(ZeroHedge)—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, but at a recent press conference he employed a reference which stunned press pool reporters.
“If we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon,” he had said, as quoted in Times of Israel. This comes as Israeli forces are increasingly accused of intentionally using starvation tactics to gain total submission of the enclave, which Tel Aviv has rejected as false.
Netanyahu has been on the defensive, doing back-to-back press conferences focused on foreign journalists, and seeking to also deflect accusations that Israel has not used humanitarian aid as a tool of war.
There’s been immense domestic and international criticism as he’s chosen to pursue to total military defeat of Hamas, a goal which ultimately could take years more to fully accomplish.
Netanyahu further once again denied that the population of Gaza is undergoing starvation, also alleging that most of the civilians killed are used intentionally by Hamas as human shields.
Below is more of what he had to say in context related to his firm comments on the question of genocide:
“There is no starvation. There hasn’t been starvation. There was a shortage. And certainly, there was no policy of starvation,” Netanyahu said at the press conference. “If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, 2 million Gazans wouldn’t be living today after 20 months.”
He continued, “It’s the same with genocide — if we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.”
Netanyahu has also increasingly begun addressing the clear shift in the American Right, or at least some influential corners of it – such as Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene’s commentary which has grown fiercely critical of Israeli policies:
Netanyahu is sounding the alarm on a new kind of war: a “concerted effort” to turn young Christians against Israel. He’s blaming “purchased influencers” and a media that’s rewriting history one post at a time.
Al Jazeera is meanwhile reporting that Israeli jets have renewed their bombing of Gaza City, after the government declared a new and expanded offensive there, and that since dawn on Tuesday at least 67 Palestinians have died.
Denmark has become the latest European country to join humanitarian air drop operations over the Strip, amid the controversy over aid getting in.
Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has admitted that air drops are “by no means an optimal way to deliver emergency aid” – given the potential for harm to people on the ground. “It is a kind of emergency solution, but it is also where we are now,” he said.
