Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, speaking at multiple campaign events over the weekend, emphasized that the United States should not permit Palestinians from Gaza to seek refuge within its borders.
The Republican presidential candidate made these comments in the wake of a deadly attack by Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic terrorist organization, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,300 Israeli lives and left over 3,000 individuals injured, marking the deadliest day in Israel’s history.
DeSantis stated to his supporters at a rally in Iowa on Saturday, “I don’t know what Biden’s gonna do, but 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. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”
DeSantis also pointed out that “none of the Arab states are willing to take any of them,” and he argued that these countries should be responsible for assisting Palestinian Arabs.
“You don’t fly people and import them into the United States of America,” he stated. “So we’re going to be very strong on that. And I think about our country, you see these demonstrations supporting Hamas in the United States of America. How did we get to the point where people are out there doing that — you get reports of babies being murdered, all this other stuff — and your first instinct is to go out and praise the terrorists who perpetrated that? You have students at Harvard signing letters, praising Hamas for doing it.”
“We’ve got some serious problems in this country,” he added. “We’ve allowed a lot of these problems to fester. But my view is very simple: If you don’t like this country, if you hate America, you should not come to this country. We’ve got to start being smart about this.”
In discussions with reporters, DeSantis reiterated his position that Palestinian refugees should not be admitted to the United States.
“We cannot be absorbing people coming from Gaza to the United States of America,” he stated. “All those Arab countries for years have not done anything with respect to helping Palestinian Arabs. And so now’s the time for them to step up. They should do that.”
