This Is What You Get to Say on TV About Palestinians

"Let's nuke Gaza" is just an interesting little talking point!

NBC News

Here is a great example of the kind of thing you get to say on television if you are talking about Palestinians.

Sen. Lindsey Graham was on Meet the Press (for approximately the 1 billionth time) on Sunday. Graham has been making overtly genocidal statements about Gaza for months. On October 12, for instance, he advised Israel to “level the place” in response to the October 7 attack. If someone went on TV and called for Israel to be “leveled” in response to the slaughter of 14,000 Palestinian children, that person would not be asked to go on TV again. When you’re a senator and you’re talking about Palestinians, it’s just part of your tough rhetoric.

So it was no real surprise when Graham started yelling about how if it was cool for the U.S. to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it should be cool for Israel to do the same.

When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision. Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can't afford to lose and work with them to minimize casualties.

There is an easy response to this: “Uh,,,you’re saying we should drop nuclear weapons on an ultra-dense area full of starving people who have already been bombed relentlessly for seven months? What is wrong with you, you sick fuck?” (I presume the language would be cleaned up for TV.)

Imagine if someone showed up on Meet the Press and said “the people of Gaza are facing an existential threat from Israel. Give them the bombs they need to defend themselves like America did when it nuked Japan.” They would stop the show in its tracks.

Instead, host Kristen Welker went a different way. “Senator,” she said, “military officials would argue that there has been so much technology since those bombs were dropped that for that very reason that is why Israel and other developed countries can be more precise.”

Ah yes, the reason it’s bad to drop nuclear weapons on Gaza is because you could drop fancier “smarter” weapons instead (you know, like all the “smart,” U.S.-supplied, 2000-pound bombs that have kept civilian casualties to such a minimum). It’s a question of tactics, not morality. Naturally.

The two then got into a little discussion about cutting off arms sales to Israel, and this exchange happened (I cleaned it up a little because there was a lot of crosstalk):

WELKER: Well, historians would say, "Why is it okay for Reagan to do it and not President Biden?" But let me ask you about—

GRAHAM: Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it okay for us to do that? I thought it was okay. To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state.

WELKER: Senator, again, military officials say the technology has changed.

GRAHAM: These military officials that you're talking about are full of crap.

WELKER: Let me ask you something that I know you care a lot about and that is the Saudi normalization deal.

If you watch the video, you will know that Graham was screaming at the top of his lungs during this exchange. So not only was a U.S. senator advocating the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza, he was doing it in a totally unhinged way.

Again, imagine if a prominent politician—say, Rashida Tlaib, though obviously she would never do this—went on the longest-running program in U.S. television history and began shouting about how people in Gaza had the right to nuke Israel in response to the murder of 14,000 children. Do you think Kristen Welker would say “hmmm, but the technology has changed?” Do you think Rashida Tlaib could just walk away from those comments? Do you think Welker would react by going “OK, let’s talk about Saudi Arabia?” Of course not! Welker would be like “did you just say that shit out loud…on live television?” Joe Biden would have Tlaib’s house surrounded before she even got out of the studio.

But Graham was ranting about Palestinians. So insert shrug emoji here. Guess he got a little “passionate” in his defense of Israel! Moving on.

As I’ve said before, it’s always good to know what the rules are.