Mark Levin's hateful defenses of civilian casualties, calls for war crimes, and xenophobic attacks on Palestinians

Andrea Austria

Mark Levin's hateful defenses of civilian casualties, calls for war crimes, and xenophobic attacks on Palestinians

Written by Brendan Karet

Published

While commenting on Israel's military response to the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, Fox News personality Mark Levin used his radio platform and appearances on Fox to demonize Palestinians and Muslims with xenophobic attacks, lay out explicit justifications for the massive civilian casualties in Gaza, and attack any journalist who questioned Israeli officials about the conflict. Media Matters has compiled a selection of the worst of Levin’s vicious, dehumanizing hate speech on this topic below.

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  • Levin defended war crimes, civilian casualties, and a disproportionate response, attacking media and others who highlighted related concerns

  • Mark Levin: “When we fought big wars and we won, our media wasn't counting how many civilians the enemy are gonna lose.”

    He added: “There's going to be a lot of civilians killed in Gaza." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 10/09/23]

  • Levin: “And I'm supposed to, what, shed crocodile tears, for what's going to happen to these people? I’m not.”

    He continued: “If there are innocent people, quote-unquote civilians, who are killed, then maybe they ought to organize to take out the government they elected." [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/10/23]

  • Levin: “There was no debate after we attacked on Pearl Harbor about how many enemy casualties there would be.”

    He added: “I'm sick and tired of this proportionality, legal or not. I'm sick and tired of it. Victory. The word victory is never used." [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/10/23]

  • Levin: “I don't know why one Israeli should spill a drop of blood —— a drop of blood — trying to make sure that the enemy goes unharmed or that they only get, quote, unquote, the right person.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/10/23]

  • Levin: “Democrats will go wobbly and start talking about, look at the atrocities and so forth and so on that are being committed by the Israelis. ... They won't support the Israelis to victory.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/11/23]

  • Levin: “Humanitarian crisis in Gaza? Was there a humanitarian crisis in Germany, in Japan, Italy? Who the hell knows and who the hell cared? They attacked us.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/12/23]

  • Levin called American media “sympathetic to the enemy,” noting that “over and over and over again we get the line about civilian casualties.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/12/23]

  • Levin suggested Israel should not have to respond to Hamas proportionately because the U.S. did not do so in World War II.

    He said: “We intended to utterly destroy our enemies, and that is exactly what we did. Was that proportionate? Nobody asked and nobody cared. Did that violate the rules of war? What rules of war?” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/12/23]

  • Levin asked if, should Israel face defeat, it should “be proportional, or should it act like the greatest generation in the United States?"

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/13/23]

  • Levin said of media reports that 1,600 Palestinians had been killed, “Well, 1,600 Palestinians — how many of those were terrorists?"

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/13/23]

  • Levin criticized journalists for noting that “not all” of the millions of Palestianians in Gaza are “terrorists.”

    He said that Jake “Tapper and the others are saying, ‘There's 2 million Palestinians in Gaza — they're not all terrorists.’ … Let me ask you a question: Is that how we treated the German people, when we were fighting the Third Reich? ‘Well, they’re not all Nazis’? I mean, you got to fight to win and survive. You can't sit there and figure all that stuff out.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/13/23]

  • Levin: Israel is lectured on “proportionality, rules of law,” but “was [Gen. George] Patton supposed to slow down? Look out for civilians, particularly when the enemy wants its own civilians killed?”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/13/23]

  • Levin quoted someone arguing that “seizing Gaza is not illegal, nor collective punishment,” before positing himself that there is “no limit” to what can be done.

    He said that “if Hamas is hiding at schools or they're wearing civilian outfits, there is no limit to what you can do because it's impossible to separate one from the other." [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/16/23]

  • Levin said that during “World War II, we had no concerns about humanitarian efforts at all” and targeted “hospitals, schools, anything we could to break the spirit of the Nazis, of Imperial Japan, and fascist Italy.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/17/23]

  • Levin said this is “the same ideology that attacked us on 9/11,” adding that “if there's collateral damage? Well, that's too bad. So be it.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/17/23]

  • Levin: When the Allies “were taking out German cities like Dresden — I don't know, did your government say there is a horrendous humanitarian problem happening on the ground?”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/19/23]

  • Levin: The Israeli army “can't feed the population, medicate the population, and make sure if they go to door-to-door combat that, whatever they do, they don't kill a civilian or they don't take out a building they're not supposed to take out.”

    He continued: “That's a pretty damn high bar — no army can meet that bar.” [Fox News, Life, Liberty & Levin, 10/21/23]

  • Levin: “I guess World War II, we committed all kinds of war crimes, didn't we, America?”

    He added: “Let me just suggest to you, if they cut off the water and electricity for the past two weeks, this thing might be over." — [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/23/23]

  • Levin defended a fuel blockade that threatened the lives of Palestinian children, asking, “Did we provide fuel to the Taliban?”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/25/23]

  • Levin: “Where are you gonna find Hamas terrorists? Among the civilians, at the UN buildings, in the hospitals, in the infrastructure. So Israel is being told, effectively, you can't win.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/30/23]

  • Levin compared killing Palestinian civilians to nuking Japan, saying, “All throughout World War II, civilians were targeted. ... If you don't take the heart out of the enemy, the enemy doesn't die.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/31/23]

  • Levin cited civilian deaths in the American Civil War to justify civilian deaths in Palestine.

    He said: “The civilian deaths were enormous” in the American Civil War. “There were no pauses for humanitarian ceasefires, not once,” and it was “worth it.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/31/23]

  • Levin cited the Siege of Vicksburg to justify civilian deaths in Gaza.

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/7/23]

     

  • Levin: “I don't think Churchill gave a damn about how many civilians died when he was trying to defend his country. I know Franklin Roosevelt didn't give a damn, and I sure know Harry Truman didn't give a damn.”

    [Fox News, Life, Liberty & Levin, 11/19/23]

  • Levin: “The media have been very ambiguous, confounded, and confusing about making distinctions between Hamas and the Palestinians. Hamas is Palestinian. Hamas was elected as a terrorist organization of terrorist Palestinians in Gaza.”

    [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 12/6/23]

  • Levin lobbed xenophobic and dehumanizing attacks at Palestinians, denied that there is a Palestinian national identity, and otherwise vilified people from the Middle East

  • Levin said the media are “sickening” “propagandists,” mostly from the Middle East, “and many of them are Israel and Jew haters dressed up as journalists.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/11/23]

  • Levin: Palestinians are responsible for Hamas because “they elected this government” and “the rules of law do not apply to terrorists.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/12/23]

  • Levin mocked people saying that “all Palestinians aren't bad,” adding that “Palestinians never, ever had claim to the land they are on right now.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/16/23]

  • Levin quoted from a “great piece” at “Jihad Watch” that describes Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as “(D-Mogadishu)."

    He added that Palestinians “didn't even exist until the 1960s when the KGB and Yasser Arafat bestowed Palestinian nationality on a group of Levantine Arabs as a rhetorical weapon to use against Israel.” Levin also said: “There is no Israel occupation. In fact, it's Israel that is occupied.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/16/23; Jihad Watch, 10/14/23]

  • Levin said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had come “to the rescue” and “says we shouldn't accept Palestinians from the Gaza” because “they're all antisemitic.”

    He added: “And this offends the Hamas-supporting media in America." [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/16/23]

  • Levin compared Students for Justice in Palestine to Nazis and “Japanese saboteurs,” claiming, “If Joe Biden were president during World War II, Nazis would be coming into this country.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/16/23]

  • Levin: “Democracies in Europe” and the U.S. have been “overrun with immigrants from the Middle East.”

    He added that they’re in the “Democrat Party on Capitol Hill,” mentioning Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), “and the rest of the scum on the Democrat Party left." [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/17/23]

  • Levin: “Front groups” that support Palestinians are “the greatest threat we face,” not “white supremacists, … Klansmen, and neo-Nazis.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/18/23]

  • Levin: The media “might say Hamas doesn't represent all the Palestinians. They may say that, but they honestly don't believe it completely.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/18/23]

  • Levin: “There isn't one” Palestinian in the Middle East who “speaks out for true peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/19/23]

  • Levin: “We have people in Congress who are enemies of our country, who come from certain parts of the world. [Ilhan Omar's] ancestry, or her recent history, is Somalia. Tlaib is the Palestinian territories.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/23/23]

  • Levin: “We get lied to by our politicians left and right about how the Palestinian people really don't believe in what's being done in their name.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/25/23]

  • Levin defended illegal Israeli settlements, comparing them to land occupied by American settlers.

    He said: “The wagon trains, as people from the East moved west and were encouraged to do so by their government, many of them were slaughtered by the Native Americans. … And many of them were brutalized. And by the way, many of the Native Americans were brutalized too. So, whatever.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/26/23]

  • Levin praised DeSantis for opposing the U.S. potentially accepting Palestinian refugees because “their culture is different.”

    “DeSantis came out and said, ‘no Palestinians. No, because their culture is different,” Levin said. ”He's right. We've seen it. We see the way these kids are raised. They're indoctrinated." [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/30/23]

  • Levin blamed a national spike in hate crimes against Jewish people on the U.S government “allowing people from Arab and Muslim countries, from the Middle East, and other parts of the world to come into this country unvetted.”

    “That doesn't mean everybody from these parts of the world are so terrible, but it means there's a lot of them coming in who are,” he said. “We know the enemy, Hamas, and the others are sending people into this country. We know this because they've sought to infiltrate our culture and our politics.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/31/23]

  • Levin: “Some who are coming here from the Middle East are very bad people. They've infiltrated our schools, our media, our culture, the Democrat Party. They're marching in the streets. They're Islamo-Nazis.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/1/23]

  • Levin: “Who is it that has done more harm to the citizens of the Middle East? Obviously, the Arabs and the Muslims. And those are the people to whom Joe Biden, Blinken, are kowtowing.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/13/23]

  • Levin: “The list of Palestinians” who have “excelled in many fields” would “be a very, very short list.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/15/23]

  • Levin: “The funny thing is, the Palestinians aren't in the Bible, and there's not a lot of archaeology backing up that they were there either. None. Zero.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/30/23]

  • Levin has campaigned against a ceasefire and humanitarian aid entering Gaza

  • Levin: “If Israel backs off, it's not for humanitarian reasons because more of their soldiers will die, more of their civilians will die. No ceasefire until it's done.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/2/23]

  • Levin: “There must be no two-state solution. There must be no — call it what it is, ceasefire. This must be unrelenting, it must be brutal, and it needs to be done competently, but as swiftly as possible. That’s what needs to be done.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/3/23]

  • Levin attacked Western media sources for not being sufficiently pro-Israel in their coverage

  • Levin complained that the media want to “know how many innocent civilians the Jews are gonna kill.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/16/23]

  • Levin raged against a BBC anchor who corrected a report that had inaccurately described pro-Palestinian protests in Britain as pro-Hamas.

    “The people who are protesting now are not protesting for ‘Palestinians.’ Is it coincidence that they're protesting now when Hamas has slaughtered Israelis, still shooting rockets into Israel? Is that a coincidence?” Levin asked. “Where's the office for the Palestinians that don't support the evisceration of the Israeli state?” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/17/23]

  • Levin defended Israel’s lying to journalists: “During World War II, we lied a lot because we wanted to win the war. … Massive conventional bombing, two atomic bombs aimed at citizens, disinformation campaigns, we did all those things.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/18/23]

  • Levin accused Reuters of spreading “Hamas Nazi” propaganda by publishing photos of “malnourished children” in Palestine.

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/26/23]

     

  • Levin falsely claimed CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer’s parents “weren’t victims in one way or another, of the Holocaust,” and that “CNN is filled with a lot of self-hating Jews.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/1/23; Media Matters, 11/2/23]

  • Levin has denied the existence of Islamophobia in the US

  • Levin: “Arabs in this country aren't being threatened in any systemic or ubiquitous way. Muslims in this country aren't being threatened in any systemic or ubiquitous way.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/31/23]

  • Levin: “Where's Islamophobia taking place? … Where are the people shouting at the top of their lungs to obliterate Muslims?”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/1/23]

  • Levin denied that the U.S has an Islamophobia problem and argued that “Muslims are Islamophobic” because they slaughter one another by the “tens of thousands.”

    “Muslims are being slaughtered all over the world, all over the world, in Arab and Muslim countries,” he said. “They're being slaughtered by the thousands, the tens of thousands, by other Muslims. Not the Jews, not the Christians, not the Buddhist, not the Hindus, not the atheists, not the gays, not the this, not the that. No, Muslims are Islamophobic.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/1/23]

  • Levin: “There's Islamophobia going on, but not in our country. No systematic attempt to — to destroy Muslims.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/6/23]

  • Levin characterized Jewish people who question or criticize Israel as “self-hating” and/or illegitimate practitioners of their faith

  • Levin: Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is a “self-hating Jew” because he supports a two-state solution for Israel. “A two-state solution for Israel is a final solution.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/30/23]

  • Levin: “How can you be a Jew and a Democrat today? I just wanna know. How is it even possible?”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/31/23]

  • Levin: “If you're not a faithful Jew … and you just believe that it's an ethnicity, then you fit in very neatly with the left-wing Democrat Party.”

    He singled out Blinken, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), and other congressional Democrats whom he deemed “Marxists." [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/27/23]

  • Levin: American Jewish groups calling for a ceasefire are “Jewish by birth, but they're not Jewish in any other way.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 11/20/23]

  • Levin railed at “liberal Democrats” and “self-hating Jews” who criticize Israel’s behavior.

    Levin: “Liberal Democrats” and “self-hating Jews” like to condemn the October 7 attacks, but then turn around and say, “I already spoke out against that. You know, I did my part. I put the little preface in there, now I can say anything I want about Israel and the Jews and Netanyahu and all the rest.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 12/4/23]

  • Levin: “Bernie Sanders was born as a Jew. That's his ethnicity, but he rejects it as a religion. He rejects a Zionist state. He rejects the biblical history of the Jews. He rejects all of it. He embraces Marxism.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 12/5/23]

  • Levin called Jake Tapper “a self-hating Jew” for pressing an Israeli spokesperson on the thousands of innocent civilians killed by the Israeli military during its war on Gaza.

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 12/5/23]

  • Levin: Tapper is a “self-hating Jew” and a “propagandist for the enemy.”

    [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 10/23/23]