{"id":1962,"date":"2023-10-19T01:14:46","date_gmt":"2023-10-19T01:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connectwithfund.com\/politics\/fact-check-desantis-campaign-falsely-describes-haleys-comments-on-the-people-of-gaza\/"},"modified":"2023-10-19T01:14:47","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T01:14:47","slug":"fact-check-desantis-campaign-falsely-describes-haleys-comments-on-the-people-of-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/connectwithfund.com\/?p=1962","title":{"rendered":"Fact check: DeSantis campaign falsely describes Haley\u2019s comments on the people of Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his presidential campaign and a super PAC backing him are inaccurately depicting a comment Republican rival Nikki Haley made on CNN on Sunday about the people of Gaza.\n <\/p>\n

\n The DeSantis camp has been claiming this week that Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, said in a CNN interview that the US should take in refugees from Gaza \u2013 the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas, the Islamist group that perpetrated the terrorist attacks that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel this month.\n <\/p>\n

\n On Monday, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, posted a video clip<\/a> of Haley\u2019s remarks and claimed the video showed Haley arguing in favor of \u201cbringing Gaza refugees to America.\u201d The same day, the DeSantis campaign posted<\/a> a video of DeSantis responding to what the campaign claimed was \u201cNikki Haley wanting to import Gazan refugees to the U.S.\u201d On Tuesday, DeSantis claimed in a Fox interview that Haley had been speaking on CNN about bringing people from Gaza to the US.\n <\/p>\n

\n All of these claims are wrong.\n <\/p>\n

\n Facts First<\/strong>: Haley is opposed to the US accepting refugees from Gaza, and she did not say on CNN that the US should take in these refugees. DeSantis and his allies have been falsely portraying Haley\u2019s response to a question that was not even about US refugee policy toward Gaza. <\/em>\n <\/p>\n

\n Rather, Haley was asked by CNN anchor Jake Tapper for her thoughts about DeSantis having said that while the people of Gaza are not all Hamas, \u201cthey are all antisemitic\u201d and \u201cnone of them\u201d believes Israel has the right to exist. Haley responded that many Gazans don\u2019t want to be ruled by Hamas, just as many Iranians oppose the regime that governs them, and the US should continue to distinguish between terrorists and civilians.\n <\/p>\n

\n She did not say the US should take in any of these Gaza civilians as refugees. And in subsequent remarks, Haley has expressed firm opposition to the US accepting refugees from Gaza. She argued on Fox on Tuesday that \u201cHamas-sympathizing\u201d Middle Eastern countries should take in these refugees instead.\n <\/p>\n

\n You can read the full transcript of Haley\u2019s Sunday exchange with Tapper here. The exchange was not about whether the US should accept refugees from Gaza.\n <\/p>\n

\n Here\u2019s what actually happened.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tapper noted that a high proportion of Gaza residents are children and asked Haley if she thinks \u201cthe US, Israel, Egypt needs to be doing more to help these innocent Palestinian civilians get out of harm\u2019s way.\u201d Haley said, \u201cYou know what, we should care about the Palestinian citizens, especially the innocent ones, because they didn\u2019t ask for this.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But then she continued: \u201cBut where are the Arab countries? Where are they? Where is Qatar? Where is Lebanon? Where is Jordan? Where is Egypt? Do you know we give Egypt over a billion dollars a year? Why aren\u2019t they opening the gates? Why aren\u2019t they taking the Palestinians? You know why? Because they know they can\u2019t vet them, and they don\u2019t want Hamas in their neighborhood. So why would Israel want them in their neighborhood?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n After Haley completed her answer, Tapper asked her to listen to a clip of DeSantis\u2019 assertions in Iowa on Saturday that not all Gazans are Hamas but that all are antisemitic and none thinks Israel has the right to exist. DeSantis made these claims in the course of arguing that the US should not accept refugees from Gaza, but CNN did not play the portion of his comments about refugees to Haley during the interview; Tapper was specifically asking Haley for her thoughts on how DeSantis characterized Gazans\u2019 beliefs.\n <\/p>\n

\n Before he got to his question, Tapper read out some results from a July poll of Gaza, which found, among other things, that 50% of Gazans want Hamas to \u201cstop calling for Israel\u2019s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.\u201d Tapper then said: \u201cSo I\u2019m not really certain that Governor DeSantis has a real read on the difference between Hamas and the people of Gaza. What was your response when you heard what Governor DeSantis said?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Haley responded by invoking her two-year tenure as US ambassador to the UN in 2017 and 2018, when she said many Gazans indeed opposed Hamas.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI dealt with this every day for two years. And what I can tell you is, you have to realize that, whether we\u2019re talking about Gazans and Palestinians, all of them don\u2019t \u2013 you\u2019ve got half of them at the time that I was there didn\u2019t want to be under Hamas\u2019 rule. They didn\u2019t want to have terrorists overseeing them. They knew that they were living a terrible life because of Hamas. You had the other half that supported Hamas and wanted to be a part of that. We see that with Iran too. The Iranian people don\u2019t want to be under that Iranian regime. They don\u2019t \u2013 we saw what happened to Mahsa Amini. We saw how they treat them,\u201d Haley said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Haley continued: \u201cThere are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule. They want to be free from all of that. And America\u2019s always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists. And that\u2019s what we have to do. But right now, we can never take our eyes off of the terrorists. I mean, what Hamas did was beyond thuggish, brutal, and sick.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Again, nowhere did Haley say that the US should take in Gazans as refugees.\n <\/p>\n

\n The DeSantis camp has emphasized Haley\u2019s comment that \u201cAmerica\u2019s always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n DeSantis said in a Fox interview on Tuesday: \u201cOver the weekend, she was taking issue with what I said, saying that you can separate someone who\u2019s Hamas in Gaza with somebody who\u2019s more of a freedom-lover. So why would she be talking about that we can vet these people if she wasn\u2019t saying that they should come to this country? We would have no role in vetting them unless you\u2019re bringing them to this country.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But Haley did not use the word \u201cvet\u201d on CNN in the context of the US; when she did use the word, she was talking about how Middle Eastern countries cannot<\/em> vet refugees from Gaza. And it\u2019s a baseless leap to claim that Haley was talking about refugees when she spoke of how the US should distinguish terrorists from Hamas-opposing civilians.\n <\/p>\n

\n There are numerous possible reasons other than refugee policy that someone could find it important for the US government to understand the beliefs of Gaza\u2019s population. For example, Gazans\u2019 views about Hamas could be pertinent to the durability of Hamas\u2019 control over Gaza. Gazans\u2019 views could also affect the willingness of a member of Congress or a president to authorize humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, or affect their positions on Israel\u2019s military actions.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a new television ad attacking Haley over her comments on CNN, the pro-DeSantis super PAC used a question mark that appeared to slightly hedge its claim about what Haley was saying \u2013 putting text over the video of Haley\u2019s remarks that reads, \u201cNIKKI HALEY ON GAZA REFUGEES?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But the ad \u2013 which juxtaposes some of Haley\u2019s words with a clip of DeSantis expressing opposition to the US taking refugees from Gaza \u2013 is misleading nonetheless. A single question mark is not nearly sufficient to explain that these Haley comments never even mentioned the US taking in refugees.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a Wednesday email, a spokesperson for the super PAC repeated DeSantis\u2019 argument that Haley\u2019s comment about how America needs to \u201cseparate civilians from terrorists\u201d was about refugees. The spokesperson also said, \u201cDeSantis said Gazans are antisemitic and do not believe in Israel\u2019s right to exist BECAUSE he was arguing against bringing Gaza refugees to the U.S. So it is fair to view Haley\u2019s rejection of DeSantis\u2019 statements in that context.\u201d And the spokesperson criticized Haley\u2019s past positions on US refugee policy.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n