Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back Sunday at U.S. President Joe Biden over his criticism of the former’s conduct of the war in Gaza, saying that the president is “wrong” about the need to fight Hamas differently.
“He’s wrong,” Netanyahu said, in an interview with Politico.”The attempt to say that my policies … are not supported by most Israelis is false. The vast majority are united as never before, and they understand what’s good for Israel.”
As Breitbart News reported, Biden told MSNBC on Sunday that Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than he’s helping,” because of international opposition to Israeli tactics. (Vice President Kamala Harris also took a swipe at Netanyahu on Friday, saying she distinguished between Israel’s government and its people, implying Netanyahu was a problem.)
Netanyahu, who has avoided criticizing Biden directly in public to avoid jeopardizing American support, replied:
I don’t know exactly what the president meant, but if he meant by that that I’m pursuing private policies against the majority, the wish of the majority of Israelis, and that this is hurting the interests of Israel, then he’s wrong on both counts.
Number one, these are not my private policies, only. They’re policies supported by the overwhelming majority of the Israelis. They support the action that we’re taking to destroy the remaining terrorist battalions of Hamas. They say that once we destroy the Hamas, the last thing we should do is put in Gaza, in charge of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority that educates its children towards terrorism and pays for terrorism. And they also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state.
That is something that they agree on. And it’s something that I think is also for the interests of Israel because the majority of Israelis understand that if we don’t do this, what we’ll have is a repetition of the October 7th massacre, which is bad for Israel, bad for the Palestinians, bad for the future of peace in the Middle East. So, the attempt to say that my policies are my private policies that are not supported by most Israelis, is false. The vast majority are united as never before. And they understand what’s good for Israel. They understand what’s important for Israel. And I think they’re right.
Biden also said that an Israeli attack on Hamas’s last four batallions in the city of Rafah would cross a “red line” (though not one that would end U.S. arms supplies).
Netanyahu said last week, in a veiled rebuke to Biden over his position on Rafah, that “[w]hoever tells us not to operate in Rafah, is telling us to lose the war – and that will not happen.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
