Opinion

Why Biden’s Gaza refugee plan is a hard hell no

As President Biden considers bringing Gaza war refugees into the United States, he would do well to recall what happened when other good-hearted people took a similar chance ā€“ and paid with their šŸ…·blood.

Before the October 7 Hamas attack, Israeli citizens sponsored work permits for thousands of security-vetted Palestinians to earn money working on some of theš’†™ir farms in towns not far from the Gā›¦aza Strip.

Some of those Gazan day laborers are believed to haveź¦ used their access to kill hundreds of Israelis on October 7šŸ…·.

The bad apples lesson of that still developing story ā€“ and directly assisted the October 7 attackers ā€“ is central to the problem with to import Gazan war refugees. Itā€™s an unacceptable national security rš’‰°isk.

Thatā€™s because just about all of the Gaza Stripā€™s two million inhabitants have gone through decades of institutionalized cradle-to-grave indoctrination into the ruling Hamasā€™ upside down 7th century Islamist value system, wšŸ˜¼hich features at its core and extremely violent religious ideology.ą½§

Hamas relentlessly preaches that humanityā€™s highest virā™‰tues are suicide bombing, armed combat, genocide, intolerance of difference, and a dehumanizing hatred of Jews and Americans.

Yes, there will be exceptions among Gazans who are independent-minded enough to rebel. But if Israel canā€™t readily suss out the tolerant, then certainly Americaā€™s refugee bureaucrats will have far lessšŸ”“ luck.

A large number of respectable have shown how Hamas indoctrinates the people of the Gaza ź¦ÆStrip.

Recall the of jubilant children, women and men cheering, spitting at, and even beating both alive and dead Israeli hostages paraded through Gaza after the October 7 attack.

ā€œThese are the people you might be bringing here,ā€ said Nayla Rush, a refugee policy expert for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, who recently penned a column titled .” ā€œHow are you going to vet them? What do you do, go to the Hamas authorities and ask? Thatā€™s a huge breach of any vetting. Itā€™s impossible.ā€

A Palestinian father and his son holding up copies of the Quran during a Hamas anti-Israel rally in the northern Gaza Strip on Sep. 29, 2006. UPI Photo/Ismael Mohamad

Hamas starts things up in kindergarten and ramps up the ideological training all the way through the Islamic University of Gaza, a redoubt of hatred in 1978 and which offers law degrees from a ā€œSharia Law Departmentā€ and whose engineering department is there to churn out combat engineers for Hamas ź§‹tunnels.

As , the required school textbooks and curriculum ā€œinfuse the next generation with its militant ideolš’ŠŽogyā€ as part of a required national educatiš’on course of study in government schools.

The children are taught never to recognize modern Israel as anything more than a target of genocšŸ»idal violence, Gaza school curricula is replete with thousands of examples of violent incitement against the Jewish state and Jewish people.

Tens of thousands have attended Hamas , where its armed terrorist operativšŸ’ƒes serve as camp counselors dishing out violent Islamist ideology and military training to prep them for conscription into Hamasā€™ armed forces.

Teachers and authority figures of every stripe teach the children that waging jihad that kills Jews is a solemn religious duty where martyrdom earns the believer paršŸ€…adise in heaven, of collected Arabic television news segments shows.

ā€œThe nexšŸ’t generation of Palestinians is being relentlessly fed a rhetorical diet that includes the idolization of terrorists, the demonization of Jews and the conviction that sooner or later Israel should cease to exist,ā€ Yuval Steinitz, Israelā€™s minister of intelligence and international affairs, wrote in a .

He noted that, for instance, some Facebook pages of government-supported Palestinian against European Jewry and thašŸ’®t ā€œJews and Zionists are horrible creatures that corrupt those in their vicinity.ā€

of 156 Palestinian school textbooks found that many glorified suicide terrorists as role models and demonize Jews as dangerous and deceptive so as to generate feelings of hatą± red.

Hamas television station Al-Aqsa TV has used a character called Farfour to promote radical Islam and antisemitic ideas to children. AP

Hamasā€™ popular Al Aqsa TV gained international notoriety when its childrenā€™s show star was outed for promoting radical Islam, hatred ofš„¹ Jews, and for urging children to take up AK-47 assault riflšŸŒŸes.

The stationā€™s response to international outrage wź¦†as to depict an ā€œIsraeliā€ bureaucrat unjustly beating Farfour to death, then replaced the character with a bee named Nahool who continued to preach violence.

And so much for tolerance. Any Gazan at any age who might be brought to the United States can be expected to regard non-Muslims as sub-human after years of indoctrination backed by extreme violź¦°ence against CšŸ’Žhristians in Gaza.

Islamist proselytizers ą·“and forced them to convert to Islam and burned churches to the ground.

The tiny population of Christians that have not fled Hamas persecution remain subject to targeting ā€œin ways even more acute and systemic than Christians in the West Bank and Israel,” a concluded.

Christians feel coercion šŸ’œto covert to Islam, while Christian women are harassed and pressured to cover their hair and adopt Islamic foršŸ…·ms of clothing.

PollingšŸ„€ of Gazans consistently show for the Ocź¦ŗtober 7 attack and for Hamas, whose backing .

And large majorities have long viewed the United States as an enemy of Palestinian Arabs, sšŸ§øhowing that number at 76% a decade ago and soaring, if that is even possible, since the new war began.

Palestinians dressed as suicide bombers with a child carrying fake explosives during a Hamas march in Lebanon on Dec. 9, 2001. Photo by Courtney Kealy/Getty Images

ā€œThe level of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism is hugš”‰e among Palestinians because of the positions they have taken regarding international humanitarian law and what is happening in Gaza,ā€ pollster Khalil Shikaki told the Associated Press in December.

Absent even a national security risk in importing men, women and children deeply schooled in blood lust, why would the Biden administration think it wise to import such America-haters into the country

But in the end, Gazans must be regarded as too great a ź§’national security threat for a US humanitarian gambit.

By all means, do facilitate their exits to friendlier and safer neighborhoods in the region. Provide humanitarian aid. Arrange for medical treatment elsewhere. Send doctors on the US Navy’s Mercy hospital ship.

But importing them ź¦into the United States as refugees? These aā™ˆre not the people, and this is definitely not the time.

Todd Bensman is a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.