Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
“If we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon,” Netanyahu said, as quoted in Times of Israel.
The remark was part of a heated defense against claims that Israeli forces are deliberately starving the Gaza Strip into submission, an accusation Tel Aviv has dismissed as outright false.
Netanyahu has spent recent weeks in rapid-fire briefings with foreign journalists, determined to dismantle the growing global narrative pushed by the United Nations, pro-Palestinian NGOs, and legacy media outlets.
His message: Israel is waging war on Hamas, not civilians, and humanitarian aid is not being weaponized as a tool of war.
“There is no starvation. There hasn’t been starvation. There was a shortage. And certainly, there was no policy of starvation,” Netanyahu said. “If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, 2 million Gazans wouldn’t be living today after 20 months.”
He added, “It’s the same with genocide — if we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.”
The Prime Minister also blasted the growing propaganda campaign targeting young “Western Christians,” saying “purchased influencers” and revisionist media are rewriting history in real-time to erode Israel’s historic support base, according to Zero Hedge.
More from the Times of Israel:
Earlier in the press conference, Netanyahu defended Israel’s approach to humanitarian aid in the Strip, which he said is now being overhauled. In recent weeks, Hamas-run local officials, in addition to international agencies and aid groups, have documented a rising number of deaths from starvation in Gaza.
Israel has disputed such claims, and blames Hamas for stealing aid and the United Nations for failing to distribute it. But facing international condemnation, Israel has put several measures in place to increase the flow of supplies.
At the press conference, Netanyahu was asked whether his decision earlier this year to halt humanitarian aid was a failed strategy to defeat Hamas.
“First of all, we need to understand what actually happened,” he answered. “We never said we were stopping all entry of humanitarian aid. What we said was that, alongside halting the trucks that Hamas was seizing — taking the vast majority of their contents for itself, then selling the leftovers at extortionate prices to the Palestinian population… we would stop this.”
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