Margaret Brennan presses DeSantis for calling all Palestinians in Gaza ‘antisemitic’

CBS “Face the Nation” anchor Margaret Brennan on Sunday pressed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over remarks he made on the campaign trail in which he called all Palestinians in Gaza “anti-Semitic.”

DeSantis on Saturday argued the U.S. shouldn’t take in any Palestinian refugees fleeing from Gaza or any Palestinian Arabs.

“We cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees. I am not going to do that. If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all anti-Semitic,” DeSantis, a GOP presidential candidate, said Saturday during a campaign stop in Iowa.

Playing his remarks on “Face the Nation,” Brennan asked DeSantis, “I’m sure you know, all Arabs are Semites. But how can you paint with such a broad brush to say 2.3 million people are anti-Semitic?”

“Well, first of all, my position is very clear. Those [in] Gaza are refugees; Palestinian Arabs should go to Arab countries. The U.S. should not be absorbing any of those,” DeSantis said. “I think the culture — so they elected Hamas, let’s just be clear about that. Not everyone’s a member of Hamas, most probably aren’t. But they did elect Hamas.”

Brennan then noted Hamas won the elections in 2006 before violently seizing control of the Gaza Strip from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers semi-autonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. No elections have taken place in Gaza since.

“There was a lot of … celebrating of those attacks in the Gaza Strip by … a lot of those folks who are not Hamas,” DeSantis pushed back.

DeSantis then took aim at the Gaza Strip’s education system, claiming it teaches “kids to hate Jews.”

“The textbooks do not have Israel even on the map,” DeSantis continued. “They prepare very young kids to commit terrorist attacks, so I think it’s a toxic culture.”

The 2024 White House hopeful says importing large numbers of Palestinian refugees would “increase anti-Semitism” and “anti-Americanism” in the country.

“And that’s something after seeing those demonstrations pop up in our country, just with … blood still flowing amongst Israel citizens over the weekend. You had people taking to the streets cheering on the barbarism of Hamas in our country,” DeSantis said. “That was a chilling thing to see, and I don’t think that that’s something that we should ever think is acceptable.”

Brennan then noted “no one’s talking about getting Gaza and refugees here right now,” to which DeSantis said some on the far left have mentioned it.

The Israeli military Friday gave an estimated 1.1 million Palestinian civilians just over 24 hours to evacuate the area ahead of an expected ground offensive on northern Gaza, the area controlled by Hamas.

The order came nearly a week after Hamas launched an onslaught of surprise attacks on Israel, invading several Israeli towns by land, sea and air. Israeli forces have since launched a major counteroffensive, sending hundreds of airstrikes into Gaza.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have already fled their home after airstrikes destroyed dozens of neighborhoods. Adding to the growing humanitarian crisis is Israel’s “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip early last week, which halted the supply of food, electricity and water to the territory that already had run low on supplies.

Brennan addressed the argument of some that Israel’s counteroffensive could be seen as “collective punishment” for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.

“It’s not collective punishment. Hamas is the one that is creating this predicament. Hamas is the one who always uses civilian targets to conduct operations,” DeSantis responded.

Fighting in Israel and Gaza has claimed more than 3,600 lives — mostly civilians — from both sides, with thousands more injured since the militant group Hamas’s multipronged surprise attack on Oct. 7. At least 27 Americans are among the dead, the State Department said Saturday.