To help safeguard my own mental health, I don't follow racial fabulist Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Twitter/X. One of her posts nevertheless crossed into my feed late last week (before all hell broke loose on other issues), and I just stared at it for a few moments. I read it a second time, and then again. Even for her, it's breathtaking. Its framing is vile and deeply ignorant. It doesn't take special expertise from someone steeped in the history and nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to immediately recognize what's wrong with this message, and what's missing from it:
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing government have failed to get the hostages released and have killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians. No more blank checks for Netanyahu. We need to condition aid, resume the cease-fire, and advance peace through a two-state solution.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 8, 2024
Her very first assertion blames the Israeli government for 'failing' to "get the hostages released" (which looks even worse now, in light of last night's heroic rescue). Did Hamas draft this? Even if one believes Israel could or should be doing things differently -- including acceding to all sorts of outrageous demands from the hostages' captors -- in order to secure the remaining (non-murdered) victims' freedom, at the very least, some acknowledgement of Hamas' responsibility for the entire ordeal is in order. The overwhelming moral evil in this scenario is owned by the monsters who kidnapped hundreds of hostages, while in the process of slaughtering more than 1,200 civilians, and continue to refuse to let them go. But the monsters don't receive even a passing scolding in Warren's statement. In fact, they are absent entirely. The fault is instead placed on the victimized nation for not magically undoing their genocidal enemies' actions. Vile. I'll return to the 'substance' of Warren's tweet in a moment, but first, a small digression:
I try to be intellectually honest and fair, even to someone like Warren. I wondered if this post might have been part of a longer thread, other elements of which dealt with Hamas. Her tweet would still deserve criticism if shorn of wider context, in my view, but I wanted to see if she had at least offered a modicum of nuance and clarity in surrounding tweets. She had not. I scrolled back through her entire feed, reviewing every post from January 1 forward. Sifting through her many tweets promoting limitless abortion, and various economically-illiterate rants about corporate 'greed,' I identified six tweets mentioning the Israel/Hamas conflict that she has published this year. Every single one of them is either a direct criticism of Israel, or a reference to further scrutinizing or limiting US aid to Israel. The terrorists who massacred hundreds of innocents, and who continue to hold hostages (including children and Americans), earned zero mentions -- let alone criticisms. And no, in light of the massive pro-Hamas hate rallies across Western cities, and the bigotry gripping many campuses, it does not 'go without saying' that Hamas should unconditionally release their captives and surrender. Warren made a few anti-Hamas noises back when the shock of their vicious attack was still fresh. Back when it was easy. Her more lasting focus, priorities, and intended audience now speak loudly for themselves.
Back to the tweet itself. After blaming Israel for its 'failure' to get these savages to liberate their still-living kidnap victims, Warren claims that Israel has "killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians." Her comrade, Bernie Sanders (who not long ago offered correct assessments of Hamas' fundamental desire to destroy Israel), recently added the extra propagandistic flair that the vast majority of these casualties are women and children. The source for such egregious-sounding statistics has typically been 'Palestinian officials' and the 'Gaza Health Ministry.' In other words, the source is Hamas, and entities controlled by Hamas. To simply regurgitate these claims as facts amounts to another PR win for Hamas, courtesy of United States Senators. There is no doubt that many people have died in Gaza. Thousands of them are Hamas terrorists who deserve to be killed. Warren makes no effort to distinguish these deaths from others in her broader, somber tribute to dead Palestinians. To the extent that innocent people have been killed, that is both extremely sad and entirely the fault of Hamas. Israel's military does more than any fighting force on earth to avoid and reduce civilian casualties. Hamas, by contrast, deliberately targets civilians, uses their own civilians as shields to be 'sacrificed,' and routinely kills members of their own population.
It's astounding that statements like this must be said over and over again, but evidently they must: Israel did not ask for this war. They don't want to be fighting this war. They didn't start it. They would happily end the war if Hamas agreed to stop trying to annihilate their country. Israel is fighting an existential war against an enemy that wants their nation wiped off the earth, and all Jews killed. They say so out loud. They pledge to perpetrate an endless string of October 7-style attacks until Israel is gone and the Jews are dead. They reject any reasonable, remotely civilized ceasefire terms. Yet they are the villains in Warren's imagination, as evidenced by every related tweet she's fired off in 2024. Hamas terrorists are quite obviously not the target of her backwards preening about the urgent need for a 'cease fire.'
Finally, Warren calls for advancing peace "through a two state solution." I'd once again direct the Senator to the words of Hamas. Let's set aside the Palestinians' history of rejecting multiple, generous two-state solution proposals. Let's also set aside the reality that even if a Palestinian governing entity were willing to approve some such solution, many Palestinian extremist groups would instantly reject it as neither binding nor legitimate. No authority currently exists that could uphold the Palestinian end of a hypothetical peace deal. Let's focus on the fact that Israel simply cannot possibly agree to a two-state solution with a terrorist group that's openly and proudly committed to genocide -- and that publicly denounces a two state solution:
Hamas Leader Abroad Khaled Mashal: We Reject the Two-State Solution; October 7 Has Shown that Liberating Palestine from the River to the Sea Is Realistic and Has Already Begun #Hamas #Israel #Palestinians #Gaza pic.twitter.com/fcnUsbzRN1
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) January 21, 2024
We have nothing to do with the two-state solution because it means you would get a promise for a [Palestinian] state, yet you are required to recognize the legitimacy of the other state, which is the Zionist entity. This is unacceptable...The position of Hamas, and the position of the vast majority of the Palestinian people -- especially following October 7 -- I believe that the dream and the hope [is] for Palestine from the river to the sea, and from the north to the south, has been renewed. This has also become a slogan chanted in the US and in Western capital cities..."Our vision remains unchanged, I believe that October 7 has enhanced this conviction."
Warren's tweet either intentionally inverts morality, or offers evidence of its author's profound ignorance. Neither option reflects well on her. Israel has no choice but to ignore the bleatings of the world's Elizabeth Warrens, and those two whom she's shamefully pandering, and finish the job:
Over the past 24 Hours, IDF troops have:
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) February 8, 2024
🔺Identified terrorists that carried out anti-tank missile fire toward a tank and directed an IDF fighter jet which struck the terrorist cell.
🔺Eliminated a terrorist cell that attempted to transfer technological systems to Hamas.…
I'll leave you with a far better take from a Democratic Senator who grasps the basic culpability calculus at play:
Sen. Fetterman today:
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) February 8, 2024
“To anyone that is protesting or demanding for a ceasefire, let’s be honest here, why aren’t you protesting to bring them all home right now? Why aren’t you demanding that Hamas surrenders as well?” pic.twitter.com/CbYl4bZHTN
UPDATE - This is disturbing, and it also got somewhat buried under the rubble of the last end-of-week news cycle:
Top Biden officials recently met with a man whose reaction to the 10/7 massacre was: “Hamas is not a terrorist organization…the terrorist is Benjamin Netanyahu and his government." Tonight, Biden called the Israeli response to the butchery “over the top.” https://t.co/0YQGmlcdPi
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 9, 2024
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