Conservatives try to pin Israel attack to Biden

Plus, voting rights lawsuit brings favorable redistricting to Alabama

WHAT YOU MISSED

As the dust settled on one of the deadliest episodes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, right-wing weirdos began to spread disinformation. For starters, Donald Trump Jr. took to X to falsely blame the attack on President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

This pernicious “detail” is misleading: That picture was taken in 2021 and is of Taliban militants, not Hamas. The article cited by America’s most brain-poisoned son quotes an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) operative concerned that Hamas could hypothetically receive arms from the Taliban. While the two organizations have a relationship and U.S. arms abandoned during the withdrawal have appeared in other conflict zones, Iran is the primary benefactor of Hamas. And Israeli intelligence has said it's unclear what role the country played in assisting in the offensive.

Of course, that didn’t stop Junior’s dad and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) from asserting that the Biden administration’s hostage exchange in August — which allowed $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue to be used for humanitarian purposes — had allowed the Islamic Republic to send resources to Hamas.

“Iran has helped fund this war against Israel, and Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran has helped to fill their coffers,” DeSantis said in a video on X. “Israel is now paying the price for those policies.”    

In a campaign speech over the weekend, former President Donald Trump told supporters that “The war happened for two reasons: The United States is giving — and gave to Iran — $6 billion over hostages.”

But even Fox News was skeptical of such claims. Their Pentagon reporter, Jennifer Griffin, said on Saturday that Iran has yet to even access the funds. “The $6 billion is still currently held in a Qatari bank account with U.S. Treasury oversight, I’m told. The money came from Iranian oil sales to South Korea and did not include U.S. taxpayer dollars,” she told Fox News.

“In fact, the U.S. has pre-positioned $2 billion worth of weapons stored in Israel. I’m told the U.S. will likely release some of these pre-positioned weapons to assist Israel in the coming days.”

Any connection that the U.S. might have to the attacks on Hamas isn’t a product of the Biden administration. Indeed, it goes back much, much further. As MSNBC host Medhi Hasan has pointed out, Hamas and its predecessors were backed financially in the late 1970s and early 80s by Israeli and U.S. officials who were attempting to dampen the power of the once-dominant Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a secular, nationalist movement backed by many Palestinians both at home and abroad.  

“This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s,” Hasan explained.

“Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a ‘counterweight’ to … PLO and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as ‘a creature of Israel.’)”

Such nuances have shockingly escaped the geopolitical wisdom of the American Right.

POLL WATCHERS

According to ABC News, redistricting in Alabama could mean that the state could send another Democratic congressional member to Washington. Following a racial discrimination lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States this summer, a new electoral map of Alabama will likely create a Black-majority district. And, as such, it would almost certainly allow for a liberal representative.

However, it’s worth noting that new districting in North Carolina and New Mexico could offset Democratic gains in the deep South.  

THINGS THAT AGED WELL

Behold! The once-great future of the Republican Party!