Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded in detail on Sunday to claims by US President Joe Biden one day earlier that Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in his approach to the war with Hamas in Gaza.
Speaking in an interview with Politico, Netanyahu said at the start of the exchange, “I don’t know what the president (Biden) meant, but if he meant that I lead a policy against the majority of the Israeli public and that it harms Israel’s interests, he is wrong on both counts.
“This is not just my private policy, it is a policy supported by the vast majority of Israelis,” the prime minister pointed out.
“They support the action we are taking to destroy the remaining terrorist battalions of Hamas.
“They say that once we have eliminated Hamas, the last thing we should do is bring the Palestinian Authority into Gaza, which educates its children in terrorism and finances terrorism — and they also support my position that we must absolutely reject the attempt to impose a Palestinian terrorist state on us,” he emphasized.
“Most Israelis understand that if we don’t do this, we will return to the October 7 massacre. That is why my policy is the policy of most Israelis.
“The vast majority is united like never before, and they understand what is good and what is important for Israel – and they are right.”
It’s not the first time Netanyahu has had to remind the Biden Administration that Israel is an independent sovereign nation with its own government and makes its own decisions, “unbreakable bond” with America notwithstanding.
Netanyahu’s remarks came in response to a sharp rebuke by the American president during an interview Saturday with MSNBC.
During the interview, Biden called Israeli plans to expand military operations into the southern Gaza city of Rafah “a red line,” contending (using unsubstantiated figures claimed by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry) that “[we] cannot have another 30,000 more Palestinians dead.”
Biden added that Netanyahu “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”
Rafah is where the remaining four Hamas terrorist battalions are holed up, and likely many hostages they kidnapped from Israel as well. It is also the city to which Gaza residents from the rest of the enclave were directed by the IDF to go in order to move them out of harm’s way as combat operations continued in other areas.
But the time has now come to begin military operations in Rafah.
The IDF created a plan for the safe relocation of the refugees who fled to Rafah, and has said it plans to begin its implementation in the near future.
That’s a whole lot more than any other nation has ever done for those civilians caught in harm’s way as they waged their various wars around the world — including wars waged by the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan, not to mention attacks against the Nazis in Europe and against Japan during World War II.
But somehow that gets swept under the carpet when it comes to Israel — it’s so much easier than having to acknowledge the pesky fact that even the US uses a double standard when it comes to the Jewish State…
