Fox News host Jesse Watters launched into a wild rant on Wednesday’s episode of “The Five.” In response to reports that activists have been caught on video taking down posters of Israelis who were abducted on Oct. 7, Watters began, “I want to say something about Arab Americans and about the Muslim world.”
“We — and when I say ‘we,’ I mean the West and Western technology — have created the Middle East,” Watters said. “We made them rich. We got that oil out of the ground. Our military protects all of these oil shipments flying around the world, making them rich. We fund their military, we respect their kings, we kill their terrorists. OK?”
“But we’ve had it,” he continued. “We’ve had it with them. Obama, Trump, now Biden have tried to get the heck out of that stupid desert. Just as we’re about to get out, because we have this great balance of power we’re arranging, these crazy Muslim fanatics come in and massacre over 1,000 of our allies and hold Jewish people hostage, hold Americans hostage.”
“And so, if you’re an Arab American in this country, and you rip down posters of Jewish hostages, of American hostages, no. No, no, no. Someone is going to get punched in the face,” he said.
Watters then referenced an article from the New York Times and told his cohost Greg Gutfeld that the second sentence is “even worse.”
The section of the article in question reads: “The battle has inflamed already tense emotions. And it captures one of the most fervently debated questions of the war: Whose suffering should command public attention and sympathy?”
“Those who object to the posters have derided them as wartime propaganda,” the article continues. “Critics of those tearing them down have characterized the act as antisemitic and lacking basic humanity. Increasingly, the disputes seem to teeter on the brink of violence, a proxy battle for the life-or-death war in the Middle East.”
For Watters, the question alone was too much. He added, “What they’ve done, they’ve now made suffering a commodity. They’ll put a price tag on emotional suffering. Is it the Jews, is it Black teens, the Native Americans, the Palest— you know, who’s suffered the most?” he asked, as a representative of none of the aforementioned groups of people.
“And he who’s suffered the most,” Watters added, “is allowed, as you say, a free punch.”
“Now people are above the law, people are below the law, and that’s making everybody crazy, because we can’t live in a country like that. I won’t live in a country like that,” Watters continued.
The United States sends billions in foreign aid to countries around the world, including several in the Middle East. In 2022, the United States sent $3.3 billion in foreign aid to Israel, second only to the $12.4 billion sent to Ukraine.
American interest in the Middle East dates back to at least World War I. At the time, the region was open to President Woodrow Wilson and his King-Crane Commission. The U.S. was seen as a potential anti-colonial ally, but things fell apart before a planned 42-day trip could begin.
The U.S. didn’t step in when the United Kingdom and France made plans to split up the region between themselves and didn’t again express interest in the countries in the Middle East until after World War II. The U.S. had two chief points of interest: fighting Soviet influence and the shift from coal to oil, in terms of energy. The Middle East seemed to provide solutions for both.
While oil imports were incredibly important in the 1970s and ’80s, as domestic production began to increase, American dependence on the Middle East for oil began to wane. At the same time, American support for Israel had never been stronger, something author Karim Makdisi said created a “sense of betrayal” for many Arabs in the region.
In conversation with journalist Jon Alterman, Makdisi said that this betrayal has led “to a situation where the most junior diplomat at, let’s say, the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, has to go around with armed bodyguards and can barely go get a cup of coffee at a cafe without getting permission from a thousand people in security.”
Watch Watters’ entire rant in the video above.
