President Joe Biden said that Israel's conservative prime minister, Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, needs to change his right-wing government and reiterated calls for a future Palestinian state.
Speaking to Democratic donors, Biden said Prime Minister Netanyahu must change his current government and said the Jewish state is losing support over what he described as its "indiscriminate" bombing of Gaza.
Biden spoke at a Washington hotel to a crowd of about 100 Democrat donors and included several Jewish attendees. He was presented by a leader of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby.
"Israel's security can rest on the U.S., but right now, it has more than the U.S. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world. But they're starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place," Biden told donors.
Biden referred to his private conversation with Netanyahu following the October 7th massacre and Israel's ground invasion of Gaza.
"You carpet-bombed Germany, you dropped the atom bomb, a lot of civilians died," Netanyahu told Biden.
The President responded: "Yeah, that's why all these institutions were set up after World War II to see to it that it didn't happen again don't make the same mistakes, we made in 9/11. There's no reason why we had to be in a war in Afghanistan."
Despite public remarks from Israeli military and political officials, the President and his administration hope that the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) will take over Gaza once Hamas is gone.
Netanyahu and members of his unity government have been clear that Israel will not allow the P.A. to have control of Gaza following the war's end, given that various leaders of the P.A. have repeated Hamas's talking points of the massacre being false.
The P.A. is also currently in a precarious state, given Hamas’s popularity in the West Bank.
Since its inception, the P.A., under President Mahmoud Abbas, has paid the families of terrorist "martyrs" who have attacked Israeli soldiers and civilians.
In a newly released statement, the Israeli Prime Minster said that Israel had "full backing" from the U.S. for its ground incursion into Gaza and that Washington had blocked international pressure to stop the war."
The statement went on to say that there was "disagreement about the day after Hamas" and he hopes Israel and the U.S. will "reach agreement here as well."
Despite the longstanding relationship between Biden and Netanyahu, the two have had deep political disagreements.
During the 2020 election, Biden vowed to re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement that the Trump administration pulled out. The administration de-listed the Houthi rebel group and Iran-backed anti-Israel terrorist group in Yemen.
The Biden White House has also sought to restrain Israel from invading Southern Lebanon to neutralize the Iranian-backed Shiite Lebanese terrorist group, Hezbollah, which trained Hamas in its Oct. 7 massacre.
Despite calls for restraint, Israeli government officials have vowed to continue on their mission to destroy Hamas and its leadership.
Related Story: ‘There is a Disagreement’: Netanyahu Smacks Down Biden’s Postwar Plans for Gaza Governance
