"Genocide"

It shouldn't even be necessary to explain this, but is.

When bigots tell lies, @RepRitchie tells the truth. Speaking about the Iron Dome, he says:

“I will not apologize for supporting technology that protects civilians from rocket fire.”pic.twitter.com/WwilmV9mm2

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) February 16, 2023

As a good comedian and not-so-good person would say, "what's the deal with I will not apologize for....'"?

On Thursday, President Biden said “I expect to be speaking with President Xi,. And I hope we’re going to get to the bottom of this, but I make no apologies for taking down that balloon.” Nobody asked him to apologize, and there was no need to apologize.

The same should be said for the remark of Ritchie Torres, a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from the Bronx, New York.  The tweet below includes a video which, typically from this platform, does not establish what immediately preceded nor the ending of the exchange. However, at the tail end of what we see as a discussion of Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system, Torres states "I will not apologize for supporting technology that protects civilians from rocket fire."

There is no need to apologize because as the congressman explained (interrupted periodically by critical members of the audience) to constituents unaware- or not- of the nature of the system

So you said ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinians....

Can we all agree that when there's ethnic cleansing or genocide, there tends to be depopulation? That if you count genocide against the people.... The Palestinian population in Israel has gone from somewhere in the range of 200,000 in 1948 to over two million in Israel and the terror....

Torres cuts himself, for whatever reason, before completing the word "territories," and picks it up at

And then overall, it's about fourteen million. And that's based on numbers that have been reported by the Palestinian Authority. So if there were genocide, there would not be a surge in the Palestinian population. There would be systematic depopulation.

A moment later, Representative Torres adds "It is true that we fund Iron Dome technology. Iron Dome is defensive, not offensive, technology. Iron Dome does not attack anyone. It protects civilians from rocket fire."

It's hard to believe that anyone who expresses a fervent opinion, as a few audience members were, about what is unfortunately labeled the "Palestinian issue" (better understood as the conflict between Jewish Palestinians and Arab or Muslim Palestinians) do not know that the Iron Dome is a defensive system. 

More likely, Torres was only being kind to his constituents who accuse Israel of "ethnic cleansing" or genocide. He is, of course, right about that. A major premise of the anti-Israel or anti-Zionist crowd is that the country is a major power brutalizing weak, defenseless non-Jews.  But if that were the case, Palestinians would be shot dead, regularly and daily.  There would be a drastic decline in the Arab population in Israel proper and the occupied territories, worldwide horror, and unparalleled demonstrations by non-Jews and Jews alike in the streets of the nation.

Torres told people, whether they truly are ignorant about Iron Dome or are anti-Semites spewing nonsense about the country employing it, what they need to be told and told more often- Israel does not engage in genocide, and it's not even close. 

 

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