March 13, 2024 (EIRNS)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an unflinching, hardcore message to around 1,600 AIPAC delegates gathered in Washington, in case some of them were having second thoughts about starving to death Palestinians. According to the Times of Israel (TOI), after he allowed that he “deeply appreciate[s] the support we have received from President Biden and the administration” which he hopes “will continue,” he stated: “But let me be clear. Israel will win this war, no matter what.” To win the war, Israel “must destroy the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah. If not, Hamas will regroup, rearm and reconquer Gaza. That is an intolerable threat to our future, and we will not accept it. We will destroy Hamas, free our hostages and ensure that Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel again.” Israel will “finish the job in Rafah, while enabling the civilian population to get out of harm’s way.”
If that wasn’t chilling enough, he confronted his audience, telling them that “you cannot say you support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself and then oppose Israel when it exercises that right.… You cannot say you support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas, and then oppose Israel when it takes the actions necessary to achieve that goal. 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 Hamas cynical strategy…. 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 added that none of the pressures Israel is facing from its allies around the world “will stop us,” and there is “no other option but total victory, and that victory is within reach.”
He concluded by assuring the delegates that “the overwhelming majority of the American people stand with us. I know that the overwhelming majority of Congress stands with us.” The TOI suggested that this last point constituted an “oblique message” to President Biden.
