Rep. Hank Johnson is not known for his towering intellect or penetrating insight. In fact, he’s an ignorant loon.
Back in 2010, Johnson astonished attendees at a House Armed Services Committee hearing by claiming that if too many U.S. military personnel transferred to our base on Guam, it could cause the island to “capsize.”
These days, Johnson has turned his attention to the cause of the Palestinians. At a meeting for the anti-Israel U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Johnson compared Israeli settlers to “termites” and Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Donald Trump.
“There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming,” Johnson said during an event sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, an anti-Israel organization that galvanizes supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS.
“It has come to the point that occupation, with highways that cut through Palestinian land, with walls that go up, with the inability or the restriction, with the illegality of Palestinians being able to travel on those roads and those roads cutting off Palestinian neighborhoods from each other,” Johnson continued. “And then with the building of walls and the building of check points that restrict movement of Palestinians. We’ve gotten to the point where the thought of a Palestinian homeland gets further and further removed from reality.”
Johnson, who in 2010 voiced his fears that Guam would tip over and capsize if too many people resided on the island, said that “Jewish people” routinely steal land and property from Palestinians.
“You see one home after another being appropriated by Jewish people who come in to claim that land just because somebody did not spend the night there,” he said, referring to claims that Israeli settlers plot to seize Palestinian land. ‘“The home their [Palestinian] ancestors lived in for generations becomes an Israeli home and a flag goes up,” he said, adding, “the Palestinians are barred from flying flags in their own neighborhoods.”
Johnson went on to compare Lieberman to Trump as he lashed out against the Israeli government.
“The fact is the Israeli government, which is the most right-wing government ever to exist in the state of Israel in its history, the most right wing government, you got a guy like Trump who is now the minister of defense in Israel calling the shots on defense,” he said, adding that he is not the only member of Congress who holds these views.
Much of that critique is absolute nonsense — Palestinian propaganda carefully aimed at ignoramuses like Johnson. He and his ilk will believe any story released by the Palestinian Authority because they’ve been conditioned to do so by years of lies.
Comparing Jews to insects recalls the nauseating anti-Semitism of the notorious Nazi publisher Julius Streicher. In Streicher’s newspaper, Der Stürmer, Jews were portrayed as rats, cockroaches, and other vermin. He was executed after the war for his crimes.
That Johnson was too stupid to know that he was aping a Nazi war criminal is no excuse. At the least he should apologize. But given Johnson’s attitude and the attitude of many of his fellow Democrats, we better not hold our breath waiting for it.
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