Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Let's unpack the essence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's utterances at Monday's disastrous press conference. In a nutshell, he told the Israeli public, he told the anguished families of the still surviving hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza and the grieving families of the murdered ones, he told President Joe Biden, he told Diaspora Jewry, he told Hamas, he told the world that he never intended to make any deal to rescue any of the hostages, that he will never make such a deal, and that his narcissistic, egocentric intention is to continue waging war in Gaza, perhaps forever.
That's the gist of his belligerent and bellicose comments. He made clear that everything he ever said to the contrary to Biden, to Vice President Kamala Harris, to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to French President Emmanuel Macron, to anyone, was a sham, a subterfuge, a delaying tactic, an outright lie.
Israel's war goals, Netanyahu declared defiantly, were "to destroy Hamas, to bring back all of our hostages, to ensure that Gaza will no longer present a threat to Israel, and to safely return the residents of the northern border," adding that "three of those war goals go through one place: the Philadelphi Corridor," a narrow 14 kilometer-long (8.7 miles) stretch along the Egyptian-Gaza border, which, he contended, "is Hamas's pipeline for oxygen and rearmament."
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