2023-10-18 12:53:00
The US “will continue to cover Israel’s back,” says Biden in his meeting with the Israeli war cabinet
President Joe Biden, center left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center right, participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli and U.S. government officials, Oct. 18, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
President Joe Biden pledged US support for Israel as he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the country’s war cabinet at an expanded bilateral meeting in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, saying: “We will continue to cover behind Israel while you work to defend your people.
“We will continue to work with you and partners across the region to prevent further tragedies for innocent civilians,” Biden told Netanyahu and members of the war cabinet, calling the Hamas attack “brutal, inhumane, almost inconceivable.”
For his part, Netanyahu criticized Hamas for committing “this terrible double war crime once morest humanity.”
“While Israel tries to minimize civilian casualties, Hamas tries to maximize civilian casualties,” Netanyahu said. “Hamas wants to kill as many Israelis as possible and has no regard for Palestinian lives, every day they perpetrate a double war crime, attacking our civilians while hiding behind their civilians, embedding themselves in the civilian population and using them as human shields.”
Israel’s prime minister also referred to the explosion at a Gaza hospital overnight, which preliminary estimates killed hundreds of people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.
“Yesterday we saw the cost of this terrible war crime, when a rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists missed and fell on a Palestinian hospital,” Netanayahu said. “The entire world was rightly outraged, but this outrage should not be directed once morest Israel, but once morest the terrorists. As we move forward in this war, Israel will do everything it can to keep civilians out of harm’s way.”
Gaza authorities claimed Israel was behind the explosion, while the Israel Defense Forces said its intelligence services had shown a “botched rocket launch” by the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad was responsible.
Earlier on Wednesday, Biden briefly addressed the hospital bombing during a meeting with Netanyahu, telling Israel’s prime minister that “it looks like it was done by the other team.”
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