Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is undermining the values on which Israel was founded and is harming the country with his handling of the Gaza war, US President Joe Biden charged during an interview he gave to MSNBC on Saturday.
“[Netanyahu] has a right to defend Israel, and a right to continue to pursue Hamas, but he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken,” Biden stressed
“He is hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world… it is contrary to what Israel stands for, and I think it’s a big mistake,” Biden said.
He spoke amid growing tensions between Israel and the United States over Israel’s conduct of its military campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza, an operation which it supports in principle, but has otherwise opposed elements of its operation.
It has been concerned in particular by the high fatality count, with Hamas asserting that over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war. Israel has asserted that over 11,000 of the fatalities have been combatants.
The US has also argued that Israel has not done enough to contain the humanitarian disaster that accompanied its military campaign, during which it has taken out roads, infrastructure, and the governance system, making it difficult to distribute and in some cases impossible to distribute aid.
Biden caught off the record
During a private comment Biden made on Thursday, which was caught by microphone, he said, that he needs a “come to Jesus meeting” with Netanyahu on the issue of humanitarian aid for Gaza.
When pressed by MSNBC as to what he meant by that comment, Biden said, it was a euphemism for a “serious meeting.” He added, “I have known Bibi for 50 years and he knew what I meant by it.”
Biden was careful to stress to MSNBC that irrespective of his thoughts on Netanyahu, he supported Israel, particularly concerning defensive weapons.
“I am never going to leave Israel,” Biden emphasized. “The defense of Israel is still critical, so there is no red line where I am going to cut off all weapons so they do not have the Iron Dome to protect them,” Biden said.
But at the same time, “you can not have 30,000 more Palestinian dead, as a consequence of going after [Hamas]there are other ways to deal with, to get to Hamas.”
He recalled how when he visited Israel in October he had sat with the country’s war cabinet and warned it not to make the same mistakes the US had made when it entered Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attack on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001.
“The first time I went over I sat with the war cabinet, I said, do not make the mistake America made, … we should not have gone into the whole thing in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was not necessary, it was not necessary, it caused more problems than it cured.”
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