On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) responded to a question on who is responsible for carnage in Gaza because Hamas didn’t let civilians in their tunnel shelters by saying that “You have to hold everybody accountable.”
At the start of the discussion, host Bill Maher read from and praised a statement from Warnock saying he stands with Israel, echoing Dr. Martin Luther King’s defense of Israel’s right to exist, and rejecting the idea that Israel is an apartheid state.
Maher then asked the panel why Democratic Socialists have such an obsession with Israel.
Warnock then said, “Israel is our ally. And allies and friends can have honest conversation and real debate about what’s going on. And we’re at a — as people are witnessing what’s happening under Netanyahu, there [are] a lot of people, in Israel, he’s not terribly popular, who are not comfortable with what’s happening. There is an acronym in Gaza, and it’s a terrible way to start your life, it’s WCNSF, wounded child, no surviving family. You can’t look away from that. You’ve got to look at it.”
Maher agreed that Netanyahu isn’t super popular in Israel, but cut in to say, “No, but you have to look at who caused it, who caused that? Because they have tunnels, which are shelters, which they didn’t put any of their people in.”
Warnock answered, “You have to hold everybody accountable. And, as a pastor, my North Star is a sustainable peace in Israel that is a nation that’s at peace with its neighbors. I think, at the end of the day, Israeli mothers, Palestinian mothers want the same thing, they want to be able to put their children to bed at night, for them to be safe and to awaken in a world that embraces all of them. And I think these extremes are not helpful. We’ve got to have honest conversation about all of –.”
Maher then cut in to say he thinks there’s more extremism on one side.
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