To help safeguard my own mental health, I don't follow racial fabulist Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Twitter/X. One of her posts nevertheless crossed into my feed late last week (before all hell broke loose on other issues), and I just stared at it for a few moments. I read it a second time, and then again. Even for her, it's breathtaking. Its framing is vile and deeply ignorant. It doesn't take special expertise from someone steeped in the history and nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to immediately recognize what's wrong with this message, and what's missing from it:
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing government have failed to get the hostages released and have killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians. No more blank checks for Netanyahu. We need to condition aid, resume the cease-fire, and advance peace through a two-state solution.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 8, 2024
Her very first assertion blames the Israeli government for 'failing' to "get the hostages released" (which looks even worse now, in light of last night's heroic rescue). Did Hamas draft this? Even if one believes Israel could or should be doing things differently -- including acceding to all sorts of outrageous demands from the hostages' captors -- in order to secure the remaining (non-murdered) victims' freedom, at the very least, some acknowledgement of Hamas' responsibility for the entire ordeal is in order. The overwhelming moral evil in this scenario is owned by the monsters who kidnapped hundreds of hostages, while in the process of slaughtering more than 1,200 civilians, and continue to refuse to let them go. But the monsters don't receive even a passing scolding in Warren's statement. In fact, they are absent entirely. The fault is instead placed on the victimized nation for not magically undoing their genocidal enemies' actions. Vile. I'll return to the 'substance' of Warren's tweet in a moment, but first, a small digression:
I try to be intellectually honest and fair, even to someone like Warren. I wondered if this post might have been part of a longer thread, other elements of which dealt with Hamas. Her tweet would still deserve criticism if shorn of wider context, in my view, but I wanted to see if she had at least offered a modicum of nuance and clarity in surrounding tweets. She had not. I scrolled back through her entire feed, reviewing every post from January 1 forward. Sifting through her many tweets promoting limitless abortion, and various economically-illiterate rants about corporate 'greed,' I identified six tweets mentioning the Israel/Hamas conflict that she has published this year. Every single one of them is either a direct criticism of Israel, or a reference to further scrutinizing or limiting US aid to Israel. The terrorists who massacred hundreds of innocents, and who continue to hold hostages (including children and Americans), earned zero mentions -- let alone criticisms. And no, in light of the massive pro-Hamas hate rallies across Western cities, and the bigotry gripping many campuses, it does not 'go without saying' that Hamas should unconditionally release their captives and surrender. Warren made a few anti-Hamas noises back when the shock of their vicious attack was still fresh. Back when it was easy. Her more lasting focus, priorities, and intended audience now speak loudly for themselves.
