The international community must stop applying double standards when it comes to IDF actions during the Israel-Hamas war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Tuesday in a virtual address.
“You cannot say you support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas and then oppose Israel when it takes the action necessary to achieve that goal,” Netanyahu stated.
“You cannot say that you oppose Hamas’s strategy of using civilians as human shields and then blame Israel for the civilian casualties that result from this cynical Hamas strategy.
“For Israel, every civilian death is a tragedy. For Hamas, every civilian death is a strategy,” he said.
“It is wrong and immoral to hold Israel to a standard for avoiding civilian casualties that no other country on Earth is held to,” he stated.
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) March 12, 2024
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, in 2018. (credit: HAIM ZACH/GPO)
Growing tension between Netanyahu’s government and Biden administartion
Netanyahu spoke amid growing tension between his government and the Biden administration over Israel’s policies concerning the Hamas war.
The US had hoped to finalize a six-week pause to the war, that would allow for the release of some 40 out of the remaining 134 hostages held in Gaza and to expand the absence of those hostilities into a deal for a permanent ceasefire.
Instead, the continuation of the war into the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Sunday night, has deepened the humanitarian crisis in the enclave and increased the risk that combat in Gaza could spark a regional war.
The international community has increasingly pressed Israel to halt the war, even though it has not achieved its goal of destroying Hamas, a goal many countries including the United States support.
The US and the international community are concerned in particular about the pending Israeli military operation into Rafah in southern Gaza, which is considered to be the last Hamas stronghold.
It has also been concerned by unverified Hamas assertions that over 31,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza war-related violence. Israel has said that over 13,000 of the Palestinian fatalities are Hamas combatants.
Before the Hamas war, in speaking of modern-day conflicts the UN had said that 90% of wartime casualties are civilian.
US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby, however, has repeatedly said that one civilian casualty is unacceptable and United Nations experts have spoken of an unusually high casualty count in this war.
US President Joe Biden in his Ramadan message on Sunday said that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them civilians, including thousands of children.
Netanyahu defended Israel’s casualty record in his AIPAC speech, explaining that the IDF has “taken measures to minimize civilian casualties that no other army has taken in history. Just ask Colonel John Spencer, a world expert on urban warfare, in charge of urban warfare at West Point. We have taken measures to minimize civilian casualties that no other army has taken in history.”
He held fast to Israel’s determination to finish its military campaign to destroy Hamas by conducting a final military operation in Rafah, a move which he said is essential to ending the war.
“To win this war, we must destroy the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah. If not, Hamas will regroup, rearm, and reconquer Gaza and then we’re back to square one. And that’s an intolerable threat that we cannot accept,” Netanyahu told AIPAC.
“We will finish the job in Rafah while enabling the civilian population to get out of harm’s way,” he stated.
In Washington, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that Israel must present a credible plan to safeguard Palestinians in Rafah before it launched a military operation there.
In the absence of a creditable humanitarian plan, the “long-term solution to stability and peace in the region doesn’t lie in smashing into Rafah, where there are 1.3 million people,” Sullivan said.
He clarified that Israel had yet to provide a credible humanitarian plan for Rafah.
“As things stand today, we have not seen what that plan is,” Sullivan said.
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