Rep. Hillary Scholten celebrates the killing of a Hamas leader, and never mentions the terrorism inflicted by Israel and Netanyahu

Last week, Congressional Representative Hillary Scholten posted a statement on various social media accounts about the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar at the hands of the Israeli military. 

I have added numbers to the statement from Rep. Scholten, which are talking points I am using to deconstruct such an awful piece of propaganda. The numbered talking points below coincide with the numbers on Rep. Scholten’s statement.

1. It is true that as a leader of Hamas, Sinwar was responsible for the October 7th attack against Israel. However, such a statement provides no historical context. Hamas has been very clear from the very beginning that they have opposed the internationally recognized illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Israeli system of Apartheid. October 7, 2023, was never the beginning of of anything, rather the 1948 Nakba, when thousands of Palestinians were killed and displaced from their homes and the land that they had been living on for generations. See the book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe.
2. The number of Israelis killed on October 7th, 2023, is not completely accurate, since there are multiple sources, even Israeli sources, that admit that the Israeli military killed some of the Israeli civilians on that day. See an article headlined, Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says.
3. The claim that Hamas raped people on October 7, 2023, is also hotly contested. The US Government was using this claim for a long time, as was the New York Times. Read this excellent analysis of the New York Times story, where they deconstruct the claims made. Another excellent counter-narrative is a story from Electronic Intidada entitled, Israeli “commission” on 7 October rape claims exposed as fraud.
4. The claim that only Sinwar and Hamas remained an obstacle to peace is also propaganda. The Israeli government, along with the US a some European governments, especially those that have been aggressively arming Israeli in its genocidal war against the Palestinians are also an obstacle to peace. It is instructive that Rep. Scholten statement that Sinwar barbarically murdered hostages, yet fails to mentions the 42,000 Palestinians killed over the past year by the Israeli military, with thousands of those civilians being children.
5. Here Rep. Scholten can be seen as celebrating the “elimination” of Sinwar, then calling it, “a critical step to ending Hamas’s reign of terror.” If Sinwar  and Hamas are terrorists, then what do you call Israel and Netanyahu, which has killed 42,000 Palestinians during the same time period? People should really look at the long history of the US and its practice of committing terrorist acts against its own population and around the world. Read Noam Chomsky: The Long, Shameful History of American Terrorism or the excellent book by Chomsky’s long-time co-author Ed Herman’s book, The Real Terror Network. 
6. Rep. Scholten then continues the lie about the US as “defending itself against terrorism” when she cites the example of Osama Bin Laden, and then affirms Israeli’s “right” to do the same. In the case of Osama Bin Laden we always leave out the fact that the US provided weapons and training to Bin Laden in the 1980s, when he and other members of the mujahideen were fighting against the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan. People need to ask themselves why the US has militarily intervened in hundreds of places around the world over the past 130 years. If you look at the record compiled you can see that in most cases the US military intervention was to protect US corporate interests or broader geo-political interests, where countless civilians were killed.
7. Rep. Scholten ends her propaganda statement demanding that “Hamas release all of the hostages and put a stop to this carnage.” Conveniently, Scholten never mentions the Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, which have always been part of the equation in the negotiations of the Israeli hostages release. In addition, Rep. Scholten never mentions the billions of US military aid to Israel in the last year, the 600 plus US weapons shipments, the US blocking the United Nations call for a ceasefire, nor the Israeli killing of 42,000 Palestinians in the past year. From the beginning, Rep. Scholten has blamed Hamas for all of the violence and never once has taken accountability for her votes and her unconditional support for Israeli war crimes. 

It is worth noting that since Sinwar has been killed, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is giving no indication that he will let up on the Israeli assault on Gaza, the growing Israeli assault on the West Bank, nor the possibility of a broader regional war against Lebanon and Iran. 

Lastly, it is worth quoting long-time grassroots journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of the book on Erik Prince, Blackwater, who had this to say in a recent interview: 

“I mean, this has to stop,” Scahill continued, fighting back emotion. “We’re watching a genocide in real time, and I’m sorry, but on this network there are people who’ve promoted propaganda from Israel. There are people cheer-leading for people running for office lying to the American people about concern for the Palestinians.”