Israel is “fighting for America too” and Iran’s declarations of its ambitions to destroy the U.S. should be taken seriously, according to Israeli lawmaker Ohad Tal, who vowed that Israel will act to protect its citizens and combat the Islamic Republic of Iran regardless of U.S. support, while lamenting that Israel has become “too dependent” on America.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News this week, Israeli Knesset Member Ohad Tal of Israel’s National Religious Party, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, addressed President Joe Biden reportedly telling the Israeli premier — as the attack was ongoing — that the U.S. would not back any Israeli response to the unprecedented weekend attack that saw Iran launch over 300 missiles and drones at Israel.
He asked:
Does President Biden not understand that we are fighting for our survival? Do he and his administration not understand that we were attacked by a regime whose whole purpose is to wipe us from the face of the earth, and that has for years now utilized all its proxies — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and Judea and Samaria — to destroy Israel?
Iran’s Majles Members Celebrate Report of Missile and UAV Attack against Israel with chants of “Death to America! Death to Israel!” #Iran pic.twitter.com/PYMzRquaIp
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) April 14, 2024
Tal, who was visiting Washington, DC, to attend the Keep God’s Land organization’s event on Tuesday, questioned how, following the Islamic Republic’s launching a direct attack against the Jewish state, is Israel expected to “just sit tight and do nothing — does that make any sense?”
“If somebody would tell America after 9/11, ‘do not fight back,’ would that make sense to anyone? Of course not,” he said. “So we, at the end of the day, will do what is good for Israel.”
“We will defend our citizens because that is our obligation,” he added. “While we would be happy to have the current administration with us; if they choose not to, we will still do what we need to because that’s our obligation.”
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According to Tal, who serves on the Israeli parliament’s Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, “one of the biggest mistakes Israel made in the past years was becoming too dependent on America.”
“We have to be much more independent and to free ourselves from relying on America so much,” he said, adding that while it would initially “not be easy,” it is a “process that we have to begin and it’s already started actually.”
He also insisted that while disagreements with the Biden administration are “perfectly fine,” the fact that the current administration “decided to publicize all our disagreements, to show that we disagree on so many issues, sent a clear message to Iran that the door is open to attack Israel.”
“Perhaps they [the Biden administration] didn’t mean for that to happen, but the attack was a direct result of what they did,” he explained. “So, again, we have to fight back against Iran and we have to complete the mission in Gaza — to eradicate Hamas.”
Israel’s current conflict in Gaza that was launched in response to the October 7 massacre, Tal noted, is aimed at achieving three separate objectives.
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“The first is to bring back the hostages; the second is to eradicate Hamas; and the third is to ensure that Gaza will no longer be able to pose a threat to Israel, and never be able to repeat that massacre again,” he said.
Consequently, if Israel does not “complete the mission” and doesn’t enter Rafah to “eradicate the remaining brigades” there — “then we’ve effectively accomplished nothing,” he explained, “because as long as Hamas exists, October 7 will happen again.”
“It may take them a year or so — but it will happen again,” he added, “and we cannot afford for that to happen.”
With Iran on the precipice of becoming a nuclear-threshold state, as well as having “proven their goal is to wipe us from the face of the planet,” Tal cited Prime Minister Netanyahu who has repeatedly warned that Israel will not allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons.
“We won’t allow it to happen,” he stated. “And, here as well, when we retaliate against Iran, we’d be happy if the Biden administration stands with us, but if not, we will do what we have to do just as much.”
However, Tal explained, Iran is not just trying to “destabilize the Middle East,” but has ambitions to “become a global superpower.”
“They want to threaten and take power from America [in the region],” he said. “Listen to them: they’re constantly shouting: ‘Death to Israel, Death to America.’ They call us [Israel] the ‘little Satan,’ but they call America the ‘great Satan.’”
“Their eyes are on America,” he added. “We are just at the forefront of their fight, but their real goal is to get to America.”
As a result, Tal called on America to “wake up” to reality, along with Israel:
On October 7, we were also ‘asleep.’ We didn’t want to recognize reality. People keep asking how the massacre happened if Israel has the best intelligence in the world, but the answer is that the problem is not acquiring intelligence — because we had all the information in our hands — but the right perception. We didn’t want to believe that what they were saying is what they actually mean to do. We wanted to believe that if we improve the Palestinian economy, it will give them better incomes and better jobs and better healthcare and they will then drop their desire to kill us. And they don’t really mean it when they say they wish to destroy us.
Unfortunately, he noted, what they preach is “exactly” what they seek to do.
“We have to understand that such is their murderous ideology and what they say is exactly what they want to do,” he said. “So when Iran says they want to destroy America, you have to believe it.”
“We are fighting for America too,” he concluded, “and we must win.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
