Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of
the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
Joe
Biden could not have chosen to end his statement commemorating the first
anniversary of October 7 in a more inappropriate manner. “I believe that history
will also remember October 7th as a dark day for the Palestinian people because
of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day.”
A dark day for the Palestinian people? Really Joe?
Really??
Of all the things to say on a day marking pogroms against
the Jewish people so depraved and vicious it is an obscenity to describe them. October
7th didn’t happen to just any people and it certainly didn’t happen
to the “Palestinian” people. The events that took place on October 7th
happened to the Jews.* It was arguably the single darkest day in Jewish
history, the darkest day the Jewish people have ever known.
But it seems Jewish tragedy is fair game for a crooked hack
like Joe Biden to exploit for his own gain and/or nefarious pleasure. Because
one thing cannot be in doubt. If we know the facts, Joe Biden knows them
too.
As Hamas terrorists carried out a highly choreographed massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, they received a source of support that amplified the horror that took place that day. A mob of ordinary Palestinians spontaneously joined in what became the deadliest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, according to videos, eyewitness accounts, and the Israel Defense Forces.
Whereas the Hamas terrorists wore uniforms and carried military-grade weapons, the Gazans who followed them into the Jewish state were dressed as civilians and mostly unarmed, two officials from Israel's devastated Gaza border region said. Young men with knives, overweight dads, and at least one elderly man on crutches were among those who exploited Hamas's rampage to create a second wave of carnage that rivaled the barbarism of the professional terrorists.
The IDF declined to provide details about non-Hamas Gazans’s involvement in the Oct. 7 attack. But IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that large numbers of Gazans who were not members of any terrorist group entered Israel and participated in the atrocities.
"They did what you say they did," Conricus said.
Gadi Yarkoni, mayor of the Eshkol Regional Council, which
serves most of the Gaza border communities, told Tobin that there was no
difference between the Gaza civilians who raped, burned, and murdered Jews and
their Hamas “terrorist” counterparts (emphasis added):
"The second wave of Arabs who came into the country were just as cruel as the terrorists of the first wave. We saw that it was not only Hamas who came to slaughter us. It was all the residents of Gaza, including people who worked in our kibbutzim.
"I saw a scene where a Gazan civilian chopped off a man's head. It took him several attempts to detach the head from the body," said Yarkoni.
There is ample footage of these “ordinary” Gazans looting,
killing, and assisting the “terrorists” in kidnapping Israeli civilians
including women and children.
Security footage from 7/10 shows ordinary Gaza citizens entering Be'eri and mass looting the Kibbutz. pic.twitter.com/lvgaC05uxJ
— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) October 16, 2023
These “not terrorist” Gazans, including their “not
terrorist” children, cheered, jeered, and praised Allah as Jews were brutalized
and defiled in ways not seen before. They, the “not terrorists,” burned Jewish
homes. “Not terrorists” kicked the dead bodies of the murdered Jews, and “not terrorists”
spat on Jewish hostages as they were driven through the streets of Gaza.
If you can stomach it, take a look. (This is actually milder
than much of what is out there.)
Tobin also spoke with an eye witness to the bestial acts of “Palestinian
people” that day. (emphasis added):
Raz Cohen, a 24-year-old former Israeli commando, saw both Hamas terrorists and ordinary Gazans kill and rape revelers at the Supernova music festival in Re'im, where at least 260 people were slaughtered. After escaping the Hamas terrorists, Cohen hid in a bush with a group of friends for almost seven hours. He watched as a gang of Gazan civilians—men wearing Adidas and armed only with knives and axes—raped and murdered a young Jewish woman.
"While they were raping and killing, they always laughed. I can't forget how they laughed," Cohen told the Free Beacon.
Several members of Cohen's group later ran from the bush and were caught by the same gang of Gazans. He said he heard his friends' screams as they were tortured and stabbed to death.
"You know when you hear the screams of someone who is dying," said Cohen, who was eventually rescued by Israeli soldiers.
We’ve looked at the first part of Joe Biden’s appalling
reference to October 7 as a tragedy shared by Jews and “Palestinians.” Now let
us examine the rest. Here is the “dark day” comment again, this time with the
emphasis on the second part of the sentence:
“I believe that history will also remember October 7th as a
dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas
unleashed that day.”
Joe calls the natural response to what happened that day as
a “conflict,” as if there were parity between Israeli Jews and Hamas
terrorists, Israeli Jews and Gazans. But the IDF is not targeting the “Palestinian”
people. The IDF is not doing to the “Palestinian” people what the “Palestinians”
did to the Jews on October 7th. Jews and “Palestinians” are not two kids in the
sandbox who won’t stop fighting, and who share equal blame for the death and
destruction. The Jews are not the aggressors, here.
Joes tries to distract from these facts, by using the word
“unleashed.” Translated, Biden blames Israel for making Gaza pay for what Hamas
started. It was Hamas that unleashed the violence.
But that’s not true, is it? The horrors unleashed on October
7 were unleashed on Jews by Hamas terrorists and ordinary Gazans alike. To compare
the suffering of Jewish Israelis to the subsequent suffering of Gazans is therefore
nauseating. The Gazan people support Hamas. They elected Hamas. They raped Jews
and burned babies with and alongside Hamas on October 7. They are culpable.
Anyone who wanted to could and did take part in the barbaric cruelty of the “dark day” that was October 7 and that is exactly what the “Palestinian” people did, relishing every dark evil moment.
This is how Biden gives license to a Jew-hating world to hold
the Jews responsible for Gazan suffering; to believe that it is somehow unfair for
the Gazan people to be forced to bear the onus for the October 7 atrocities.
This is neither a fair nor true characterization of events as
Biden well knows. No matter. His comments are all now nicely recorded for
posterity.
On the one-year anniversary of October 7, and in the waning
days of his demented presidency, Joe Biden still has enough cussed meanness in
him to call October 7th, a “dark day” for the “Palestinian people,”
though the ordinary citizens of Gaza stood shoulder to shoulder with the
terrorists and attacked the Jews with gusto.
Which leaves us with the question: Who is a terrorist if
everyone is a terrorist?
From a moral standpoint, the answer is obvious. It makes no
difference if the attackers are Hamas operatives or just plain old, regular “Palestinians.”
Terror is terror. And the “Palestinian” people are now reaping the natural
consequences of what they sowed on that very dark day for the Jewish people.
*As we know, there are a significant number of migrant workers who were also savaged and or kidnapped on October 7th. Perhaps in the frenzy, the October 7th rapists and killers got to a point where they didn’t care who they brutalized. Or perhaps these workers were considered tainted by association with Jews. None of this changes the fact that this day belongs squarely within the confines of Jewish history, alone.
