Joe Scarborough is notorious for his incessant Trump = Hitler analogies. Now, for purposes of smearing Benjamin Netanyahu, Scarborough has devised an analogy to another mass-murdering dictator.
On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough began by claiming that Netanyahu "had a plan to force famine on the Palestinian people, on the Gazan people."
Scarborough then upped the ante, claiming that Netanyahu's plan is "calculated, and let me say, it's calculated just like Stalin's starvation of Ukrainians was calculated. This is calculated by Benjamin Netanyahu."
Scarborough's mention of Stalin's starvation of Ukraine was a reference to the Holomodor, a famine imposed on Ukraine in 1932-33 by Stalin in which an estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians perished.
As the maxim goes, in war, truth is the first casualty. Various anti-Israel organizations have accused Israel of intentionally starving Gazans, but hard facts are hard to find. Often, headlines are cleverly couched: starvation "looms," starvation is "stalking."
Consider that here at home, left-wing groups regularly push nonsenical notions like "More than 44 million people in the US face hunger, including 1 in 5 children." In fact, in the Unites States, as worldwide, by far the bigger health threat is not hunger, but obesity.
Note that Scarborough offered no evidence in support of his scurrilous accusation that Netanyahu is intentionally starving Gazans. By implication though, he could be buying into the insinuation that MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire made on Morning Joe earlier this week, that Israel's strike on the World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza was intentional.
And Scarborough also repeated today his cynical twist on a phrase fashioned by those seeking the total destruction of Israel, which we noted yesterday, that Netanyahu's plan is for an Israel, "from the river to the sea."
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
4/5/24
6:17 am EDTJOE SCARBOROUGH: It is increasingly looking like Benjamin Netanyahu had a plan to force famine on the Palestinian people, on the Gazan people, to amp up the pressure on Hamas. Of course, it seems to me that the hostages aren't even secondary in his mind because, of course, and people say, well, Hamas could release hostages. Yeah, they could! They're terrorists! They're terrorists! And they're not going to release the hostages unless the conditions are right. Which the conditions most likely are a cease fire and the allowing of the worst terrorists to escape out of Gaza with their lives. But, but this whole idea that if we starve the Gazan people, that's going to somehow help Israel in the long run, that's going to help the hostages? No! It's hurting the hostages, it's hurting Israel.
And of course you're, you're starving women and children in Gaza, and as Katty said yesterday, they're now having to grind up dog food and cat food and, and eat that, and, and drink salt water. I mean, it's savage conditions, and it's calculated.
And let me say, it's calculated just like Stalin's starvation of, of, of Ukrainians was calculated. This is calculated by Benjamin Netanyahu, and somebody needs to ask me, why the hell the United States shouldn't intervene with a guy that has a 20% approval rating and knows that when the war is over, he could be going to jail.
