The tragedy of the Hamas attacks on Israel beginning on October 7 and the military operations that followed have provided me with some rare opportunities to praise the performance of Joe Biden as President. It’s not that he’s been flawless to be sure, but his relatively steady support for our Israeli allies (at least in public) has been heartening, as was his quick offer to send them aid as soon as Congress returned to regular order. Biden had another good moment on Wednesday when he was asked about reports from the Gaza Health Ministry claiming that more than 6,000 Palestinians had been killed during Israel’s counteroffensive, mostly women and children. Bide quickly stated that had “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.” He added, “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
While I may have been impressed with Biden’s quick and accurate response, not everyone was. The Democrats’ loyal soldiers at MSNBC were particularly upset. Liberal commentator Zeeshan Aleem went so far as to publish an opinion piece on the network’s website titled, “Biden’s comments about casualty figures in Gaza were a disgrace.” Someone clearly has a bee in their bonnet, but it sounds as if Mr. Aleem has not been following the news out of Gaza very closely.
After adding that Israel should be “careful” about “going after the folks that are propagating this war,” he reiterated skepticism of the casualty number: “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
It was an astonishing comment, questioning the very premise of the query and claiming that the Palestinian people — not just Hamas — can’t be trusted to count their dead. Biden’s words weren’t just ill-founded and insensitive, they were reckless.
Biden is opening the door to conspiracy theories about whether Palestinians are lying or exaggerating about mass casualties.
Speaking of things that are disgraceful and reckless, this analysis (to put it kindly) is woefully misguided. Now I find myself in the rare situation of having to come to Joe Biden’s defense. First of all, this is not a question of the Palestinians being “trusted to count their dead.” The issue here has nothing to do with Hamas or the rest of the Palestinian people being able to do simple math. The issue is that Hamas lies and they do so constantly in an effort to wage a public relations war against Israel and much of the media happily plays along. If the Gaza Health Ministry is saying that more than 6,000 people have died there, I would wager that the actual number is closer to 2,500.
Aleem also complained about Biden saying he has “no doubt” that civilians have been killed, but that’s “the price of waging a war.” Once again, Biden was not only correct, but he was echoing something I’ve been saying here from the beginning. Bad things happen in war. Hamas unwisely launched a war against a very powerful neighbor and everything we are seeing is the “FAFO” price they are paying for that decision.
This is very reminiscent of the bogus story about the hospital being bombed. I assume that Aleem took at face value Hamas’ claims that Israel had “blown up the hospital” and killed scored of babies inside. Bide wisely held back from jumping on that train and we later learned that hospital barely sustained a scratch and it was Hamas or one of the other Islamic terror groups in the area that had fired the rocket. If you somehow missed it the first time, that was yet another example of Hamas lying.
Just as a personal side note to Zeeshan Aleem, if anyone around here is going to be criticizing Joe Biden, it’s probably going to be me. Stay in your lane, pal. It’s bad enough that I have to publicly admit that he’s gotten some things wright. I don’t need to be defending him against MSDNC.
