U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) shared a post in which media personality Mehdi Hasan warned against indiscriminate killing in Gaza after Hamas launched a brutal terrorist attack against Israel, sending rockets, killing hundreds, destroying buildings and taking hostages.
Rep. Omar issued a “reminder” — as the world rallies around Israel — that Gaza, from which the Hamas attacks were launched “doesn’t have shelters or an iron dome” to protect civilians and, anticipating the Israel’s powerful response, she asks people to “Please pray for them.”
Drawing vituperative rebuke in the comments, Omar writes: “Palestinians are human beings who have been in besieged and are deserving of protection from the international community.”
Reminder, Gaza doesn’t have shelters or an iron dome and to please pray for them. May peace prevail in the region and move us towards a moral awakening to care about the human suffering we are seeing. Palestinians are human beings who have been in besieged and are deserving of… https://t.co/zHssSCqi1O
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) October 8, 2023
The blowback is especially pointed since Omar has been accused in the past of being anti-Israel. Omar has also equated the United States with Hamas, in a 2021 quote that is resurfacing now: “we have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.”
With her tweet today, Omar is trying to draw a distinction between the Hamas terrorists and those unassociated Gaza residents who are stuck there, ordinary citizens who disavow the violence. (This is a scenario that sees Hamas as the party which has victimized Gaza citizens by inciting Israel. Hamas’s aggression against Israel that puts them in peril.)
One commenter notes that the “proportionate response” expected could be of a scale rarely seen before, positing:
The death toll from this weekend’s Hamas terror attack currently stands at 600. For a population of approx 8 million Israelis, that is the equivalent of 24,500 Americans. What would a ‘proportionate response’ to 24,500 dead Americans be?
In his comment, which launched Omar’s, Hasan cautioned against an “overwhelming” response by Israel that kills innocent citizens as opposed to targeted strikes to annihilate Hamas: “Strategically,” he says, “killing civilians in Gaza who aren’t Hamas won’t hurt Hamas, it’ll help them, in the long-run.”
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