Walberg Calls For Nuking Gaza-- "Like Nagasaki & Hiroshima"
Trump doesn't say much about Gaza; he’s being advised to let Biden blow slowly in the wind and not throw him any kind of lifeline. Every now and then he can’t control himself, though and blurts out something like “total victory” or You’ve got to finish the problem.” Sometimes Trump surrogates in Congress get more to the point.
Tim Walberg represents a pretty safe district in Michigan that includes the state’s entire southern border. MI-05 has an R+15 PVI and Trump beat Biden there by 24.2 points. Last cycle Walberg beat an unfunded, unknown Democrat, Bart Goldberg 62.4- 35.0%. He won all ten counties. This cycle, the Democrats don’t even have a candidate running against this former pastor who was first elected in 2006. A vicious homophobe, anti-Choice fanatic and climate change denier, he should be a DCCC target.
Melissa Burke reported yesterday that Walberg suggested that nuclear weapons should be dropped on Gaza. “It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick,” Walberg says in a video circulating on social media, referencing the Japanese cities that the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on at the end of World War II.”
She noted that the former pastor “also is heard in the video speaking out against humanitarian aid for those in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory on the brink of famine after more than five months of Israel's war against Hamas… ‘We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,’ Walberg said. He also urged that we “wipe out Russia.”
The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called Walberg's comments a “clear call to genocide by a member of Congress" and said his remarks should be "condemned by all Americans who value human life and international law.”
“To so casually call for what would result in the killing of every human being in Gaza sends the chilling message that Palestinian lives have no value,” CAIR Executive Director Dawud Walid said. “It is this dehumanization of the Palestinian people that has resulted in the ongoing slaughter and suffering we see every day in Gaza and the West Bank.”
One of Walberg’s House colleagues, Democratic U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham, criticized Walberg’s remarks without using his name Saturday in a post on Twitter.
“Threatening to use, suggesting the use of, or, God forbid actually using nuclear weapons, are unacceptable tactics of war in the 21st Century,” wrote Stevens, a staunch supporter of Israel. “As W.J. Hennigan recently & accurately described for the NYT, the use of nuclear weapons creates hell on earth.”
U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, also condemned the remarks from Walberg, a former pastor.
“This is a reprehensible thing for anyone to suggest, especially an elected official and someone who considers himself a man of faith,” Slotkin said in a statement. “Rep. Walberg should take back his comments, and try to put himself in the shoes of the many Michiganders who see themselves in the casualties in Gaza.”
Michigan state Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, tweeted that Walberg had been caught on video “endorsing and calling for a complete genocide in Gaza.”
“He’s an absolute disgrace and needs to resign,” Camilleri said.
Former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, a Palestinian American from Kent County who served with Walberg in Congress, said his comments “evince an utter indifference to human suffering.”
“The people of Gaza are our fellow human beings— many of them children trapped in horrific circumstances beyond their individual control,” tweeted Amash, who is running for the Republican nomination for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat. “For him to suggest that hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians should be obliterated, including my own relatives sheltering at an Orthodox Christian church, is reprehensible and indefensible.”
Millions of Americans are rightly furious at Biden for continuing to arm Israel even as it commits a non-nuclear genocide in Gaza. Some say they will never vote for Biden. I understand the sentiment. They need consider the alternative to Biden and the Democrats anyway. At this point, every member of Congress should be considered either pro-genocide or anti-genocide. Every single Republican and most Democrats, despite the fancy rhetoric, are pro-genocide. 77 Democrats are anti-genocide