“Very fine people.”
That’s what then-President Donald Trump in 2017 called white supremacists rallying in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a Nazi supporter plowed a car into a crowd of counter protestors, and killed one of the demonstrators.
Fast forward to last week, after heartless terrorists launched a cowardly sneak attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and wounded thousands more.
Hamas carried out the attack, but Trump found a way to heap praise on Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terrorist group with ties to Iran that attacked Israel from the north.
“Two nights ago, I read all of Biden’s security people, can you imagine, national defense people, and they said, ‘Gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn’t attack from the north, because that’s the most vulnerable spot,’” Trump said during a rally in West Palm Beach, Fla. “I said, ‘Wait a minute.’ You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart.”
Smart? Really? All of them?
How smart is it to kill women, children and elderly people, and drag victims of barbaric violence through the streets?
How smart is it to kidnap as many as 150 people and hold them as hostages, with the threat of executing them if Israel targets people in Gaza without warning?
Trump blamed Israel for not being prepared, and said that if he were still president, the attack would have never happened. His ill-timed remarks were callous and incendiary, much like everything he says. It’s enough to make you want to quote Ron DeSantis.
“Terrorists have murdered at least 1,200 Israelis and 22 Americans and are holding more hostage,” tweeted DeSantis, the Republican Florida governor who is running for president.
“So it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart.’ As President, I will stand with Israel and treat terrorists like the scum that they are.”
Words matter. Timing matters. This war is as much about propaganda as it is about anything else.
That’s why it is laudable that state Attorney General Letitia James would urge social media companies to crack down on hate speech and threats of violence in the wake of the Gaza attack.
Such posts only encourage more violence and hatred and put vulnerable people at risk.
The same can be said for some of the protest rhetoric that has been spewed in recent days across New York City — home to more Jews than anywhere but Israel.
If you’re going to gather on an American college campus and loudly support shameless murderers and terrorists who think nothing of killing and torturing people by the thousands, then don’t be cowards and hide behind masks and bandanas like the Students for Justice in Palestine did the other day at Columbia University
“Despite the odds against them, Palestinians launched a counter offensive against our settler colonial oppressor, which receives billions of U.S. dollars in military aid and possesses one of the world’s most robust surveillance and security apparatuses,” one of the protest leaders said. “Any omission of this context. Any rhetoric of an unprovoked Palestinian attack is shamefully misleading,”
Also misleading is the notion that all speech is free. There is a cost. And right now, we’re all paying.