Here’s How Dems Are Responding to a Republican Calling to Nuke Gaza

Michigan Representative Tim Walberg’s remarks last week urging Israel to deal with Gaza like “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” has drawn swift condemnation, with several Democrats calling the Republican’s comments extreme and shocking. But some Democratic lawmakers have been noticeably silent.

Twenty-two Democrats voted in November to censure Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress. Tlaib was punished for supposedly “promoting false narratives” about Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and allegedly calling for the destruction of Israel for using the phrase “From the river to the sea.” Walberg himself also voted to censure Tlaib, saying in a statement that he “will not support the right to call for a violent genocide.”

How do those 22 Democrats feel about Representative Walberg’s comments, which outright allude to dropping nuclear bombs on Palestinians in Gaza?

Journalist Marisa Kabas reached out to those Democrats for her newsletter, The Handbasket, to see if they would weigh in on Walberg’s comments and whether they believed he should be censured. Only three responded: Representatives Ritchie Torres from New York, Greg Landsman from Ohio, and Brad Schneider from Illinois. While they all condemned Walberg’s remarks, only Landsman said he would vote to censure Walberg.

It’s a clear double standard, especially since pro-Palestinian activists point out that “From the river to the sea” has to do with the Palestinian right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Walberg’s spokesman, Mike Rorke, said that the congressman’s remarks were taken out of context, stating that “he clearly uses a metaphor to support Israel’s swift elimination of Hamas, which is the best chance to save lives long-term and the only hope at achieving a permanent peace in the region.”

So far, there has been no discussion among members of Congress to censure Walberg, nor has there been any criticism from within his own party. The only pushback from a right-leaning figure has come from former Representative Justin Amash, who is currently running for the Republican nomination for Michigan’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

“The people of Gaza are our fellow human beings—many of them children trapped in horrific circumstances beyond their individual control. For him to suggest that hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians should be obliterated, including my own relatives sheltering at an Orthodox Christian church, is reprehensible and indefensible,” Amash, who is Palestinian American, said on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday.