In a discussion with actor and activist Jonah Platt on Tuesday, CNN commentator Van Jones offered strong words to describe Hamas and the terror group’s Western supporters.
“The Palestinians deserve all the support in the world,” Jones said on Oct. 29 during the “Being Jewish with Jonah Platt” podcast. “Their cause is just, they want human rights, they want dignity, they want sovereignty—that’s beautiful. And it’s been hijacked by a Nazi organization called Hamas who are terrible.”
Countering the positions of some others on the left, Jones said of the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip: “They are not freedom fighters. They are freedom takers. They are not interested in democracy, they are not interested in human rights. They are not interested in women’s rights. They are not interested in gay rights.”
Jones continued: “They are not interested in anything we care about. And they are trying to destroy Israel way more than they’re trying to help the Palestinians. It’s a Nazi organization.”
Characterizing support for Palestinians as “a good cause that’s been hijacked by bad people,” he urged that “you’ve got to be able to talk about this stuff honestly.”
He said that as a result of his positions on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, “I’ve had people pull money out of things I’m a part of. But who cares? Nothing compared to what those kids went through at the Nova festival. Nothing compared to what the people went through at the kibbutz.”
Personalizing the discussion, Jones said “I’m a progressive, so Hamas attacked my people. Those are my people on the kibbutz—those are liberals, those are my people.”
He also dismissed some of the rhetoric used by leftists to justify mass murder: “You have these idiots over here talking about, ‘Oh, these were Nazi Zionist colonizers, blah, blah, blah.’ And I’m like, ‘Guys, you don’t know anything about anything, you sound like idiots, and the only reason you can get away with it is because there just aren’t that many Jewish people to fight back.’”
