I’ve respected and watched Jonathan Capehart for a long while. Many spotlights shine
on him, such as his show on MSNBC. But
he lost all my respect during his May 3rd PBS “Brookes and Capehart”
segment.
What Capehart Said
The segment starts at around 33:30 on the following youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD80JXcrrYY
Capehart was asked for his thoughts on the student protests
going on across America. He gave a shallow,
feckless answer. Starting with a brief nod to what’s going on in Gaza, he said, “We’re seeing the passion of the students ... over the humanitarian crisis.”
Then he immediately pivoted to his main concern, his "big
question”: Will the students keep
protesting “once they go back home?”
What a succinct and less-than-subtle way to insinuate that the protestors are naïve children.
When asked about the GOP argument that the protestors are antisemitic,
Capehart didn’t even acknowledge that the large majority of protestors are not
antisemitic. He also failed to mention
that they are conscience- and grief-stricken by the atrocities happening in Gaza.
Instead, as tersely and euphemistically as he had
mentioned the “humanitarian crisis,” he referred to concerns about Prime Minster Netanyahu
as “legitimate.” Then, moving right
along, he ended with a rhetorical flourish: he pondered why it is so hard for the
students to state their objections “without being bigoted about it.”
Why I’m Vastly Disappointed
Mr. Capehart, most of the students are not antisemitic
bigots. They are in anguish because a
great horror is taking place in front of the whole world, the murder and
torture of millions of people. Part of
that anguish comes from the gaslighting tactics of people like you, who should know
better. Do you care about the genocide
taking place, Mr. Capehart? It seems to
me, it sounds to me, from your PBS segment, that you do not. You come across as being as callous as the most rightwing extremist.
Just today, an article in the New York Times indicates one of the evils being inflicted in Gaza.
Famine:
Gaza has been gripped by what experts have called a severe
human-made hunger crisis. Israel’s bombardment and restrictions in the
territory have made delivering aid very difficult. The amount of aid entering
Gaza has increased recently, but aid groups say it is far from adequate.
For the first three weeks of the war, Israel maintained what
it called a “complete siege” of Gaza, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying
that “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed into the
territory. The Israeli military also destroyed Gaza’s port, restricted fishing
and bombed many of its farms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/world/middleeast/gaza-famine-mccain-israel.html
If you access that article, you will see heart-rending
pictures of children begging for food. But wise Mr. Capehart is far more concerned if the student protestors here in the USA will persist when they go home from school.
I don’t have time or energy to get comprehensive about the
wickedness Israel is inflicting. There’s
so much. Two-thirds of the Gazan people
have lost their homes. They’ve been herded
into small corners of Gaza, and these so-called refuges are now being bombed by
Israel. Already, 5% of the Gazan people are dead
or maimed, most of them women and children. Think about that. That's 1 in 20 of the whole population.
The number climbs daily.
Hourly.
Here is another article from just today, this one from the
Washington Post. There is serious evidence
that Israel is conducting gunfire executions, a war crime reminiscent of the Nazi
SS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/04/west-bank-raid-israel-nur-shams/
WaPo has backed up its article with outstanding research:
This article is based on more than a dozen interviews over
two days inside Nur Shams and by phone, as well as on photos and videos
provided by eyewitnesses and reviewed by Washington Post reporters.
There are other cases of executions, covered by other sources, such as Al
Jazeera and the BBC. These include mass graves outside of a hospital (all Gaza's hospitals have been bombed, by the way).
I used to respect Jonathan Capehart. But he has used his mircophone on PBS to sugarcoat
the horrors in Gaza with the quick phrase, “humanitarian crisis,” before going on
to wonder when the students will go home.
He also, in good radical rightwing fashion, scolds them for being bigots.
Shame on you, Capehart. There’s a genocide taking place.
President Biden, you are the main culprit, continuing to
supply weapons for the genocide. Biden, you had the repulsive gall, a few days ago, to admonish the student protestors for
being too violent.
Too violent,
sir? Really? The protestors form encampments. Sometimes they occupy buildings. They chant loudly.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu bombs, starves, and in many ways tortures
and terrifies millions of human beings.
And the bombs he uses, Mr. Biden, are yours, paid for with my tax money.
And yet, Mr. Biden, you claim that the so-called ‘violent’ students are the problem?
More and more, it seems to me that the USA is fine with genocide, both Democrats and Republicans, as
long as it serves our country’s power interests.
Only the younger generation seems to want to stand up for what this country used to believe in. What happened to ‘Never Again’? What happened to Anne Frank? Elie Wiesel?
Viktor Frankl? I guess all that
means nothing now, as Biden, leader of the 'free world' gives bombs for a genocide to a fascist dictator.
And that fact, more
than anything else, should terrify Jews and all other traditionally oppressed groups. It should, indeed, terrify us all.
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