This is what desperate times look like to desperate House Democrats.
Amid unmistakeable signs that its far-left is taking their party into dangerous places the war sparked by the Hamas terrorist group’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, a freshman Democratic representative on Tuesday went public with a proposal for Israel to “pause” its fighting and to bring former President Barack Obama into the picture in a negotiating role.
It’s hard to tell the worst part of the idea — that it’s so naive, or that it’s so ignorant.
The plan came from Rep. Shri Thanedar, who was elected in the 2022 midterms to represent Michigan’s 13th Congressional District (a Detroit-area district bordering fellow Dem Rashida Tlaib in the 12th).
In a social media post on Tuesday, he called on Israel to halt its attacks on Hamas in order to buy time to negotiate freedom for the hostages the bloodthirsty mob took on its savage raid on southern Israel a month ago.
He also said it would be an opportunity to get “the surrender of Hamas leaders responsible for Oct. 7 attack.”
My statement calling for a 72 hour humanitarian pause. pic.twitter.com/e3SCJJNS4h
— Congressman Shri Thanedar (@RepShriThanedar) November 7, 2023
It wasn’t well received.
Better idea: Israeli proceeds to destroy Hamas now instead of waiting 72 hours for Hamas, a terrorist group dedicated to murdering Jews, to confirm that they still want to murder Jews
— Sunny (@sunnyright) November 7, 2023
No ceasefire.
Hamas attacked with NO warning, just as the Japanese did on Dec 7, 1941.We gave the Japanese no warnings for any of the invasions that followed.
— mke394 (@mke394) November 7, 2023
Here’s a great idea! Let Hamas negotiate while they’re getting their butts handed to them, instead of thinking that they can get a break in order to regroup.
The call for releasing hostages should be unilateral, not dependent upon Israel issuing a ceasefire.
— MrTwyst (@MisterTwyst) November 7, 2023
The idea of Hamas leadership surrendering is near ludicrous, of course. The terrorist group is dedicated to nothing less than the destruction of Israel — the carnage of Oct. 7 wasn’t an accident or an excess — it was a step toward the group’s goal.
What was even worse was Thanedar’s idea of a mediator — to be appointed by President Joe Biden — to bring it about.
“I can think of no one better than former President Barack Obama to lead these efforts,” Thanedar wrote.
Actually, even Biden might be aware that there could well be few people worse.
During his presidency, Obama was singularly hostile to then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the man who is also now Israel’s prime minister and a man a “senior Obama official” once called “chickensh*t.”
The Jerusalem government would have precious little reason to trust Obama as an envoy.
But more to the point, Obama also spent his presidency cozying up to the murderous mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It was arguably thanks to Obama and the nuclear deal he reached with the terrorists of Tehran in 2015 (which was denounced in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump) that Iran has maintained its leadership position in the Middle East.
To no one’s surprise, it’s using that leadership position to openly support Hamas and its equally bloodthirsty counterpart Hezbollah.
And in his most recent public statement on the Middle East war his policies helped make possible, Obama painted the war as a both-sides-are-wrong situation — utterly indifferent to the fact that it arose from the most murderous attack on world Jewry since the Eisatzgruppen soaked the soils of Europe with Jewish blood.
“Nobody’s hands are clean,” Obama said during a podcast made public on Saturday.
It’s tough to say what, if any, reaction Thanedar’s idea got in the White House, but it’s a good bet neither Biden nor Obama would favor the idea.
Biden will never outgrow Obama’s shadow in Democrats’ eyes and he knows it. Making Obama a main player in the Middle East war wouldn’t help.
For Obama, the role holds no upside. It would be doomed to failure from the start, and too much like work for him, anyway.
Still, as far-fetched as the idea might be, the platform X erupted at the idea of anyone entrusting Obama with a negotiating role — with his history of hostility toward the current Israeli government and outright appeasement for Muslim terrorism (not to mention his friendships with domestic Jew-haters like Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton).
“NEGOTIATE the release of hostages.” This proposes that Hamas should gain some advantage from their monstrous ongoing crimes. “Bring all parties to the table.” Yes, and perfume the room with the strawberry scent of unicorn farts. Mr. Thanedar, are you a fool or a knave? Both?
— Eric Chevlen (@echevlen) November 7, 2023
You want Obama as a negotiator. You are not a serious person. Obama Iran deal was a disaster. Syria, the red line disaster.
— Philip (@wpnzjqqtc9) November 7, 2023
Not to disappoint you or anything but Obama has never done such a thing. Even when he was president.
— Jerry Fuhrman (@jerryfuhrman22) November 7, 2023
Why would you sent a guy who pals around with vicious anti semites to broker peace with Israel? pic.twitter.com/7Gucy3v04P
— Jenn (@jennyjupite) November 7, 2023
To be fair to Thanedar, he’s apparently the kind of man whose sense of morality was so outraged by the Democratic Socialists of America response to the Hamas attack that he quit the far-left group in protest.
To be serious about Thanedar, he’s apparently the kind of naive or ignorant Democrat who associates himself with the Democratic Socialists of America in the first place. (It would require the kind of ignorance or arrogance on the level of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or a Bernie Sanders to make that possible.)
But it doesn’t take a political genius to see that the Hamas savagery has Democrats painting themselves into a corner. On the one hand, the party’s increasingly restless far-left base is actually endorsing the wholesale slaughter of young people, the rape of women and the abduction of hostages by Palestinian terrorists.
On the other hand, sane Americans want no part of the atrocities that echo the Nazi Holocaust and the smoking chimneys of Auschwitz.
It’s a corner they’re desperate to get out of. Thanedar’s proposal is what desperation looks like.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
