Israel responded Wednesday to President Joe Biden’s claim Tuesday that Israel was engaged in “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, saying it was taking extraordinary measures to protect Palestinian civilians, even as Hamas used them as human shields.
Biden made the accusation, without evidence, at a private fundraiser with donors in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. He also claimed that Israel is losing support around the world, and that the Israeli government has to eject right-wing political parties.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is “making efforts that no army in history has made in order to protect civilians” in a counter-terrorism operation in urban areas, said Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, at a press conference on Wednesday.
Levy hailed “our friend and ally” President Biden, and stressed the positive side of Biden’s reported remarks, in which he said Israel had to complete the mission of destroying Hamas, and said the U.S. would continue to support Israel as it did so.
He acknowledged that “perhaps some nations are beginning to lose their nerve” as images of the war in Gaza, many of them produced by Hamas, are circulating in the media. He maintained that most of the world supported Israel, given that it had seen “the atrocities that Hamas perpetrated” on October 7.
Levy was thankful for Biden’s commitment to continue to send Israel all of the military assistance that it would need in the war.
He did not respond to the commend about Israel’s government.
On Tuesday, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari had also disputed Biden’s claim, noting that Israel had been very careful in its use of airstrikes, not only in the beginning of the war but especially now, with IDF soldiers on the ground as well.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
