Trump urges Israel to ‘finish up’ its Gaza offensive: ‘Got to get it done’
Former President Donald Trump said he would have responded the same way as Israel did after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas but urged the country to “finish up” its offensive in Gaza and “get this over with,” warning that international support for the Middle East democracy is fading.
“You have to finish up your war. You have to finish it up. You’ve got to get it done,” he said in an interview with Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. “We’ve got to get to peace. You can’t have this going on, and I will say Israel has to be very careful because you are losing a lot of the world. You are losing a lot of support.”
Trump, who this month became the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, brought up global criticism of Israel’s offensive even as he has repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden’s handling of the conflict.
“It (Oct. 7) was an attack that I blame on Biden because they (Hamas) have no respect for him. He can’t put two sentences together. He can’t talk. He’s a very dumb person. He’s a dumb person. His foreign policy throughout 50 years has been horrible. If you look at people that were in other administrations with him, they saw him as a weak, ineffective president, they (Hamas) would have never done that attack if I were there,” Trump said in the interview.
According to the newspaper’s transcript of the interview, Trump said “Israel made a very big mistake” in releasing photos and videos of its offensive in Gaza, commenting the country’s public image is “in ruin.”
“That’s a terrible portrait. It’s a very bad picture for the world,” Trump said. “I think Israel wanted to show that it’s tough, but sometimes you shouldn’t be doing that.”
Soon after the attack in which Hamas terrorists killed about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and took 250 hostages, Trump denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegedly letting him down while he was in the White House. He also said Netanyahu “was not prepared” for the deadly incursion from Gaza.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
Trump also again suggested that American Jews were wrong to support Democrats, days after being criticized by some Jewish advocates for saying Jewish Democrats were being disloyal to their religion. He alleged that Biden “supports the enemy.”
The Review-Journal and Israel Hayom are owned by the Adelson family. Dr. Miriam Adelson is publisher of Israel Hayom.