When I thought nothing I saw from an American politician would shock me, I saw Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)’s tweet. Quoting his own recent appearance on Fox News, Senator Graham declares that “we’re in a religious war.” In the embedded seven-second video, he recommends that Israel “level the place.”

Gaza is one of the most densely populated strips of land on the planet, with 2.2 million people crammed into an area twenty-five miles long and a little over six miles wide. About three-quarters are registered with the United Nations as refugees. Their families were ethnically cleansed from elsewhere in the country. Not only are they not allowed to return home, but they can’t even step outside of the tightly guarded perimeter of what numerous observers have called an “open air prison camp.” Oh, and half of the population is under the age of eighteen. That’s the “place” Senator Graham wants to level.

He may come horrifyingly close to getting his wish. Over the weekend, fighters from the Islamic fundamentalist organization Hamas broke out of Gaza to both attack Israeli military targets and massacre ordinary Israelis. Since then, Israel has responded with flagrant collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza, abandoning almost all pretense of even trying to distinguish between armed fighters and civilians. Entire apartment blocks full of civilian families have been targeted again and again with only the thinnest pretext that this serves any kind of military purpose. The ground invasion being prepared now could send civilian deaths into the stratosphere.