Lindsey Graham uses the logic of a terrorist in barbaric Gaza remarks | Opinion
I don’t know how to solve the crisis unfolding in Israel and Gaza. I’m neither expert nor wise enough to devise a peace plan that would have a real chance of becoming reality.
I know, though, that we should not do what Lindsey Graham advises.
For far too long, we’ve been led astray by men like him, allowing them to put in place policies that all but guarantee cycles of horrific violence will continue repeating, leading to the unnecessary death of innocent fellow human beings. For far too long, we’ve allowed them to define the terms of who gets to use what we deem justified violence and when and against whom.
“We’re in a religious war here. I am with Israel,” Graham said. “Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”
South Carolina’s senior U.S. senator spread that message during an appearance on the Fox News Channel and has doubled down on it multiple times since.
Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.
South Carolina’s senior U.S. senator was referencing an area that includes roughly 2.3 million Palestinians — nearly half of whom are children.
That was his response to the atrocities committed by the terror organization Hamas. He believes murdering Palestinian children is a rational way to respond to the murder of Israeli children. Let’s kill their babies because terrorists killed ours. (Several hundred Palestinian children have already been killed during Israel’s bombardment.)
Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.
It’s the logic of terrorists who often believe themselves freedom fighters, killing for a supposedly righteous cause. It’s what motivated a man who murdered five Dallas police officers, and injured civilians, in 2016, a perverted belief that his actions were righteous retaliation for racial injustice. It’s the way Hamas thinks and why it had no compunction targeting Israeli civilians. It’s why Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden didn’t bat an eye before murdering 3,000 civilians on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s why a landlord in Chicago forced his way into a Muslim family’s apartment on Saturday and stabbed to death a 6-year-old boy and badly injured his mother while expressing anti-Muslim views.
In their minds, they were only doing whatever the hell they “had to do” to protect themselves, even if it meant leveling the Twin Towers or breaking into the homes of Israeli citizens, committing unspeakable acts against them.
It’s easy to rationalize our way to justifying the wanton killing of those we deem less than, those who frighten us, those who have harmed us or the people we love. Our anger quickly becomes bitterness, our bitterness speedily morphing into moral blindness even before the bodies are cold in the ground. If we do it to them, it’s OK because we are good. If they do it to us, it’s bad because they are evil. It’s a story as old as humanity and plays itself out in a million ways big and small, loud and ignored.
When a small group of young men shot up my youngest brother’s apartment, killing his fiancé and nearly killing his then-toddler daughter, it wasn’t hard to rationalize why they needed to be hunted down and killed. They were “human animals” who had forfeited their right to life by their willingness to end the lives of others. That was the guttural instinct I had to fight against to convince my brother to not pick up a gun and retaliate, knowing that responding to the shedding of blood with bloodshed would only lead to the shedding of more blood, including people caught in the crossfire of those blinded by hatred, controlled by bloodlust.
Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.
We should mourn with our Jewish brothers and sisters, those directly affected by the terror and horrors unleashed by Hamas. They suffered an unequivocal evil that must be unequivocally condemned.
That doesn’t mean we must leave our Palestinian brothers and sisters to be slaughtered by men like Graham and others who support them because doing whatever the hell we have to do, no matter how many innocent lives that means snuffing out, is neither defense nor defensible.
It’s a barbarism that must be deemed unacceptable in every society believing itself just.
This story was originally published October 17, 2023 at 6:00 AM.