Former Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has suggested that the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian war may have been caused by “wokeness.”
Bachmann, who represented Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District from 2007 to 2015 and ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, said during an interview with conservative news outlet Real America’s Voice on Wednesday that Hamas was “controlled and run by the demonic realm of Iran.”
During a discussion on the “spiritual” side of the war, the former congresswoman argued that reports of alleged atrocities committed by Hamas were evidence that a “demonic presence” was controlling the militants attacking Israel.
“This is demonic,” Bachmann said. “This is not human. What happened on Saturday, what’s continued to happen, is not human. What would it take for a human being to decapitate a baby? And not just one, but 40. Something has to happen to your soul.
“What happened is, it is a spiritual, demonic presence that has come in and taken over,” she continued. “Do all Muslims feel this way? Absolutely not… There was an uprising with Islamic supremacists, this demonic realm, division of Islam.”
When the topic turned to reports that Israel was warned of the attack by Egypt days before it took place, the ex-congresswoman suggested that the apparent failure by Israel to anticipate Hamas may have been caused by “wokeness,” a term defined by Merriam-Webster as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”.
Bachmann floated a theory that “wokeness” led individuals within the government to fail to act upon the tip from Egypt in hopes of toppling Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing conservative who has been under heavy criticism during his current tenure leading the country.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is saying, ‘nobody warned me,’ he didn’t hear it,” said Bachmann. “Now, the thing that may be—we have problems with wokeness in the United States, in our government agencies. It’s entirely possible that perhaps the intel service in Israel also had wokeness and decided not to pass the information along. That could be a possibility, but I’m speculating.
“I believe part of this may be to blame Benjamin Netanyahu for this disaster and then topple him,” she added. “We have problems in America, with the FBI, with our intelligence offices compromised. So, that could very well have happened in Israel.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to Bachmann via Regent University, a private Christian school where she serves as a professor, on Wednesday evening.
The claim that Hamas beheaded 40 babies originated with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Tel Aviv news channel i24, who said on Tuesday that she was told of the alleged massacre by an Israeli “commander” surveying the aftermath of Hamas attacking a kibbutz near the Gaza border.
The Israeli government has not confirmed the claim, with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) telling Sky News on Wednesday that it “cannot confirm any numbers.” The IDF did say that “a massacre” had occurred at the kibbutz “in which women, children and toddlers and elderly were brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action.”
Other journalists, diplomats and international observers have witnessed alleged evidence of war crimes since Hamas launched its surprise attack on Saturday.