We then see snippets of video of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, followed by footage of bleeding children.
We don’t know who or what the target was in these strikes, or who or what was hit. As National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says later in the video, it is inevitable that Israeli airstrikes will lead to civilian casualties, so it is reasonable to conclude we’re watching Israeli strikes that resulted in civilian casualties.
But one snippet of footage is from the strike on al-Ahli Hospital, which Israel contends, and many outside observers concur, was hit by a misfire from Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group, not by Israel. No one has found any shrapnel that looks as though it came from an Israeli missile; the claim from Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, to the New York Times was “the missile has dissolved like salt in the water. It’s vaporized. Nothing is left.” Missiles explode, but they do not vaporize themselves into nothingness on impact. U.S. intelligence has judged that Israel “probably” was not responsible for the explosion, according to an unclassified analysis shared with The Post.
So we’re seven seconds in, and already Tlaib is misrepresenting what happened.
Then Tlaib’s video cuts to images of a protest and the word “MICHIGAN” in big white letters. We get similar footage from California, Pennsylvania and Ohio — and at the Ohio protest, we get our first caption of what the protesters are chanting: “No peace on stolen land.” A few moments later, we hear, “From the river to the sea.”
In response to criticism of the video, Tlaib defended the chant and insisted, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”
You can’t chant or endorse the chant, “no peace on stolen land” and then insist you’re calling for ”peaceful coexistence.” You just literally said you’re not willing to peacefully coexist with somebody else because you perceive them as living on land stolen from you. And everyone knows that the Palestinians and groups such as Hamas see all of Israel as “stolen land.”
Nor is the chant “from the river to the sea” a call for “peaceful coexistence.” The river and sea in question are the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, effectively the eastern and western borders of the state of Israel for the past 75 years.
In the minds of those chanting the slogan, what happens to all the people currently living “from the river to the sea”? Do they just choose to move away? Do they get somewhere else as compensatory homeland? Because we’ve seen how Hamas wants to clear out that area.
Tlaib stares into the camera and says, “Mr. President, the American people are not with you on this one. … We will remember in 2024.”
Actually, the American people largely are with Biden on this, at least so far. Late last month, a University of Maryland Critical Issues poll found that just 19 percent of respondents thought Biden was too pro-Israel, 11 percent thought he was too pro-Palestinian, 28 percent said about right, and — intriguingly — 40 percent said they didn’t know. Not many respondents said the issue would affect their vote in the next election: “Slightly more than half of respondents, 52.8 percent, said Biden’s policy on the issue won’t affect the way they would vote. Attitudes are divided along partisan lines, with 28.4 percent of Democrats saying they are more likely to vote for Biden and 10.8 percent saying less likely, while 57.6 percent of Republicans say they would be less likely to vote for Biden compared with 3.2 percent who would be more likely to vote for him.”
Now, among certain demographics that might be particularly important to Tlaib — Arab Americans and young voters — support for Biden has dropped considerably. But it is fair to wonder whether these groups are really willing to make good on their threat to stay home if next year’s presidential race is a close rematch between Biden and Donald Trump.
The Tlaib video closes with an accusation: “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people. The American people won’t forget.” Look, nobody’s more eager to join a good Biden-bashing session than I am, but that is not a fair characterization of the man who’s been talking about the need to ensure humanitarian relief can get into Gaza from very early on in this conflict. Biden’s first speech after the massacre declared, “Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people. They use Palestinian civilians as human shields.” While in Israel, Biden insisted, “The people of Gaza need food, water, medicine, shelter.” And in his address to the nation upon his return, Biden said, “We can’t ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have an opportunity.”
These are not the words of a man who supports genocide of anybody. It’s a deeply unfair smear to claim otherwise.
There is, however, real genocide going on right now. We live in a world where Vladimir Putin is trying to wipe the Ukrainians off the map, Hamas will murder any Israeli of any age it can get its hands on, and the United Nations has found China is committing “crimes against humanity” against the Uyghur people.
Twenty-two Democratic House members were right, on Tuesday, to join Republicans in censuring Tlaib. The situation is bad and tense enough without her claiming that the U.S. policy of supporting Israel — unchanged through administrations in both parties — amounts to genocide. The fires of extremism and rage are burning, and Tlaib is grabbing the gasoline.