OAN’s Taylor Tinsley
5:24 PM PT – Thursday, October 19, 2023
A Democrat has blocked Senator Josh Hawley’s resolution condemning Hamas and anti-Semitic speech on college campuses as Hamas and Israel wage war in the Middle East.
Hawley (R-Mo.) sought to pass his resolution on the Senate floor on Thursday.
The GOP senator said the response from some people on the nation’s college campuses to “broadcast their support for genocide” is almost as disturbing as the facts of the terrible attacks themselves.
“Listen to what these students said, at Harvard University students wrote they ‘hold the Israeli Regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence’,” Hawley stated. “Think about that, they hold the Jewish people responsible for their own deaths and massacres.”
Protests over the Israel-Hamas war have erupted all over the country, causing clashes between people on all sides of the conflict.
Hawley said campus leaders have refused to condemn anti-Semitic rhetoric, which is threatening Jewish-Americans.
“Students at New York University of Law wrote that they believe Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life. Students at Ohio State praise the heroic resistance in Gaza,” he said.
His efforts to unanimously pass the resolution was prevented by Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
Van Hollen said the horrors conducted by Hamas must be condemned. He added that Hawley’s resolution is not about condemning Hamas’s attacks on Israel but about condemning certain speech around the country.
“I stand with anybody and second to none when it comes to condemning antisemitism… When you come to the Senate floor to pass such a resolution and you’[re talking about freedom of speech, it’s very important not to paint a broad brush and condemn everybody engaging in speech, this is what this resolution does,” said Van Hollen.
Hawley said speech is not protected when it threatens individuals or groups and that calling for the genocide of Jewish people and their babies is not just a matter of opinion.
“Celebrating the assaults on Jewish people in this country is not just another opinion, and the Senate should be clear and stand with moral clarity and say ‘this is wrong,'” he said.
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