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US Secretary of State–‘Jewish lives don’t matter more than those of Palestinians’

Blinken also affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure massacres like October 7th don’t happen again.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

At the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, noted journalist and commentator on the Middle East Thomas Friedman asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “Do Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian and Muslim lives, given the incredible asymmetry in casualties?”

“No. Period,” Blinken responded, “What we’re seeing every single day in Gaza is gut-wrenching. And the suffering we’re seeing among innocent men, women, and children breaks my heart.”

Antony Blinken is descended from Hungarian Jews and his paternal grandfather Maurice Henry Blinken was described as “an early backer of Israel” by The New York Times.

Blinken explained that it was the Biden Administration’s priority to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and to minimize civilian casualties.

Currently, the Hamas Health Ministry claims casualties in Gaza have reached 24,000, but these numbers haven’t been verified and Israel has stated that at least 9,000 of the dead are terrorists.

Blinken also affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure atrocities like October 7th don’t happen again.

He said, “Israelis have to live with security. They can’t have a repeat of October 7th. No country would accept a repeat of October 7th.”

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Blinken added, “It’s hard to overstate the psychological impact on the country as a whole of what happened on that day.”

He continued, “There are large swaths of the world (where)…information environments have been used and abused in such a way that large numbers of people don’t believe October 7th actually happened.”

“They don’t believe that Hamas slaughtered men, women, and children, that it executed parents in front of their kids, that it executed kids in front of their parents, that it burned families alive. They don’t believe it.”

The Secretary of State said that despite the war, he envisions Arab countries willing to normalize relations with Israel but only with the assurance of a Palestinian State.

Blinken said, “You now have something you didn’t have before, and that is Arab countries and Muslim countries even beyond the region that are prepared to have a relationship with Israel in terms of its integration, its normalization, its security.”

He added, “But you also have an absolute conviction by those countries, one that we share, that this has to include a pathway to a Palestinian state.”