Earlier this month, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham charged Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with being “naïve” to warn about unintended consequences of civilian casualties in Gaza. “This is a radicalized population,” Graham told CNN’s Dana Bash. “I don’t want to kill innocent people, but Israel is fighting not just Hamas, but the infrastructure around Hamas.”
That’s why it’s pointless to worry about “inflaming the Palestinians,” the senator added: They’re already murderously antisemitic, and Americans like Austin should stop “telling Israel things that are impossible to achieve,” like bombing fewer Palestinian kids or including the prospect of multigenerational blowback in strategic calculations.
Graham, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, may be the most high-profile figure to so explicitly argue against minimizing Palestinian civilian casualties, but he is not unique. A recent Townhall article, approvingly shared by right-wing pundit Mark Levin, argued there are no “innocent Palestinians” because Palestinians “duly elected” Hamas and “rais[e] their children … to hate and murder Jews.” A few weeks ago, GOP Rep. Brian Mast contended—with only slightly more moderation—that “there are very few innocent Palestinian citizens,” and we wouldn’t “so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”
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