Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on Tuesday criticized a headline that ran in The Washington Post late last week blaming the Israeli missile defense system for the recent violence in the Gaza strip.
“Israel’s Iron Dome defense system protects Israeli lives. It also perpetuates the Israel-Gaza conflict,” the headline read.
“It is ludicrous to suggest that Israel’s self defense bears the same responsibility for the ongoing conflict as the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist attacks,” Scott responded in a tweet sent on Tuesday.
In the Post’s analysis, Yagil Levy, a professor of political sociology and public policy at the Open University of Israel, wrote that the defense system allows Israel to “act with less concern for civilian casualties” and makes it so Israeli politicians have a decreased incentive to work toward a peaceful resolution to the tensions between the two sides.
“Here’s the ironic outcome: Even as Iron Dome enables devastating Israeli bombardment from the air, it protects Gazan civilians from potentially devastating outcomes of an Israeli ground offensive, which would be the likely alternative,” Levy wrote. “Iron Dome up to this point has saved Israeli lives from Gaza rocket attacks, while enabling air campaigns against Palestinian citizens. But the reduced pressure to resolve the conflict with Gaza also means Iron Dome gives Israelis a false sense of security, based on technological success — which isn’t guaranteed forever — rather than political solutions.”
It’s not the first time Scott has tangled with the Post this year.
A week before he was slated to give the GOP rebuttal to President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress, a Post fact-checker cast doubt on the hardship his family faced after the Civil War, prompting backlash from both the right and left.
Scott mentioned the article during his rebuttal, saying: “I’ve also experienced a different kind of intolerance. I get called ‘Uncle Tom’ and the N-word by progressives, by liberals. Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my family’s poverty was actually privilege because a relative owned land generations before my time.”
Democrats on Capitol Hill have criticized Biden following reports that he had approved $735 million worth of precision-guided weapons to be sold to Israel amid the recent violence. Progressive members in the House have said Israel is engaged in unprovoked attacks on innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Republicans, largely supportive of Israel, have said the U.S. has a responsibility to help a trusted ally fight off attacks from the terrorist group Hamas and suggest Biden’s “weakness” on Middle East policy has led to the escalating violence.