Chris Van Hollen, a Senatorial Squadroon, Accuses Israel of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

Chris Van Hollen is a Democratic Senator from Maryland. He has an abiding anti-Israel animus, just now expressed, yet again, in his claim — in an interview with Mehdi Hasan — that Israel engages in “ethnic cleansing.” More on this senatorial squadroon’s views can be found here: “US Sen. Chris Van Hollen Accuses Israel of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ in Northern Gaza,” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, November 19, 2024:

US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has slammed the Biden administration for continuing to support Israel and accused the Jewish state of committing “ethnic cleansing” in northern Gaza.

During a recent interview with anti-Israel journalist Mehdi Hasan, Van Hollen argued that Biden undermined “American values” by continuing to send arms to the Jewish state. He bemoaned Biden’s “deeply frustrating” refusal to break with Jerusalem and his support of the “super right-wing racist government” of Israel.

Piling on the adjectives, Van Hollen denounces what he calls the “super right-wing racist government” of Israel. Right wing, sure, though not “super” right wing. But “racist”? What can he be thinking of, other than it’s the all-purpose epithet to blacken the name of a person or a country? What laws has the Netanyahu government passed that merit it being called “racist”?

Is Van Hollen still stuck in the rut of denouncing “apartheid” Israel? Does he still refuse to admit that in Israel Arabs serve on the Supreme Court, sit in the Knesset, go abroad as diplomats? Does he not know that the former head of Israel’s largest bank, the Bank Leumi, was an Arab?

Does he realize that Jews and Arabs are treated by the same medical personnel — Jewish and Arab — in the same hospitals, that Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras, work in the same offices and factories, go into business together in every enterprise from restaurants to high-tech start-ups? There is only one difference in the treatment of Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. Jews must, while Arabs may, serve in the military. So what does Van Hollen mean when he calls Israel “racist”?

“I have, as you said, pushed the president to do a lot more. He’s essentially given [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and the super right-wing racist government of people like [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir and [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich a blank check, right?” Van Hollen said.

What blank check? Didn’t the Biden administration try to prevent the IDF from entering Rafah — a demand that, fortunately, Israel turned down, because it was in Rafah that the IDF located, and assassinated, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023 mass atrocity, Yahya Sinwar? Didn’t the Biden administration ask Israel to refrain, in its retaliatory strike on Iran, from hitting Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities? Israel complied in part: it did not hit the oil facilities, though the bombing of the oil terminals at Kharg Island would have brought Iran’s economy to its knees, and it avoided hitting Iran’s main uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, though it did destroy a hitherto unknown secret nuclear research facility at Parchin. And the Biden administration demanded that Israel increase the number of trucks bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza to 350 a day, within a month, or some military aid for Israel could be withheld. Was that a “blank check”?

The senator accused Israel of withholding aid from Gaza and only sending in a “trickle” of food and supplies into the war-torn enclave. He also lamented the so-called “indiscriminate” bombing of civilians in Gaza and suggested that Biden should not continue to send Israel more arms….

That “trickle” of food going into Gaza, as Van Hollen calls it, has actually consisted of 39,000 trucks carrying more than 840,000 tons of food, and several hundred thousand tons of other humanitarian aid — and those figures are as of last month. A “trickle,” Senator Van Hollen?

And what about Van Hollen’s claim that there has been “indiscriminate” bombing of civilians in Gaza? If that were true, why would Israel make tremendous efforts to warn civilians away from areas, cities, and even individual buildings, that are about to be targeted? Hadn’t Israel, by March, managed to drop nine million leaflets, send fifteen million text messages, and make sixteen million robocalls, all to warn civilians away from dangerous areas? Aren’t Israeli pilots instructed to abort their missions if they think there are too many civilians near the site that has been targeted? There is nothing “indiscriminate” about the Israeli Air Force bombing. The result is that the civilian-to-combatant ratio — a key metric — in the Gaza War is less than 1:1. By comparison, in all the wars fought since 1945, that ratio has been 9:1. In Afghanistan, the Americans managed to get it down to 4:1, and in Iraq, to 3:1. But no one has come close to what the IDF achieved in Gaza. That is why British Colonel Richard Kemp, who has fought in half a dozen wars and commanded the British forces in Afghanistan, has described the IDF as “the most moral army in the world,” and West Point Professor John Spencer, a specialist in urban warfare, has concluded that “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires.”

Hamas has tried to prevent civilians from leaving areas that the IDF has warned them to leave. It has even fired on civilians who tried to flee south from Gaza City; they were shot down on the north-south corridor of Salah al-Din Street in an attempt to discourage others from fleeing to safety.

Whom should we believe — Colonel Kemp and Professor Spencer, or Chris Van Hollen?