GOP Congressman Calls For Treating Gaza 'Like Nagasaki And Hiroshima'

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told constituents gathered at a town hall meeting last week that the war in Gaza “should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima,” invoking the U.S.′ nuclear strikes on Japan that brought an end to World War II.

“Get it over quick,” Walberg said of the Gaza war.

HuffPost reviewed a video of the full meeting, a portion of which was clipped from a YouTube video and posted to X, formerly Twitter. According to Walberg’s congressional website, he held a town hall event Monday morning at the Dundee Village Hall.

His office told The Detroit News that the remark was “a metaphor to support Israel’s swift elimination of Hamas.”

Walberg’s comments were in response to a question posed by someone at the meeting about U.S. troops being deployed to Gaza. Since Hamas militants’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Israeli Defense Force has engaged in a relentless bombing campaign that has displaced the majority of Gaza’s residents and killed more than 30,000 of them, including many women and children. The U.S. has continued to send bombs, fighter jets and other resources to help the Israeli effort.

President Joe Biden has been under huge pressure to fund humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, where everyone is at risk of famine. Israel has refused international calls to open more land-based routes for aid deliveries.

In response, the Department of Defense announced earlier this month that it would build a pier for aid shipments off the coast of Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea. The logistics involved in building the pier, however, have led to questions about how to prevent U.S. troops from being put in harm’s way.

In Dundee, a man in the audience said that he had spoken to a soldier who was going to be sent to help build