John Kirby slamming reporter about Hamas. (Screenshot)
‘US would not accept international pressure to make a deal with Al Qaeda and Bin Laden’ – Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Biden administration spare over ceasefire deal with Hamas.
By David Rosenberg, World Israel News
The Biden administration condemned an Israeli government minister Friday for criticizing a U.S.-backed plan for a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terror organization.
Last week, warned against calls to renew hostage and ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, calling the proposed agreement a “dangerous trap.”
“It’s definitely not the time for a capitulating deal that ends the war before the elimination of the Hamas ISIS Nazis, allowing them to recover and return to murder Jews again,” Smotrich tweeted.
At a press briefing Friday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby castigated Smotrich over his comments, calling them “outrageous,” “absurd,” and “dead wrong.”
Some critics, like Mr. Smotrich, for example, have claimed that the hostage deal is a surrender to Hamas or that hostages should not be exchanged for prisoners,” said Kirby.
“Mr. Smotrich essentially suggests that the war ought to go on indefinitely, without pause, and with the lives of the hostages of no real concern at all. His arguments are dead wrong.”
Kirby noted that Israel would not be required to withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip in the initial phase of the three-phase deal, but ignored Smotrich’s contention that the proposed agreement would lead to a full cessation of the war against Hamas, leaving the terror group intact in Gaza.
“The idea that he [Biden] would support a deal that leaves Israel’s security at risk is just factually wrong. It’s outrageous. It’s absurd. And anybody who knows President Biden and how staunchly he’s been a defender for Israel, for the entirety of his public service, ought to be ashamed for thinking anything different.”
Kirby accused the Israeli finance minister of plotting to “sacrifice the lives of Israeli hostages, his own countrymen, and American hostages as well, and flies in the face of the national security interests of Israel at this critical stage of the war.”
On Saturday night, Smotrich fired back, tweeting that the United States must respect Israeli sovereignty, adding that the U.S. would not have bowed to international pressure to end the war with Al Qaeda after the September 11th attacks.
“I expect [the U.S.] to respect Israeli democracy and the views of Israeli citizens and their public officials in terms of making the decisions that will impact Israel’s security.”
“Just as the U.S. would reject international pressure to reach a deal surrendering to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, so too Israel will not surrender to foreign pressure to harm Israeli security.”
“A deal surrendering to Sinwar, which abandons to their deaths most of the captives, which frees mass murderers, and brings the terrorists back to the northern Gaza Strip, abandons the border [with Egypt] and enables Hamas to smuggle weapons and to rebuild its forces so it can attack Israel again as a proxy of Iran is bad for Israel and endangers its security, and we will oppose it will all our strength.”
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