A welcome and needed statement from National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, whose flashes of moral clarity over the past month-plus have been refreshing, despite all sorts of disagreements and disgraces he's defended in the past. Just last week, I addressed the terms 'genocide' and 'apartheid' levied against Israel by its legions of ignorant and/or malevolent critics. Both inflammaotry and serious words are grotesquely misapplied to Israel, especially because they're dishonestly deployed by people doing the direct or indirect bidding of Hamas -- an actually genocidal terrorist organization that enforces strict 'apartheid' societal standards. As usual, the anti-Israel, "pro-Palestine" crowd takes the truth and turns it on its head, repeating the lie endlessly. That doesn't change the lie:
…and it’s especially mind-blowing to see the immoral, manipulative bothsidesism from people who abuse the word “genocide” in one breath, then shout an *actual genocidal slogan* in the next. I’m sick of it: pic.twitter.com/9uxWHjNwXk
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 17, 2023
And here's Kirby:
For the second time in 10 days, White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby makes the position of the White House and the United States government clear: Israel is not engaged in genocide, but Hamas has engaged in genocide.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 20, 2023
“This word genocide is getting thrown around… pic.twitter.com/6tPEGD51Yl
The rhetorical manipulations Kirby rejects are basically laboratory-pure instances of Freudian projection. Whatever they accuse Israel of -- genocide, apartheid, indiscriminate slaughter, crimes against humanity, etc. -- is what Hamas does, and is. There is a striking and important moral asymmetry between Israel and Hamas, which we have been highlighting since the October 7 massacre:
A critical & truthful insight into the nature of this conflict must be reiterated:
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 8, 2023
If Palestinian terrorists disarmed, the conflict would end & they’d have their own country.
If Israel disarmed, Israel would cease to exist and there would be a genocide against Jews. Again.
This goes directly to the 'genocide' point made by Kirby and others. Hamas could not be any clearer about its intentions. The destruction of Israel and the annihilation of Jews is enshrined in its founding document. its leaders' words are explicitly genocidal. And so are its actions. Hamas not only lobs a constant barrage of rockets at Israel, with the intent of killing as many Jews as possible; it also just carried out a bloodthirsty killing spree inside Israel, marking the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Arguments like this don't hold water:
Israel doesn't face "a genocidal terrorist threat." As brutal as the 10/7 Hamas attack was, it killed about 0.01% of the Israeli population (9/11 killed 0.001% of America's). No chance Hamas could wipe them out, nor get close.
— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) November 21, 2023
I agree, let's use the word "genocide" appropriately. https://t.co/zSJud6FxVI
Hamas has not carried out its promised genocide because it currently lacks the capacity to replicate their massacre on an even larger scale. It's not for lack of desire or trying. Israel, by contrast, absolutely could inflict something close to a genocide of Palestinians with its superior and lethal military technology. This has been true for many years. They have not done so, even if the face of serious threats and attacks, because they are a civilized country that has no desire to kill innocents, let alone wipe an entire group of people off the face of the earth. Indeed, the Palestinian population, including within Gaza, has soared in recent decades. To recap the genocide calculus: Hamas wants a genocide, but can't carry one out yet (its puppetmasters in Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is a disturbing possibility in this regard). Israel can carry out a genocide, but has no desire or intention to do so. Yet the Hamas apologists and defenders scream about a phony Israeli 'genocide' anyway. An inversion of morality and reality.
It's impossible to know the accurate death count inside Gaza, as the 'Ministry of Health' providing the statistics is just...Hamas, and therefore totally unreliable. But it's an indisputable fact that Israel goes out of its way to avoid civilian losses, whereas Hamas operates out of civilian areas and infrastructure -- including, if not especially, hospitals. Sick and evil:
NEW VIDEO: Foreign hostages being brought into Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital on October 7th. CCTV video released by the IDF. pic.twitter.com/80OdekG9UK
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) November 19, 2023
The following clips show the two devices being lowered into the Hamas tunnel, as well as the moment the entrance was discovered on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/nk1N23xAUC
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 19, 2023
Doctors in Gaza are not free to speak their minds, even if they don’t sympathize with Hamas.
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) November 19, 2023
But this doctor safely out of Gaza reveals: he wasn’t allowed near The Basement. That was for Hamas.
💥Watch this explosive testimony:
pic.twitter.com/UfWZE03kuE
Whatever the death toll is within Gaza, some substantial percentage of it represents Hamas terrorists. Another portion of the deaths are attributable to errant Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets missing their intended targets in Israel and killing Palestinians. Others are human shields being 'sacrificed' as 'martyrs' by Hamas. There is no moral equivalency in this war. That the Hamas apology brigade tries to flip that reality on its head is both irrelevant to the actual morality, and also profoundly unpersuasive to most Americans, thankfully. They are a loud, demented fringe:
NBC poll:
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) November 20, 2023
Hamas: 1/81 fav/unfav
Palestine; 20/38 unfav
Israel: 47/24 fav/unfav
Social media isn’t reality. https://t.co/aEsAbWGho4
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