Category: Tirade

Democrat Senator Van Hollen’s Tirade Against Israel

Providing more fodder for the Unholy Alliance.

by

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrat-senator-van-hollens-tirade-against-israel/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

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Maryland’s progressive Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen is one of the leading members of Congress demanding that President Biden take a much tougher stance against Israel over its conduct of the war in Gaza. Bowing to the pressure that is coming from congressional Democrats and from the pro-Palestinian progressive voters the president needs for his re-election, President Biden is buckling under.

President Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their April 4th phone call that future U.S. support for Israel in the Gaza war would depend upon Israel taking concrete, verifiable measures to protect civilians and humanitarian workers. The Biden administration allowed a United Nations Security Council resolution to pass last month that demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza without any linkage to the immediate release of the hostages held by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists.

But Senator Van Hollen, like his fellow Israeli-bashers, is still not satisfied.

Senator Van Hollen wants to immediately cut off the U.S.’s resupply of any weapons that Israel has been using in Gaza to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, which he considers to be “offensive weapons.” During his April 7th broadcast interview on CBS, Senator Van Hollen identified the weapons he said the U.S. should not be sending to Israel as “any more airplanes, bombs, artillery, everything that’s being used right now in Gaza.”

Senator Van Hollen said he was willing for the U.S. to continue providing Israel with purely defensive weapons for use in Israel itself, such as the Iron Dome. But no more weapons that Israel’s military needs to finish destroying Hamas’ fighting capabilities at their source.

It was as if the Democrat senator from Delaware was trying to turn the clock back to October 6th. He wants Israel to respond reactively only after Hamas has already launched its lethal rockets and sent its fighters from Gaza to murder more innocent civilians in Israel. The unprovoked terrorist invasion and massacres in Israel on October 7th proved that such a wait-and-see approach will inevitably lead to a disastrous outcome. Nevertheless, Van Hollen has no problem putting Israel back again in that same vulnerable position against a revived Hamas, leaving unarmed civilians in Israel exposed to more October 7th-style genocidal attacks or worse.

Senator Van Hollen’s willingness to give Hamas space and time to regroup and rebuild its fighting capabilities rather than help Israel finish off Hamas for good is no surprise. He blames Israel, not Hamas, for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

For example, Senator Van Hollen accused Israel of “textbook war crimes” in Gaza by, according to Van Hollen, “deliberately withholding food for children.” This is unmitigated blood libel against the Jewish State of Israel. Van Hollen is propagating the same lies uttered by the United Nations’ Israel-hating so-called “experts” and by biased, self-righteous “human rights” organizations.

Hamas not only started this war with its genocidal attack October 7th on Israel. Hamas has been responsible for the suffering endured by Palestinian civilians in Gaza ever since that horrible day.

Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist, explained the Hamas-imposed humanitarian crisis this way in his article entitled “My Fellow Palestinians: Stop Blaming the Jews—Hamas Is Starving Our Brothers and Sisters in Gaza”:

“As a Palestinian human rights activist deeply sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that the terrorist group Hamas is responsible for the suffering of Gazans.”

“Hamas breached all precedent with an all-out invasion of Southern Israel, massacring over 1,200 innocents in a single day—including 300 young people at an all-night nature dance party celebrating peace… As a human rights activist and a human being, I recognize that it defies all rules of geopolitics, morality, and human nature to suggest that Israel not respond militarily to dismantle Hamas and rescue its people, who we now know are being raped and psychologically tortured in captivity. And yet, amidst the intensity of the ongoing war, Israel has facilitated the transfer of international aid to Hamas-controlled territory—while Hamas has been seizing these essential supplies and transferring them for military purposes.”

Mr. Eid condemned the “failures of an international policy that has foolishly coddled a brutal tyrant and implacable foe.” By leveling false charges of “war crimes” against Israel, Senator Van Hollen is doing the same thing as the UN “experts” and others in the so-called international community, who wear their bias against Israel on their sleeves, are doing. He is amplifying the pro-Hamas propaganda that blames the victim of aggression, Israel, for the sins of terrorist aggressors against Israelis and Palestinian civilians alike.

More than seventy Maryland rabbis of all different Jewish denominations spoke with one voice against Senator Van Hollen’s inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric. “Following the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust,” they wrote in their letter to Van Hollen, “we here at home have faced the worst wave of antisemitism in our lifetimes." Yet to our dismay, rather than standing with us, your efforts in the Senate have only stoked deeper divisions and further isolated Israel and our Jewish community. While Israel fights against terror and threats of annihilation, we are aghast by your claims about war crimes and your portrayal of Israel as the aggressor.”

Any reasonable people who understand that Israel’s survival is at stake as a safe haven for Jews in a world rife with anti-Semitism should be appalled at Senator Van Hollen’s patently false accusations against the Jewish state. They should also be appalled by his calls for immediately cutting off the delivery of weapons that Israel urgently needs to save itself from more genocidal terrorist attacks on its soil. Van Hollen is recklessly providing more fodder for Israel’s enemies to exploit against Israel itself and Jews everywhere.