Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vigorously defended his country’s record of protecting civilians as the war against Hamas rages.
Rejecting calls for a ceasefire, Netanyahu argued that Israel had taken aggressive steps to minimize civilian casualties and drew parallels with the struggle against Nazi Germany.
“We want all civilians out of harm’s way and Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Netanyahu finds himself under increasing international pressure as the Palestinian death toll continues to rise.
Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the death toll, saying “too many Palestinians” had been killed in the conflict.
Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, considered a questionable source, has estimated that 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war broke out.
Israel recently revised its estimate of casualties from 1,400 to 1,200 since the bloody October 7 surprise attack.
CNN anchor Dana Bash spoke to Netanyahu about the steps Israel is taking to help evacuate hospitals like Al-Shifa that his government claims have been operating as command centers for Hamas.
Benjamin Netanyahu defends Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties in the war against Hamas.AP
“We are obviously careful when it comes to hospitals. But we will also not give immunity to terrorists,” he said.
“I feel any kind of loss [of life] is a tragedy. And the blame should be placed squarely on Hamas because it prevented them from leaving the war zone, sometimes at gunpoint,” he said.
Netanyahu explained that Israel helped evacuate the hospital by “creating a safe corridor” that provided a “designated route to a safe zone” away from the fighting.
He also appealed to American audiences to consider how the US would respond if it experienced a comparable terrorist rampage.
“Imagine what would happen if the United States was brutally attacked by 20 9/11s? That’s a proportionate amount,” he said. “Fifty thousand Americans were killed. Ten thousand Americans became hostages, including babies, elderly, women, children 10,000 rockets fell on your city.”
People carry the body of a Palestinian youth in the Karama area in the north of the Gaza Strip Oct. 11. 2023Getty Images
Netanyahu noted that there were many civilian deaths when the Western powers defeated the Nazis in Germany during World War II.
“It is a Battle of civilization against barbarism. And if we don’t win here, disaster will pass [from] Middle East to other areas,” he argued.
The Israeli prime minister emphasized that the “savages” of Hamas had “perpetrated the worst horrors against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Last week, Israel agreed to a four-hour daily pause in fighting to give civilian relief, but Netanyahu made it clear he felt that too long a pause would give Hamas time to regroup and regroup.
Recently, Netanyahu has resisted international pressure to support plans for a Palestinian-led governance of Gaza united with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.
He explained that his objective was to “militarize” and “radicalize” the Gaza Strip.
“[The] The Palestinian Authority has unfortunately failed on both camps. They did not destroy the West Bank,” he said. “They refuse to this day, 36 days after this atrocity, to condemn what Hamas did.”
When asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about what the governance structure in the Gaza Strip would look like after the war, Netanyahu replied, “It’s still too early to say.”
“[But] the first task we need to achieve is to defeat Hamas.”
WATCH: @netanyahu called for “different authorities” to govern Gaza after the war, but would not say whether international forces should manage the territory.@kwelkernbc: “Who is that?”
Netanyahu: “It is still too early to say. … [But] the first task we need to achieve is to defeat Hamas.” pic.twitter.com/pKEqShNyYG
— Meet The Press (@MeetThePress) November 12, 2023
Internally, Netanyahu has seen his approval ratings in Israel plummet. Although he has formed an emergency government since the deadly Hamas attacks, there are lingering questions about the security failures that occurred under his watch.
But the prime minister insists that now is not the time to struggle with what is happening.
“We will answer all these questions,” he said. “Right now, I think what we need to do is unite the country for one purpose, one purpose only, and that is to achieve victory.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
