Let’s not mince words: Hard-left Democrats this week proved themselves not just anti-Zionist, but murderously antisemitic.
They did this by forcing House leaders to strip from a short-term government-funding bill a measure that would have provided $1 billion to Israel to support its Iron Dome missile-defense system. The Iron Dome is a life-saving system with more than a 90% success rate in knocking down missiles fired by Palestinian terrorists toward Israel’s civilian population. Since first put into substantial use in 2014, it has eliminated the threats from thousands upon thousands of potentially deadly rockets.
Iron Dome is purely defensive. It kills nobody. It saves tens of thousands directly from indiscriminate rocket attacks aimed at civilians. It also saves lives indirectly because it affords Israel the time it needs to target perpetrators carefully without initiating large-scale operations that could have high casualty counts. If Hamas rockets were successfully killing civilians as intended, domestic pressure within Israel would force far more devastating countermeasures against Palestinian-held territory. In that sense, the Iron Dome not only saves Israeli lives, but also protects against a larger conflagration that could lead to much greater loss of life.
There is no good reason, not a single one, to oppose a small American funding stream for this life-saving system. The arguments certainly aren’t fiscal: The same “Squad” (and their few allies) who forced the $1 billion to be stripped are simultaneously playing hardball in favor of $3.5 trillion in new wasteful social spending. (For those challenged by arithmetic, that’s 3,500 times as much money as would be “saved” if the Iron Dome never gets funded.)
And the arguments aren’t humanitarian; indeed, they are anti-humanitarian. Again, the Iron Dome saves lives. It doesn’t take them. There’s not a single reason to link it to supposed “humanitarian” aid to the Palestinian people — aid that is funded through regular order, usually with little controversy at all.
Israel is a tiny nation. A billion dollars is a pittance by U.S. government standards, but it is a far larger proportion of Israel’s already robust defense budget. And while Iron Dome is largely successful where it is in use, right now, only 10 installations are in place, whereas it will take 13 installations to protect the whole territory of Israel.
The only, repeat only, effect of blocking this aid package will be to endanger more civilian lives. That’s what makes the move to strip the funding so morally monstrous, indeed murderous. It doesn’t just represent a preference for diplomatic moves against the Zionist state; it shows a gross and inexcusable contempt for civilian life.
The rump caucus of Democratic House members who forced the Iron Dome funding to be stripped must be named and shamed: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman of New York, Ilhan Omar and Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Cori Bush of Missouri, and Pramila Jayapal of Washington — the latter denying the aid while celebrating her 56th birthday.
Several of them, Tlaib and Omar particularly, have come under fire for years for obviously flagrant anti-Semitic statements and actions. Now, this group of eight might as well make things formal by founding an anti-Semitic caucus, fully willing to let Jews be killed just to give vent to Palestinian rage.
