Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said President Biden’s threat to suspend weapons to Israel is “deeply misguided.”
“Certainly, President Biden has always been a great friend of Israel, but I think this decision is deeply misguided,” Bennett told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.
“What they tell us here,” he continued. “We have a radical jihadist terrorist organization on our border that tells us they will continue to try to murder as many Jews as possible. Obviously, we have to get rid of this. We have no choice.”
Bennett said Hamas is hiding behind civilians and that Biden threatening to stop sending weapons to Israel would be a “profound mistake” because Israel “really has no choice” and they must “do what we have to do.”
His comments follow a statement from Biden on Wednesday, which said the US would stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons, such as bombs or artillery shells, if Israeli forces launched an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of civilians took refuge.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a result of these bombs and other ways they have hit population centers,” Biden told Burnett.
Biden said he has made it clear that if Israel goes to Rafah, he will not provide the weapons.
The White House has urged Israel to come up with a plan to evacuate refugees before entering the city, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been adamant about his plans to destroy Hamas, which he claims is hiding in Rafah.
Bennett said Israel “absolutely does not” use weapons to target civilians in Gaza, but said “all wars” have “collateral damage.”
Burnett pressed the former prime minister about Israel’s supposed weapons “arsenal” that could be used without U.S. help to enter Rafah, asking whether that arsenal contained American weapons.
“I don’t know. I assume some of them are,” he replied, adding that he is not in government at the moment.
Bennett continued, saying he doesn’t know why Israel hesitated to enter Rafah, which he said should have been done about four months ago.
“We are doing this too late, but better late than never,” he said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
