Responses amongst Israel’s present government to US President Biden’s unwillingness to have a “major” military offensive against Rafah, where 1.4 million Gazan refugees have been driven, included no small amount of outrage today. The Times of Israel began with the Prime Minister: “In what appears to be a response to US President Joe Biden’s decision to suspend key weapons shipments to Israel and his threat that more will follow, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posts on X footage of his speech at Yad Vashem earlier this week, in which he said that Israel will stand alone against Hamas if it must.” Netanyahu’s quotation of himself read: “Today, we again confront enemies bent on our destruction. I say to the leaders of the world—no amount of pressure, no decision from any international forum, will stop Israel from defending itself. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote on social media platform X that “Israel will continue to fight Hamas until its destruction. There is no war more just than this.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich argued: “We must continue this war until victory, despite, and to a certain extent precisely because of, the opposition of the administration Biden and the stopping of arms shipments. We simply have no other choice that does not endanger our existence and security.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a firebrand who leads the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, tweeted simply that “Hamas [loves] Biden.”
