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Chris Cuomo Reacts to Uncensored Footage of Hamas’ Oct. 7 Massacre: Israel Is ‘Doing Far Less Than It Could’
Television news anchor Chris Cuomo poses as he arrives at the WarnerMedia Upfront event in New York City, New York, US, May 15, 2019. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
NewsNation television anchor Chris Cuomo on Thursday shared his thoughts on seeing the uncensored footage provided by Israel that documents what he described during his show as the “genocidal” massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists in the Jewish state on Oct. 7.
The host of the CUOMO show and some of his team members were invited to watch a private screening of the 47-minute film showing some of the atrocities when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 240 others two months ago. The Algemeiner attended a screening in November along with other journalists and diplomats.
Cuomo said he saw members of Hamas who “enjoyed mutilating” their victims “and went back and celebrated in the streets [of Gaza] with heads and bloody corpses as trophies,” arguing that proved the Palestinian terrorist group does not “want peace; they want to kill and burn the Jews.”
“This was absolute genocide. That is a word that people are misapplying, and this is where it does apply,” he insisted. “The 47 minutes show a small fraction of the dead, but it is overwhelming that Hamas wanted war. This was not the irrepressible angst of the desperate who want freedom, who want better, nor certainly want anything approximating peace. They wanted the Jews to know that they want them to burn — again.”
“I now understand better what is fueling Israel,” he added. “This is not tit-for-tat. They are fueled by the deepest fears of genocide because those fears are real.”
Cuomo compared the Hamas onslaught on Oct. 7 to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US perpetrated by al Qaeda. He went on to argue that Hamas’ actions were “reminders of a Holocaust, the obvious desire to see as many Jews utterly destroyed as possible.”
“The method was not madness — they were sane but just evil. But the method was a message,” he said about the terrorists behind 9/11. “Their unholy efforts triggered what America feared most: Terrorists robbing us of who and what we are about at home. And so, they got what they asked for — the wrath of a people united in common fear and concern that it is us or it is them. Existential.”
Connecting 9/11 and its aftermath to the Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s ongoing military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, Cuomo said: “If an enemy wanted to make sure that Israel would come for them, the message would be to take children, women, innocents, and more, tie them up and burn them alive. Just like the Holocaust. The ultimate fear of what the world can bring the Jews’ way when a decision is made that Jews are less than human and treated that way in words and deeds.”
“I now know that is exactly the message Hamas sent, on purpose, at scale. I was not aware of that before. How intentional the effort was,” he added. “They did it methodically. You hear it in the voices, the commands, the ease, the excitement of finding and mutilating victims. Merely murdering innocents was the least of it … It was death in your face, hands on, and personal.”
Cuomo concluded by saying that while he does not want to “erase or in any way mitigate” the death toll of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, “after seeing the video … I’m telling you, Israel is doing far less than it could.”
“It is easy to say stop, [but] it is very hard to say how. Why?” he asked. “How do you ask Israel to risk being vulnerable to those who do not honor agreements and have made it very clear they don’t want peace. They want to burn and kill the Jews.”
Today I was among the journalists who have attended a private screening of the raw footage of October 7th and I want to express to you what I saw since it’s not been made public. It’s been a very heavy day. A decision was made that Jews are less than human, and treated that way… pic.twitter.com/b455joHQxs
— Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) December 15, 2023
The post Chris Cuomo Reacts to Uncensored Footage of Hamas’ Oct. 7 Massacre: Israel Is ‘Doing Far Less Than It Could’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune, who was picked last week to be the next Senate majority leader once the Republicans take control of the legislative chamber in January, wrote Sunday on X/Twitter that he will make it a “top priority” to punish the ICC if it refuses to walk back its arrest warrant application issued against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The US lawmaker also indicated he would take action if Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, does not do so against the intergovernmental organization.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” he wrote. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this — and other supportive legislation ‚ a top priority in the next Congress.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has come under fire for making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Thune’s Republican colleagues praised his threat to the ICC, suggesting that the Senate should target the international organization.
“Well done Senator Thune. The ICC’s actions against Israel have been outrageous, and an independent review into the prosecutor’s actions is more than called for,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). :The Senate should take up the ICC sanctions bill that passed the House in a bipartisan manner. Standing up for Israel today protects America tomorrow.”
“The Senate must immediately pass legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court,” stated Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY.), chair of the Senate Republican Conference. “Senate Republicans stands with Israel.”
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can and should act ASAP to pass ICC sanctions legislation. We waited for months for the majority to schedule the vote only to have them postpone it before the election. We will not fail to act when Republicans are in the majority,” wrote Sen. John Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote that the Senate “should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) added that Thune is “right” and that “Chuck Schumer should do his job” by advancing legislation to sanction the ICC.
The US has said it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and rejects the implied equivalence drawn between Israel and Hamas.
The post Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’
It was announced quietly, wit a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock […]
The post Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre
US Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during the National Action Network National Convention in New York City, US, April 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In his final weeks as a US federal lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has continued his persistent condemnation of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “apartheid” against Palestinians, expressing pride in not supporting a resolution condemning Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and arguing against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
During a newly released interview with left-wing pundit Rania Khalek, Bowman reflected on his unsuccessful reelection bid earlier this year. The lawmaker blamed the “pro-Israel lobby” for his loss in the Democratic primary, claiming that his outspokenness about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war made him a target for “Zionists.”
Bowman, one of the staunchest critics of Israel in the US Congress, argued that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, overwhelmed his campaign by spending roughly $15 million to aid his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He added that his constituents were stunned that a “special interest” group such as AIPAC “can remove a congressman” by submerging a primary race in a torrent of money.
“Now the world has seen AIPAC for who they are,” Bowman stated.
The stated mission of AIPAC is to seek bipartisan support to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
Bowman admitted that he did not know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he initially ran for office, opting to parrot talking points such as Israel “has a right to exist” and a “right to defend itself.”
Bowman said that his opinion on Israel was transformed after he visited the country on a trip sponsored by J Street, a progressive Zionist organization that recently called for the US to impose an arms embargo against the Jewish state. The left-wing firebrand said that the trip — which consisted of a series of discussions with peace activists, scholars, and former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officers — soured his view of the Jewish state, comparing the security checkpoints and barrier wall that separate Israel and the West Bank to protect against terrorism with the Jim Crow laws in the US south segregating black Americans.
Khalek asked Bomwan if his view on Iron Dome has shifted, citing that the missile interception system “shields Israel from the consequences for bombing all of its neighbors, for constantly stealing land.”
The congressman claimed that his view on Israel’s air defense system has changed, arguing that it represents “a weapon to use and continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide” of Palestinians. He said that he regrets voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, and that the missile defense system should only be replenished if the Palestinians are given a fully-funded army on Israel’s borders.
Bowman also criticized a congressional resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, suggesting that AIPAC authored the document. He dismissed the notion that the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 was “unprovoked,” claiming that Israel initiated the aggression by enacting “apartheid” on Palestinians. He then lambasted American governors, senators, and President Joe Biden for immediately showing empathy to Israelis, saying that legislators were being “dishonest” and not having a “full conversation” about the Jewish state.
In the year following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Bowman intensified his rhetoric against Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Over the summer, he condemned AIPAC as a “Zionist regime.” In a desperate attempt to salvage his ill-fated primary effort, he promise the Democratic Socialists of America — a prominent far-left organization that has made anti-Israel activism a top priority — that he would vote against future Iron Dome funding in exchange for financial backing of his campaign. Bowman infamously dismissed the widely reported and corroborated allegations of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women during the Oct. 7 onslaught as “propaganda” before being forced to walk back his remarks.
In June, Latimer cruised to a commanding victory over Bowman, winning by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent.
The post Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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