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as meaningless as possible

Senator Lindsay Graham:

We’re in a religious war, here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.

Not that Senator Graham has any credibility or integrity left to offer, but a statement like this could only be meaningful — meaningful in any way, which is to say nothing about it being ethical — if it was uttered so emphatically from inside Gaza.

As it stands, not only are statements like this entirely meaningless, they are meaninglessly destructive and violent. Graham, who preceded this remark by referring to Nazi Germany, proves himself incapable of thought. He is, along with anyone who echoes the same sentiment, capable only of missing the point. The Nazi Party was not evil because they committed genocide against the Jews, but because they committed genocide. Even more simply, they were evil because they murdered civilian men, women, and children.

That the Holocaust was primarily committed against the Jewish people is certainly, absolutely historically important. But that is not what made it evil. Hatred and mass murder made it evil. Any nation or people group which reflects that kind of hatred, who wages war irrespective of civilian casualties, who regularly kills kids along with their enemies, is guilty of that same evil.

To preach anything other than caution and care for the lives of civilians in Gaza is mindless, death-dealing bullshit.