The Patriot Post® · The Left's Anti-Israel Moral Equivalence

Where Middle East affairs are concerned, recent history has shown us that there are three certainties: first, that Israel’s enemies will strike first; second, that they will behave barbarically; and third, that the Left will fail to acknowledge the first two certainties.

This pattern played out yet again Saturday with a massive rocket attack from Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip followed by a ground attack by more than 1,000 Islamist terrorists who swept into a music festival near Israel’s border with Gaza, where they swarmed and slaughtered some 260 attendees and took dozens more hostage. The surprise attack and the stunning breach of Israel’s security suggests a massive intelligence failure on behalf of both Israel and the U.S., one that was reminiscent of a surprise attack a half a century ago that began the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

More than 800 Israelis are now confirmed dead at the hands of Iran and its murderous proxies, Hamas, and Saturday thus marks the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. But you wouldn’t know it from the reaction of Detroit Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. As the New York Post reports, Tlaib “blasted Israel’s ‘occupation’ policies while saying she grieves those killed as violence engulfed the region following Hamas’ unprecedented incursion from Gaza.”

We shouldn’t be surprised. Tlaib is a Democrat, a Jew hater of the first order, and the first Palestinian-American member of the House of Representatives. Predictably, she called for the dismantling of the “apartheid” Jewish state:

I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day. I am determined as ever to fight for a just future where everyone can live in peace, without fear and with true freedom, equal rights, and human dignity. The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance.

Since when is “resistance” defined as indiscriminately firing rockets into towns, shooting civilians from paragliders, and kidnapping and slaughtering women, children, and the elderly?

Tlaib finds common cause with her fellow Squad members, who conveniently called for a cessation of hostilities before IDF forces had so much as laced up their combat boots, much less neutralized this mortal threat to their nation’s existence. One of Tlaib’s colleagues, Minneapolis Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, called for a “de-escalation and ceasefire,” essentially telling the Jewish state to bury its 800 dead and move along.

Fat chance.

“Such senseless violence,” Omar wrote, “will only repeat the back and forth cycle we’ve seen, which we cannot allow to continue.”

The late Democrat Senator Paul Wellstone used to quip that he represents the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Similarly, we refer to “The Squad” and its supporters as the Hamas wing of the Democrat Party.

Get a load of this revolting invitation to a Palestinian party in New York City’s Times Square.

Reprobates at that rally reportedly shouted slogans such as “New York City you will see, Palestine will be free.‘” And “Zionism has got to go.” And “Long live the intifada.” They carried signs with other slogans: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” “Zionism is genocide,” “End all U.S. aid to apartheid Israel,” and “Glory to our martyrs.”

Disgusting.

The moral relativism of the Left includes many tropes, including talk of “occupied territories,” such as those retaken by Israel during 1967’s Six-Day War. The West Bank, for example, only became known as the West Bank after the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, when it was captured and ultimately annexed by what is now Jordan. For 4,000 years before that, the area was simply known as Judea and Samaria. This twisted view of history helps stack the deck against Israel’s right to self-defense by making these original inhabitants seem like occupiers.

As history also tells us, the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, but for some reason they’re not recognized as such — or at least not by those on the Left. It’s strange how Democrats and their fellow travelers love to talk about indigenous peoples, except when the indigenous ones are Jews fighting for their survival. In that case, they’re called occupiers and apartheidists.

Some things never change.