US Congressman Suggests Destroying Gaza Like ‘Hiroshima and Nagasaki’

Rep. Tim Walberg made the comments at a town hall last week

by Dave DeCamp March 31, 2024

https://news.antiwar.com/2024/03/31/us-congressman-suggests-destroying-gaza-like-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) has come under fire for saying Gaza should be handled like “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” suggesting that he was calling for a nuclear bomb to be dropped on the Strip, which could kill millions of Palestinians.

Walberg made the comments at a town hall last week when asked about the US funding the construction of a port in Gaza, supposedly to bring in more aid. “We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,” he said. “It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.”

The genocidal comments became public when they surfaced in a video on social media. In response to the controversy, Walberg claimed he was using a “metaphor” by naming the only two cities in the world that have ever been hit with a nuclear bomb.

“I used a metaphor to convey the need for both Israel and Ukraine to win their wars as swiftly as possible, without putting American troops in harm’s way,” he claimed. “My reasoning was the exact opposite of what is being reported: the quicker these wars end, the fewer innocent lives will be caught in the crossfire.”

Israeli officials have frequently pointed to the US and Allied bombings of Germany and Japan during World War II to justify the mass killing of civilians in Gaza. Military historians say the destruction in Gaza is on par with the destruction of German cities, which are some of the most heavily bombed places in history.

Walberg came under heavy criticism from fellow Michigan politicians for his reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including former Rep. Justin Amash, a Palestinian-American who lost family members to Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza.

Amash said Walberg’s comments “evince an utter indifference to human suffering. 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.”