The congressman asked Washington “not to spend a single cent on humanitarian aid to Gaza. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Then we will end this faster,” the politician said during a meeting with voters.
Wahlberg’s office said his words should be taken metaphorically: he simply called for a faster defeat of Hamas to “save more lives and achieve permanent peace in the region.”
In Congress, Walberg represents the state of Michigan, home to nearly 300,000 representatives of Muslim and Arab communities, one of the highest numbers in the United States. Democrats came under fire after Wahlberg’s comments. They called his words “horrible and shocking” and asked him to “retract his words and put himself in the shoes of the many Michiganders who see his guilt in the victims of Gaza.”
