Until a few years ago, Princeton, NJ was the place I spent the longest part of my life. Since 2004, I have lived in Israel, but Princeton is my legal US address from which I and my family file taxes, vote, and to which we get notices for jury duty.
Princeton is in the NJ 12th district, represented by Congresswoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman. I receive her monthly updates about issues that she cares about and how she’s allocating federal dollars to projects in the district. I don’t know a lot about a lot of things, but I do know a lot of things about Israel and the Middle East, having studied at two major universities. Living here, I say I live in my own petri dish.
I used to think that Representative Watson-Coleman was just misguided. I have lobbied her office and written to her as well. Except for one staff member responding once, I have never heard back.
The ignorance which I used to attribute to her is clearly more than that. She’s made it a point of not only walking out of or boycotting the Congressional address of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but featuring that as a major policy issue. It’s like she is spiking the ball in the end zone, after a fumble. It’s one thing to differ with a sitting world leader. It’s another to make that leader the epitome of evil and standing on her self-righteous hill for all to see.
Last year, Congresswoman Watson-Coleman disseminated a brazen lie, misrepresenting the number of deaths in Gaza since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and massacre. The number she quoted was higher than even the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry” was brazen enough to claim. I addressed it then, writing it off as simple ignorance, and being sucked into the propaganda fraud that the terrorist organization projects to the world. Of course, she ought to be intelligent enough to check facts before reporting them, and this is doubly true as a Congresswoman.
But hey, what’s a few thousand dead Gazans among friends — especially if it helps make Israel look bad? Never mind that the numbers often lump together natural deaths, the thousands of Hamas terrorists killed on October 7–8, 2023, and the tens of thousands of combatants targeted and eliminated since then.
This week, I received Watson-Coleman’s latest update. Under the heading “Famine in Gaza,” in 200+ words, the Congresswoman perpetuates numerous unproven allegations and outright lies. She should be ashamed.
She claims that “Gaza is a humanitarian disaster beyond measure.” Does she forget the humanitarian disasters and wars throughout Africa and Syria in the past two decades alone? Does she not remember that the famine was so bad in Africa that there was the 1985 Live Aid global concert and $245 million campaign, which sought to alleviate that?
“Aid agencies have warned for over a year that a famine was coming, and now it’s here.” Really congresswoman? “Where’s the famine?” is about as legitimate a question as “Where’s the beef?” Aid agencies and the UN perpetuated these claims, even the idea that if something didn’t change, “14,000 babies would die” immediately. That never happened. It’s the worst lie because it’s based on a fraud.
“The aid distribution system in Gaza is failing by design.” Come on, Congresswoman. Have you been there? Have you seen it? Do you know that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has provided more than 91 million meals since May 27 (for a population of 2.3 million)? That’s about 1.5 million meals a day. Sounds to me like working by design. Or that Israel has renewed air drops of food and humanitarian supplies right into Gaza, hopefully into the hands of the Gazans and not their Hamas masters.
This Watson-Coleman lie really got me. “Aid trucks are stuck at the border…” Congresswoman, I hope you’re not as unreliable in all your other work representing New Jersey’s 12th as you are on this one. The only aid trucks “stuck at the border” were nearly 1000 such trucks, ON THE GAZA SIDE OF THE BORDER. Until they were embarrassed enough to do something this week, the UN was literally letting the aid rot in the sun.
On the Israeli side of the border, on one day alone this month, as many as 166 trucks entered Gaza, with 180 more scheduled. Even on the slowest days, as few as 29 truckloads are reported to have crossed into Gaza. Averaging the high and the low, that’s 97 truckloads per day, or 2900 per month.
“Since May, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to reach aid.” It’s a war, and indeed, people are dying. That’s horrible. But how does she know that “Israeli forces” killed 1000 people, trying to reach aid? It seems the Congresswoman is getting her “facts” straight out of the mouth of a Hamas terrorist, believing them as gospel, and using the lies to propagate a fraud. She should be investigated as an agent of a terrorist organization.
My Congresswoman claims that there is “continued ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.” Of course, that’s a baseless lie as well. While the human suffering is immense and every innocent life lost is a tragedy, the population of Gaza has not been ethnically cleansed. This is a war aimed at dismantling Hamas — a group deeply embedded within the civilian population — and securing the return of 50 hostages who have been held in captivity for over 600 days. There is no genocide. Even if we accept Hamas’s unverified death toll, the overall population has remained stable due to a similar number of births. The main population change is the 100,000+ Gazans who have left the territory — and every Gazan should have the right to leave for their safety and well-being. Getting civilians out of a war zone happened in Ukraine, Syria, and between African nations at war. Why is it that only Gazans are prevented from such protection in neighboring Arab countries?
The worst part of Watson-Coleman’s 200+ word diatribe is that not once does she mention the hostages. Not once does she mention Hamas, her patrons of “truth.” Not once does she mention that Hamas has hijacked the distribution of aid throughout Gaza and is opposed to the GHF aid because it circumvents their control. Not once does she mention that if Hamas had not started this war, conducted the massacre, and kidnapped more than 250 people, there would be no war, no suffering, and no allegations of starvation, ethnic cleansing, or other fraudulent claims that she perpetrates.
The answer is as glaring as her lies. Because if you cannot blame suffering on the Jews, there’s no news. As she notes in conclusion, we should not “have the privilege to look away.” Indeed Congresswoman. Your lies are in the spotlight for all to see, and your credibility is nil.
