Humanitarians reacted with outrage on Tuesday after former presidential U.S. candidate Nikki Haley wrote and signed an arguably genocidal message on an Israeli artillery shell while visiting an Israel Defense Forces post.
"Finish them! America [loves] Israel always," Haley wrote on the shell Tuesday, signing her name. She was accompanied by Danny Danon, a member of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, who posted photos from their tour on social media. Haley, who was the ambassador to the United Nations under then-President Donald Trump, has been an ardent supporter of Israel's war in Gaza and has ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby group.
"Nothing to see here, just AIPAC's favorite politician, Nikki Haley, celebrating death and destruction in Gaza with an autographed missile," IfNotNow, a U.S. Jewish group that supports Palestinian rights, wrote on social media.
"Just disgusting," wrote Alon-Lee Green, director of the Jewish-Arab Movement for Peace, Equality & Social Justice in Israel. In the post, Green pleaded with Americans to take back their "filthy death-promoting politicians."
Alec Karakatsanis, an American civil rights lawyer, wrote that the Haley's message was "one of the most depraved things I have ever seen."
The timing of Haley's autograph of the weapon of war heightened the outrage. On Sunday night, Israel bombed the tents of displaced Palestinians in a "safe zone" of Rafah, killing at least 45 civilians, mostly women and children. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike a "tragic mistake," but the Israeli military then killed at least another 21 Palestinian civilians in a similar attack on a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Haley "spent Memorial Day not commemorating fallen American service members, but visiting Israel as it conducts a brutal massacre in Gaza," The New Republic's Hafiz Rashid reported, calling her autographed message "sick."
One commentator suggested that Haley's act encapsulated the attitude of America's leaders. The most powerful members of both major parties, including President Joe Biden, a Democrat, have supported Israel's war in spite of condemnation by the United Nations General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice, which ordered Israel to "immediately halt its military offensive" in Rafah.
"Biden provided the shells, Republicans autograph them," Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek minister of finance and pro-Palestine public intellectual, wrote on social media. "The U.S. political class is united in its complicity with this genocide."
Haley has spent recent days in Israel making unfounded claims about Russian, Chinese, and Iranian connections to the October 7 attack led by Hamas—and voicing her full support for the war effort, using rhetoric that wrongly indicates that she speaks for all Americans.
"America stands by Israel," Haley said during her tour with Danon, according toi24 News. "Israel is fighting the enemies of the U.S. today. Don't stop until you win."
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