Biden on Palestinian Rocket Hitting Hospital, Not Israelis: Terrorists 'Gotta Learn How to Shoot Straight'
On Tuesday, a rocket hit a hospital (or an adjacent parking lot) in the Gaza Strip as part of the ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict.
Hamas immediately claimed that hundreds of people had been killed and that Israel was to blame. It offered no proof.
Israel countered that Hamas’ allies in the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad were to blame. It did offer proof, “publishing intercepted phone calls and other evidence to support the claim,” as the New York Post noted.
President Joe Biden, on his Wednesday visit to Israel, told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that U.S. Department of Defense data show that “it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” according to The Associated Press.
This was based on “overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information,” according to a White House National Security Council representative.
“I don’t know all the detail, but I do know the people at the Defense Department who I respect and the intelligence community that I respect, say it is highly improbable that Israel did that,” Biden said aboard Air Force One.
Fair enough. So, what’s Biden’s advice to Hamas and its allies? Stop the slaughter? End your reign of terror and put down your weapons? Stop holding the residents of Gaza hostage as human shields?
Nah. Aim better next time.
I’m being serious. That’s not just reading between the lines when it comes to what came out of the president’s mouth. Those essentially were the lines that came out of the president’s mouth when he was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany on Wednesday night as he returned to the United States.
“Look — and I’m not suggesting that Hamas deliberately did it, either,” Biden said.
“It’s that old thing: Gotta learn how to shoot straight,” he said. “It’s not the first time that Hamas has launched something that didn’t function very well.”
Now, let’s get beyond the pedantic matter that intelligence apparently indicates this wasn’t Hamas, but instead a Hamas-allied group that fired the rocket, because I don’t think that’s what people are going to be upset about here.
Does Biden remember what happens when Hamas does get “that old thing” about “gotta learn how to shoot straight” right?
In case you’ve forgotten, one chapter of Black Lives Matter certainly remembered while celebrating the attacks on Israel via social media:
The official Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter released a graphic of a Hamas paraglider with the text: “I stand with Palestine.” A unit of Hamas militants used paragliders and hang gliders to launch their armed massacre of civilians in southern Israel. BLM, like Antifa, has… pic.twitter.com/ATN2d4sAcf
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 10, 2023
That is, in silhouette, a Hamas paraglider, representing one of many who breached Israel’s security fences and massacred hundreds of people attending a peace festival near the Gaza Strip as part of the terrorist invasion.
That is, Mr. President, what happens when the terrorists “shoot straight.”
When they don’t, mind you, the results are apparently just as deadly — only Hamas and its enablers will continue to lie about it.
The open-source intelligence is clear enough to anyone willing to look (here’s a link to an excellent social media thread about what observers can learn about the attack without having the detailed intelligence the Pentagon does) and the Israel Defense Forces would have no reason to target hospitals unless they were being used as staging areas for terrorist attacks — and even then, the attacks would come with ample warning and extreme caution, neither of which was exercised here.
Everything should, indeed, tell any disinterested observer that this wasn’t Israel’s handiwork.
Cue some regrettably rabidly interested observers who do not believe reality applies to the Israel-Hamas conflict:
Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that. @POTUS this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate.
Your war and destruction only approach has opened my eyes and many… https://t.co/mZYoifT7bj
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 17, 2023
Breaking News: Israeli PM Netanyahu has lied to the public before.
Source: https://t.co/s5wJSCqsyK https://t.co/cI3onFqcvx pic.twitter.com/T3BRFU1h4V
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 17, 2023
Bombing a hospital is among the gravest of war crimes. The IDF reportedly blowing up one of the few places the injured and wounded can seek medical treatment and shelter during a war is horrific.@POTUS needs to push for an immediate ceasefire to end this slaughter. https://t.co/dPJ48dyDe8
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) October 17, 2023
But to the president, the problem isn’t that Hamas started the indiscriminate killing of Israelis, that the indiscriminate killing is endorsed by too many in the Democratic Party who represent an openly anti-Semitic wing of the radical left, or that this rocket that misfired was part of that campaign of indiscriminate killing.
No. The problem is their aim was off.
Hit Israel next time, guys! Take it from Uncle Joe: He’d look a lot more favorably on you if you could just get your rockets, bullets, artillery and other implements of human carnage to land where they’re supposed to — inside territory under the control of the Jewish state.
Yes, this is but one comment Biden made during his trip abroad, and the balance of them were nowhere near this egregious — or egregious at all, quite frankly. It isn’t to suggest that this is necessarily a thought-out statement of U.S. policy regarding Palestinian-fired missiles. In fact, it’s safe to say it wasn’t thought out, period — because that’s the president we have.
This is what happens when words fall out of Biden’s mouth without passing through any kind of cognitive filter because there is no cognitive filter left. You know it, I know it, we all know it.
Yet, it’s considered impolitic to acknowledge this bedrock truth, thanks in part to an establishment media that treats the president’s very old brain like the emperor’s new clothes. What gaffe? What part about how Hamas has “gotta learn how to shoot straight?” ¿Qué? Lo siento, no hablo ingles, señor.
Let this be another reminder: These senescent gaffes are morbidly funny until they aren’t. Then, they’re just horribly morbid.
When the president of the most powerful country on Earth cannot realize the implications of telling terrorists they have to improve their aim, the reporters and pundits who covered for this thoroughly unready, profoundly diminished, terminally ill-equipped withered husk of a politician in 2020 — and who will gladly sign up to do it again in 2024, no matter who the GOP nominates for president — become enablers as well.
No, not Rashida Tlaib- or Ilhan Omar-level enablers, but they helped this shell of a man to take the executive reins of Israel’s biggest ally.
Hamas couldn’t have gotten a bigger gift if they had asked for it.
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