The GOP method: When in doubt, demagogue it

Palestinians aren't the problem. Racist, bigoted, Islamophobic, and xenophobic Republicans are.

She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.

• Joan Rivers

Like Americans have often said about 9/11, for Israelis, 10/7 changed everything. The Hamas terror attack on southern Israel on that terrible Saturday killed over 1,400, mostly Jews and mostly Israelis. It was the most significant death toll of Jews in one day since the Holocaust, which helps to explain why Israel was so intensely impacted.

Since 10/7, the reactions from virtually everyone have been various degrees of overreaction, as people and groups on both sides of the Atlantic have dug in and determined that their point of view is the most righteous and, therefore, the most inviolable.

It’s why Israel continues turning northern Gaza into a parking lot, and Hamas leadership continues promising to repeat 10/7. The only thing being proven is the wisdom of Bertrand Russell’s famous quote,

War doesn’t determine who’s right- only who’s left.

That and the hate being ratcheted up on each side and on both sides of the Pond.

Hamas is determined to destroy Israel- “from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea.” Israel has sworn to obliterate Hamas…but even if they succeed in that mission, what do you do with the 2.1 million people in Gaza, few of whom are Hamas? How do you make them whole when you’ve turned their home into the world’s most oversized parking lot?

And here in America, the GOP is wasting no time in making hay of the growing divide between supporters of Israel and those who’ve thrown their lot behind Hamas.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) is among Far-Right Republicans, including members of the House Freedumb Caucus, who are attempting to exploit hatred and distrust of Palestinians. It doesn’t hurt that Palestinians have a much less powerful and wealthy lobby in Washington than Jewish interest groups, who donate millions to Republicans and Democrats.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) introduced legislation on Thursday to ban Palestinians from the United States in an echo of former President Donald Trump’s infamous “Muslim ban.”

The bill would pause visas for Palestinians and go a step further by revoking any visas issued since Oct. 1.

Zinke claimed the policy would protect Americans from the threat of Palestinian terrorists abusing the immigration system in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel last month and Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

“I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States,” Zinke said in a release. “This is the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I have seen and it’s well deserved.”

That’s if you're operating from the assumption that all Palestinians are Hamas, which is by no means the case, but bigots like Zinke rarely deal in nuance. No, it’s much easier to paint ethnic groups with a broad brush. Very few Palestinians are likely to be Hamas-affiliated, but why do the hard work of trying to expose the few threats when you can toss out the whole lot?

If you eliminate everyone, you don’t have to deal with any messy issues that a selective ban would raise. Plus, Zinke could return to his constituents and beat his chest while proudly proclaiming how tough on “terrorism” he is.

Unfortunately for Zinke, racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, and xenophobia don’t combine to make one “anti-terrorist.” They make you look like an asshole willing to pander to racists in your districts and to wealthy Jewish interests who you believe will send large sums of money your way.

“On top of the homegrown violent extremists and domestic violent extremist threat, we also cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here on our own soil,” Wray said.

Despite the fact that Palestinians make up the largest stateless community in the world, the U.S. has only resettled roughly 2,000 of them in the last 20 years, according to the Migration Policy Institute, largely due to the fact that most Palestinians are ineligible for traditional visas and face exceptional immigration barriers.

So, even before Zinke’s racist legislation- which, by the way, has zero chance of becoming law- Palestinians weren’t exactly storming the gates.

Israelis, by contrast, no longer need visas to enter the U.S., a policy updated just weeks before the Oct. 7 conflict.

“Long-standing legal and logistical barriers make it exceedingly challenging for those in Gaza to resettle in the region, let alone resettle in the U.S. The political grandstanding we’ve seen so much of lately is a discriminatory solution searching for a nonexistent problem,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a refugee resettlement agency.

Even if it were to pass, Zinke’s bill would be a waste of time, money, and effort. The Palestinian diaspora in this country is nowhere near as large as the Jewish diaspora and, to date, has posed little, if any, terror threat.

Still, there’s little doubt that Zinke’s bill

represents an escalation of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric from the right. Zinke made no effort to differentiate between Hamas, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, and residents of the Palestinian territories, not all of whom even live in the Gaza Strip where Hamas operates.

What it does is provide fuel to ignorant haters on the Far-Right looking for any excuse to act like fools and embarrass themselves in front of a camera or a microphone:

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), earlier this week forced the House to consider a censure resolution against Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the sole Palestinian American serving in Congress. The House rejected the resolution, which falsely claimed that Tlaib had led an anti-Israel “insurrection” in a House office building last month.

“She’s literally a terrorist in the House of Representatives,” Greene told HuffPost this week.

Honestly, I’d be far more likely to consider MTG a terrorist than Rep. Tlaib, who has done yeoman’s work representing her community and her district. MTG is an embarrassment- to her party, her country, and herself, though she lacks the self-awareness to recognize it.

Rep. Tlaib, while she’s been something of a lightning rod in her own right, is at least true to herself and not trying to be a hypocrite.

And I don’t think “insurrection” means what MTG believes it does. Where was she on January 6th? THAT was an insurrection, y’all.

Perhaps if Republicans like Zinke and MTG could shift their focus to important things or things that pose a threat to America, Congress might be able to accomplish something worthwhile. Instead, they waste their time and energy playing immature political games and acting like recalcitrant children.

Yeah, maybe playing the overly simplistic “White people- GOOD; Brown people- BAD” game isn’t as productive as Republicans would have us think.

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