Drivers who find themselves stuck in front of “pro-Hamas mobs” blocking traffic should “take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote.
“It’s time to put an end to this nonsense,” he added.
In another post, he endorsed video footage of people forcefully dragging protesters out of a road. “How it should be done,” he wrote.
An opinion columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer with more than 85,000 followers on social media wrote that Cotton was “advocating the murder of dissenting Americans who are trying to end the slaughter of Palestinian children through civil disobedience.”
Dumisani Washington, founder and CEO of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, also rejected Cotton’s post but did so without claiming it was a call for murder.
“You could use your position as a U.S. senator to help force/empower law enforcement to do their jobs and arrest the terrorist-supporting idiots blocking traffic and shutting down airports,” Washington wrote.
“Cops know they’ll get arrested for enforcing the law. The people know they’ll be arrested for ‘taking matters into their own hands,’” he added. “Hell, criminals are assaulting police officers (in blue cities/states) and nothing happens to them. Do better, senator.”
“Mr. Cotton ignited furor in 2020 with an opinion essay in The New York Times in which he called for the use of military force to put down riots across the country amid a rash of civil unrest that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by the police in Minneapolis,” The New York Times reported.
