Former President Donald Trump said in an interview Thursday that he “wouldn’t do what Biden did” regarding Israel policy, as he responded to President Joe Biden’s comments Wednesday about halting arms shipments to Israel if its military invaded Rafah.
Trump also invoked a trope of dual loyalty and doubled down on recent comments criticizing Jewish Democrats in an interview with North Carolina Spectrum News 1saying “if you’re Jewish, just don’t vote for Biden” because “you’re really hurting your country. He’s gone completely the other way now. He’s gone — he’s abandoned Israel.”
“If you are a Jew and you vote for him, I say you are ashamed,” Trump continued.
Trump has made similar comments in recent months, sparking backlash, including saying in April that Jewish Democrats “should talk.” In 2019, he said Jewish Democrats were “very disloyal to Israel.”
Trump’s latest remarks came in response to Biden’s statement in a CNN interview that the US would stop sending offensive weapons to Israel if its forces invaded Rafah.
“Well, I wouldn’t do what Biden did. He just abandoned Israel. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said in Thursday’s interview, when asked if he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there is a limit to freedom of Israel. war efforts.
When asked directly whether he agreed with the invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering, Trump responded: “They have to do the job. Look, they were violently attacked on October 7th. They had scenes that no one has ever seen.”
Trump has maintained similar aggressive messages about Israel’s military efforts, routinely saying at campaign rallies that Israel has to “finish the job.” The former president’s attitude also stated, when discussing the Israel-Hamas war, that this would never have happened if he had still been in the White House because of his relationships with foreign leaders.
“Well, I said they should finish the job quickly, quickly, they will have to create their own solution, but they have to finish this work quickly and they do it because the world is exploding around them. So they have to get the job done quickly,” Trump said in an interview Tuesday with Pennsylvania’s WGAL.
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