Tag: Hamas

Voters take note: Thu Nguyen openly defends Hamas

I realize that the title of this post sounds crazy. The idea that a member of the Worcester City Council is defending a terrorist organization that has vowed to wipe out the world’s Jews, an anti-Israel and anti-America organization aligned with Iran, and through them Moscow and Beijing, sounds positively unhinged. Still, facts are facts.

Further, Nguyen’s defense of Hamas did not come out of nowhere; it fits into an escalating pattern of extremism on the part of the city councilor.

Background

On October 17, Nguyen was one of only two city council members to vote against a resolution stating that Worcester would “condemn the recent barbaric and inhuman taking of hostages in Israel, including a number of American citizens, and prays for their immediate and safe release and return to their loved ones.”

Nguyen made a rambling statement before casting their vote against the resolution. While they made a token, sentence-long condemnation of the violence of Hamas, Nguyen repeated uncritically that organization’s propaganda, including that Israel was going to commit “genocide” against Palestinians and that the IDF, Israel’s military, had bombed a hospital, killing 500 people.

Even before Nguyen spoke, details had already emerged showing that it was extremely unlikely that Israel had bombed the medical facility. We now know, as the U.S. intelligence community has asserted with “high confidence,” that the explosion was due to a projectile misfired by the terrorist Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which had been aimed at Israel. While the “fog of war” was still heavy as the council meeting was ongoing, Nguyen doubled down on this false assertion the next day, October 18, the same day the president told the world Israel was not responsible.

The best-case scenario is that they are posting inflammatory rhetoric about something of which they are entirely ignorant. But Nguyen’s pattern of behavior suggests something more sinister.

Next fact.

As mentioned above, Nguyen stood in a public forum and accused Israel of “genocide.” No one who understands the definition of the term really believes that Israel is engaged in this crime against humanity, and we know that Nguyen had been made aware that this false accusation is an anti-Jewish blood libel. On October 16, Nguyen posted an image from a group called “Jewish Voice for Peace,” a non-Jewish organization (in fact, the founder of one of its chapters was a Muslim Palestinian-Jordanian also on the board of a group the U.S. government listed as a non-indicted co-conspirator with Hamas). According Anti-Defamation League, JVP is as an extremist group that uses antisemitic imagery and endangers Jews.

That day, I reached out to Nguyen via social media, as chronicled here, with a link to the ADL statement and, trying to appeal to Nguyen, said that using JVP as token “Jews” to advance such rhetoric was similar to using Candace Owens as the “voice of the Black community.’ It’s certain that Nguyen read the message, because they replied, saying glibly, “More like Angela Davis.” Nguyen therefore knew that they were spreading the views of an extremist organization engaged in antisemitism.

On Oct. 22 and 28, Nguyen published one-sided “free Palesitne” statements. The irony here is that as an excuse for voting against the resolution calling to free the hostages, Nguyen said “we need to grieve the death in both communities.” But Nguyen hasn’t done that: they spared only one throwaway, milquetoast line was given to the 1,400 innocent people who were slaughtered and raped by Hamas, and yet have written post after post on social media about Palestine and are urging people to a “free Palestine” demonstration, spreading Hamas propaganda and blood libel in the meanwhile.

Maybe the reader is asking, “Okay, the above evidence paints a picture of a person who is clearly anti-Israel and doesn’t care about the welfare of Jews, but can you really accuse Nguyen of supporting Hamas based on this?”

Thu Nguyen in support of Hamas

The answer is, of course, no. There are many different types of Israel-haters and antisemites; they don’t all support Hamas. But Nguyen cleared up any confusion we might have had on October 25.

On that day, Nguyen – the supposed defender of women’s rights – posted a defense of the organization whose members on October 7 raped girls so forcefully their pelvic bones were broken.

That’s right: a sitting Worcester city councilor told us via social media that the organization that slaughtered 1,400 people and kidnapped 200, including a six-month-old baby, is really not as bad as people think. Nguyen did this by linking to a video on Instagram showing hostages Hamas released saying that they had been treated well in captivity. The video concluded with a man insinuating that CNN had lied when the hostages said they “went through hell.”

Of course, the same hostage did say she went through hell. Being captured by a murderous group of thugs and brought to a foreign land isn’t pleasant. What Nguyen’s link failed to mention was that the husband of the former hostage is still locked in Gaza, dramatically limiting her ability to speak freely. And even if that weren’t the case, Stockholm Syndrome is extremely well known.

There is no possible reason imaginable that Nguyen would post this to their official campaign page except that they are sympathetic to the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. And when I pointed this out on social media, they doubled down.

Instead of responding in a normal way – “I regret this terrible oversight, which certainly does not reflect my views,” etc. – Nguyen posted the following:

An aside

Let’s look at what Nguyen thinks, based on this statement. Even if they weren’t an antisemitic Hamas supporter, is this the kind of person who should represent us?

Someone who believes that constituents condemning their representative’s blood libel and support for Hamas on social media is a “stalkerish obsession”?

Someone who believes that, in a democratic system, when your representative comes out in support of terrorists – or, really, anything with which you disagree – you’re supposed to just “leave them alone”?

Someone who thinks “fearmongering” is the same as “look at what this person said”?

Someone who thinks criticizing a politician via social media is “intimidation”?

Anyway, I responded via X.

Nguyen still refuses to denounce Hamas

And Nguyen responded, almost incomprehensibly:

I responded that calling someone a “stalker” is slanderous, and Nguyen immediately removed that post and then blocked me on Facebook (which is not actually legal for municipal representatives to do on non-personal pages).

How can anyone believe Nguyen doesn’t sympathize with Hamas?

Thu Nguyen posted a link defending Hamas from accusations that they made the lives of the people they abducted hell. What other explanation could there be? Nguyen responded to criticism of their defense of the anti-Israeli, anti-American terrorist group that holds the people of Gaza captive by deflecting, by insulting one of their constituents. Why would they do this if they didn’t support Hamas? What possible reason could there be? There’s only one possible answer, unless we hear otherwise.

Thu Nguyen supports Hamas.

Condemning Israel like condemning Allied powers during WWII

Question: Was it wrong for America and her allies to fight World War II, given that our bombing caused an immense amount of suffering for the German, Italian, Japanese, and other people, including innocent women, children, and even babies?

Keep in mind that the U.S. and allied forces used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We also literally lit the air of Dresden on fire, killing everyone around, combatant or not, in one of the most gruesome ways imaginable.

If your answer to the above question is “yes,” that fighting WWII was morally wrong, you’ve chosen the side of depravity. In the interest of “peace” and “humanitarian efforts,” you’ve agreed it would have been acceptable to allow the Nazi Reich to maintain power at the expense of the lives of millions of people, especially Jews and the Romani, but millions of others as well – across Europe and, eventually, the world.

If you answered “no,” congratulations. You’ve made the hard choice that the people we tasked with making these choices made, in the interests of justice. And if you answered this way, then you must logically support Israel’s actions in Gaza, especially given that Israel has not, and will never, commit anything remotely approaching the scale – or type – of Dresden or Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Israel will never target civilians.

Egregious lies

And yet there are people, even now, days after the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, urging Israel to move toward de-escalation and restraint in its just and proper war against Hamas in Gaza. Israel should not accept their council. This same advice would have left the Nazis in power in Germany.

Even more egregious, some are publicly accusing Israel of war crimes, including even ethnic cleansing and genocide. The best of these people is that they are completely devoid of any realistic understanding of the situation. The worst of them are purposely repeating Hamas talking points, aimed at undermining Israel’s just response. During World War II, these same people would likely be repeating Nazi talking points about the poor suffering Aryans.

In my own city of Worcester, Massachusetts, there is a city council member, Thu Nguyen, who falls into this latter category, though I can’t make any claim to know if Nguyen, who uses they/them pronouns, is an ignoramus or a conscious defender of Hamas. They posted to Instagram a statement from Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization designated by the ADL as an extremist group dangerous to the Jewish community, accusing Israel of plotting “imminent genocide.”

With Nguyen, I have to assume that they are in the “defenders of Hamas category,” as I responded to them with a link from the ADL explaining who and what JVP is and pointing out that tokenizing a “Jewish” group to promote anti-Jewish ideas is akin to using a statement from Candace Owens as representative of the Black community. Nguyen ignored the ADL’s statement, responding only that they (Nguyen) considered JVP to be more like Angela Davis, whatever that means. Needless to say, Nguyen’s accusation of genocide has not been removed from their Instagram feed.

Unfortunately, there are people like Nguyen across the country, all across social media and cable news making these ridiculous claims. It’s as if some of these people don’t even understand the words they are using.

The falsity of the “genocide” claims

How can anyone accuse Israel of genocide? Israel’s military could easily kill every single man, woman, and child in Gaza right now. That is not what they are doing; the goal of the war has been announced: to destroy the military capabilities of Hamas. While Thu Nguyen and others might not make a distinction between Hamas and innocent civilians, Israel does.

Israel is conducting targeted air strikes to remove Hamas targets so that a ground invasion can begin. Before the airstrikes began, Israel sent video messages in Arabic to the people of Gaza telling them the general area where the bombs would fall and where to go for safety. As the ground invasion comes closer to commencing, Israel has given warning – something that the slaughtered in Israel didn’t receive from Hamas – telling everyone in northern Gaza to evacuate to south of Wadi, or about ten or 15 miles south of Gaza’s most extreme northern border.

Those who make genocide generally don’t give warnings to their intended victims telling them where to go for safety. Unfortunately, for bad actors like Nguyen and others, this has brought no good will for Israel. Instead, they suggest that the temporary evacuation is a form of ethnic cleansing!

By the standards of those who argue Israel is engaged in the practice, the U.S. ethnically cleanses Florida every so often, each time a hurricane approaches the region.

If we agree that World War II was a just war, we have to agree that Israel’s actions in Gaza are just, given that Israel is taking a dramatically more proactive effort to preserve the lives of civilians than we ever did. Who would you rather be, a Gazan driving or walking ten miles from home or a citizen of Dresden, where the air was turned into fire?

The real war criminals

As I wrote before, there will sadly be casualties in the Israel-Hamas war, both Gazans and Israeli soldiers. Despite this, Israel has to fight. The past couple decades of relative security have been due to the perception that Israel is a powerhouse. If Israel loses that edge, not only Hamas, but Hezbollah and their director financiers, Iran, will be emboldened. The horrors those groups could unleash are unimaginable.

Make no mistake: there is no justification for war crimes, and any soldier who loses their mind and commits a vile act should and would be prosecuted. Israel will not commit them. Hamas, on the other hand, is and has been.

Hamas is using civilians as shields.

Hamas raped young girls and forced their parents to listen.

Hamas killed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children.

Hamas is refusing to let Gazan civilians evacuate.

Hamas burned babies alive.

Hamas has turned schools, hospitals, mosques, and other areas into military installations.

Hamas is targeting civilians.

Hamas is torturing people.

Hamas commits rape as an act of war.

All of these are war crimes, crimes against humanity and Hamas must be made to pay for them.

Choose the right side

Any blood spilled in this conflict is on the hands of Hamas’s leaders and members. Any decent person, should they learn of a civilian killed in Gaza, should mourn them, but they should assign blame appropriately. Allowing the terror group to stay in power, ruling over Gaza, would itself be a crime against humanity, a crime that Thu Nguyen and many other “peace” lovers seem fully content with.

There is no “context” to consider. There are no shades of gray. In this conflict, Israel is on the side of good. And if you’re opposed to the side of good, either through restraining it or spreading ridiculous lies and propaganda pieces from the other side, you’ve chosen the side of evil.

Featured image: Montecruz Foto // Creative Commons License

Endangering Arabs to spite Israel: the results of “progressive” demands

How are we to understand the recent efforts of the “Justice” Democrats to cut funding for military assistance to the State of Israel? To hear them tell it, their actions are humanitarian and would stop a powerful bully (Israel) from using American tax dollars to kill innocent Palestinian Arab civilians.

This is nonsense.

Based on their recent statements, it seems apparent that the Justice Democrats – the group energized by Bernie Sanders’ campaign – give very little worry to the lives of Israeli civilians. But what has become increasingly apparent is that they also don’t give much consideration to endangering the safety of Arabs in the area, either – so long as it means the weakening, and eventual destruction of, Israel as a Jewish state. (While the “Justice Democrats” website does not go into much detail on any policy issues, the politics of the Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) overlap to such an extent that the leading members of the the former grouping are members of the latter, which has a page going into detail on their policy preferences for Israel and the disputed territories.)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced a provision into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds America’s military goals yearly, to ban the transfer of $725 million worth of “JDAMs” to Israel. According to the representative, writing Sept. 17 on Twitter, the reason for the amendment was to punish the “Israeli gov over the bombing of Palestinian civilians, media centers”. Ocasio-Cortez knows well enough that the “media centers” (it  should be in the singular form, as there was only one building) was actually a base of Hamas operations, and she knows that the leadership of her own party have seen and accepted the proof of this. She also knows full well that Israel goes beyond any other country in warning civilians before bombs fall. Apparently, none of this matters. Instead of being upset at the death of civilians (which happened in Israel as well during the war brought about entirely by Hamas), this new strand in the progressive movement is upset at Israel having the ability to defend itself.

Why else would anyone oppose the sale of JDAMs, if not to undermine Israel’s defense mechanisms? JDAM is an acronym for “Joint Direct Attack Munitions.” It is possible that AOC is so uninformed that she doesn’t know what these are (“I’m not the expert in geopolitics on this issue,” she said during a Firing Line interview after being questioned as to why she used the term “occupation” to describe Israel’s presence in the West Bank), but let us assume that she has done the most basic of research on the policy she is trying to influence. If she has, she knows that JDAMs are not weapons themselves. Instead, they are kits that, when attached to regular bombs, turn them into GPS-enhanced precision-guided weapons. Rejecting the sale of JDAMs, therefore, means pushing Israel to use “dumb” bombs instead of precision weaponry.

Why would anyone want Israel using dumb bombs when its military is engaged in a campaign in Gaza? The Gaza Strip has a population density of 13,069.1 people per square mile, meaning the whole area is far more densely populated than Chicago, which has a density of 11,783 people per square mile. In the most recent conflict, 243 people, both terrorists and innocents, were killed in Gaza. Without detracting from the fact that the death of any innocent civilian is a tragedy beyond imagination, it is obvious that the only way that the number of casualties could be kept this low was due to the use of precision weaponry. Those 243 people died in the course of an  11-day-long protracted fight where thousands of bombs were exchanged between Israel and Hamas. As a thought experiment, imagine a military plane dropping a single dumb bomb on a block in Chicago. Is it even possible to imagine that less than 243 people would die? A single subway car holds about 250 people. If an El (Chicago’s light rail system) station was hit in a regular business district, thousands of people could have easily died due to one “dumb” bomb. Contemplating how many would die over the course of a whole military conflict in such a populated area is indeed a grim intellectual exercise.

In essence, the proposal would have kept Israeli bombs “dumb.” Leaving Israel with only dumb bombs the next time Hamas decides to launch a volley of rockets would mean one of two things: Israel would be forced to allow rockets to rain down on it (even the Iron Dome isn’t perfect; 12 Israelis died in the most recent conflict, including children) or Israel would be forced to go into Gaza using imprecise bombs, killings either thousands or tens of thousands of civilians. Neither of these situations is good for anyone – aside from Hamas or PIJ.

This past week, this band of “progressives” convinced House Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to remove a billion dollars’ worth of support for Israel’s Iron Dome from a government funding bill. In essence, they told Pelosi, “Remove this money for Israel, or we’ll vote against keeping the federal government open.” Shamefully, Pelosi acceded to this measure. A billion dollars is, in relation to the federal budget, actually a relatively small amount, and anyone looking for pork to cut would do far better looking elsewhere. The aim was decidedly not to save money, but to cripple the Iron Dome. (The discussion of why the U.S. sends aid to Israel is long and complex; suffice it to say that the relationship is mutually beneficial, and also to point out that the U.S. sends military and other aid to many countries.)

Aside from hatred for Israel – increasingly common on the left and the right, fueled by non-factual “news” pieces from outlets like al-Jazeera – it is hard to imagine why anyone would oppose the Iron Dome. Composed of a set of purely defensive missiles, the Dome’s sole mission is to shoot down rockets fired into Israel, most often by Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The Dome quite literally does nothing more than defend the lives of Israelis from foreign rockets.

Indirectly, the Iron Dome saves Arab lives in Gaza. Without the Iron Dome, every single missile that enters Israeli air space every single time Hamas or PIJ decides to launch them would

The Iron Dome in action. On the right are missiles launched from Gaza while, on the left, Iron Dome missiles intercept them over the State of Israel.
The Iron Dome in action. On the right are missiles launched from Gaza while, on the left, Iron Dome missiles intercept them over the State of Israel.

potentially scores of kill civilians, and Israel would have no choice but to respond. With the Iron Dome, Israeli military officials are able to monitor how many missiles are coming in at a given time, and decide whether it is necessary to respond at all. Further, without the Dome, it is highly likely that the IDF would need to enter into a costly, in terms of human lives, ground battle in Gaza either to seek out and destroy all of Hamas’s rocket-launching capabilities or to dislodge Hamas outright. Regardless of how carefully the IDF and Israeli Air Force engage in combat, this would probably kill thousands.

Eliminating the Iron Dome would mean death for countless Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. There is no question of this. The only possible explanations for these Congressional representatives – who have never expressed any desire for fiscal constraint – and their ideological allies (including a few Republicans) to oppose the Iron Dome’s funding is either stupidity or a callous disregard for the lives of Jews so intense that this group is willing to see Arabs severely endangered only to spite Israel. Note that here “hatred of Jews” is written purposely instead of “hatred of Israel,”  because eliminating the Iron Dome would not harm Israel’s self defense as a state; it has a strong military that would easily defeat Hamas. Eliminating the Iron Dome would leave the State of Israel fully intact even as it would cause the deaths of scores of Israelis and potentially thousands of Palestinian Arabs.

Thankfully, the efforts of the the Justice Democrats, in alliance with a few extremist America First Republicans, have so far ended in abject failure. Only yesterday, House Democrats introduced a resolution separate from the federal spending bill, House Resolution 5323, the Iron Dome Supplemental Appropriations Act, which passed 420-9, guaranteeing funding for the Iron Dome. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (D-Ky.) who in 2019 was the only member of the House to vote against a bills supporting democracy in Hong Kong  and condemning the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs in China, voted against the Iron Dome funding. On the Democratic side of the aisle, Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Andre Carson (D-In.), Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Marie Newman (D-Ill.), and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.)  – Justice Democrats and their allies – voted against it, as Ocasio-Cortez and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) voted “present.” 

The vast majority of the Democratic and Republican Parties voted the right way, as did the overwhelming majorities of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. A number of Democrats made excellent speeches, including the new progressive Democrat Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), the first gay Black member of Congress, who represents the district adjacent to AOC’s. Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said what many were thinking when he responded to one of the Justice Democrats, Rep. Tlaib, and accused her of antisemitism for her more egregious statements. It is important to note, however, that Deutch’s statements can’t be interpreted as directed solely at one member of Congress, nor should this controversy be seen only as the work of a few members of the House. Instead, it is indicative of a rise in anti-Israel – connected very strongly to antisemitic – sentiment in America on both the far right and the far left. From Massie, it represents the resurgence of right-wing antisemitism under the guise of “human rights.” From the “progressives”, it represents the encroachment into the U.S. of Soviet-style antisemitism, displayed most vividly in recent times in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, through the recently radicalized Democratic Socialists of America, the Justice Democrats, and other such groups. The influence of this group is growing and, if it is left unchecked, it could metastasize throughout the Democratic Party, potentially Corbynizing the Democratic Party. While Rep. Pelosi should be applauded for introducing the Iron Dome funding in a standalone bill, her original cowardly decision to strip it from the NDAA – and not to fight the move – is not promising.

Democrats and Republicans must clean house and replace those who hate Israel and Jews so much that they would sacrifice anything, even Arab safety, to spite Israel with better representatives – and they must combat the lie that legitimate criticism of Israel includes the vicious slander that the new “progressives” lodge.