On Monday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” the host responds to several Democrat lawmakers who reacted to Israel defending itself against rocket attacks from the terrorist organization Hamas by spouting “pure terrorist propaganda.”
How did members of Congress in the United States respond to this? Two Democrat members, far-leftwing freshman representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar defended the terrorists, of course. First, Rashida Tlaib retweeted someone who was criticizing a New York Times story.
The tweet that she retweeted said, “This is a stunningly irresponsible and misleading headline, New York Times. Israel shot dozens of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza on Friday and killed four Palestinians including two protesters in Gaza before any projectiles were launched.”
That tweet that Rashida Tlaib retweeted is itself misleading because what it’s suggesting is that Israel provoked the rocket attacks. Israel didn’t provoke the rocket attacks; Iran acting through Islamic Jihad provoked the response from Israel, which then led to rocket attacks because a terrorist sniper started firing on Israeli troops. So, what this person is suggesting is that when terrorists from Gaza start firing on Israeli troops, what Israel should do is nothing. They should just take it lying down — it would be wrong to fight back against terrorists shooting our troops. That’s what that lunatic says, but the more troubling thing is that a member of the United States Congress then retweeted that Islamist propaganda.
Tlaib keeps pushing the propaganda, and she then pushes her own tweet. She says, “When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free”. I’ll pause there — did you catch that? “Our Palestinian people.” Are we talking about some group of Palestinian Arabs living in New Jersey or some group of Palestinian Arabs living in Arizona… no. Who are our Palestinian people? Who does Tliab refer to as “our”? Who does she view as us? Who is she allying herself with?
The tweet goes on: “Headlines like this and framing it in this way just feed into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress and target Palestinian children and families. Hashtag Free Palestine.”
So, this is pure terrorist propaganda. It’s the only way to put it. A member of Congress Rashida Tlaib has become a mouthpiece for some of the worst terrorists in the world. There’s no more diplomatic way I could say it. The more interesting thing and I’ve suspected this for a long time with Rashida Tlaib, is it’s clear she doesn’t like Israel, it’s clear she doesn’t like Jews, and it’s clear that she sides with some of the worst terrorists in the world. But listen to the language — she’s siding with a group of Arabs in so-called Palestine, that elected Hamas to be their government and that elected a terrorist organization to be their government.
She’s siding with them over an actual ally and a Western-style democracy in the Middle East. But the language “free Palestine” and “the people just want to be free.” We’ve talked about this theme for weeks now. This theme that goes throughout all of Western modernity, which is liberation, emancipation. We always want to emancipate. We always want to liberate. We always want to be free. Free is good, not free is bad.
Who could disagree with that? Well, what happens when freedom means the opposite of freedom? This is why you’ve always got to watch out for people who only speak in the terms of abstract rights with human rights, liberty, equality and fraternity. Whenever they’re just talking in those totally abstract terms that are not connected to anything on the ground, that are not connected to actual legal rights, not connected to actual people in actual places with actual institutions and when they’re just using those words… chances are they’re demagogues. Chances are they’re trying to trick you.
When she says “free” she means Arabs in this region get another state — “they just want to be free.” How many Muslim states are there in the region?
There’s one Jewish state in the world and there are dozens of Muslim states in that region. Now she’s saying we need to take away part of the Jewish state to have another Muslim state, otherwise, these Arabs can’t be free.
Let’s take Rashida Tlaib’s tweet on the surface as face value. They want to be free and to be free they need a state. What would that state look like? It would be a state run by Hamas.
You would be giving the terrorist organization Hamas, which targets civilians — it doesn’t just accidentally kill civilians, but targets civilians’ women and children, uses them as bulletproof vests, not bulletproof for the women and children, and uses them as protection from bombs and guns — you would be giving them a country. Free Palestine would mean giving international recognition to a group of people that intentionally undermine the international order. You’d be giving a nation to people who undermine our system of nation states. It is a freedom that would undercut everybody else’s freedom.