Source: Yahoo News
At a pro-Hamas rally in the heart of New York City, speaker after speaker praised the slaughter of civilians that had taken place in Israel on Saturday, after the terrorist group overwhelmed Israeli defenses in an audacious, unexpected raid.
“And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” one speaker joked about the Hamas assault on a desert rave, where horrific scenes of murder and rape took place.
It was a bracing spectacle that countered the grief pouring in from most civic leaders, from Brooklyn to Berlin. But it was also evidence of a split within the Democratic Party, with many younger activists, forged in the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements, viscerally identifying with the Palestinian cause. Israel’s founding story, as a quasi-socialist refuge for Holocaust survivors and other landless Jews, resonates less and less, especially as younger generations show little knowledge about the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis.
The controversial rally in Times Square was hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America, a far-left organization that includes several prominent House members in its ranks, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, both of New York, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who is the first Palestinian woman in Congress, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, an outspoken critic of Israel.
In a widely criticized statement, Tlaib seemed to blame Israel for provoking the attack with its occupation regime in Gaza and the West Bank. “The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer,” ” she said.