Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published Friday in The Wall Street Journal that Israel’s war efforts against Hamas are going “better than expected.”
“It took the US and its allies nine months to defeat radical forces in Mosul,” he said, referring to the 2016-2017 war against the Islamic State in Iraq. “Mosul is smaller than Gaza and did not have the massive terror underground infrastructure.”
Speaking to a contributing columnist to the paper, Netanyahu added that despite what it might look like from the outside, he believes he represents the views held by the majority of Israelis when it comes to the day after the war in Gaza, and the future of the Palestinians.
“Some in the United States believe that the obstacle to peace with the Palestinians is me,” he said in the interview. “They don’t realize that I reflect the view of most Israelis.” Regarding a future two-state solution, Netanyahu said that any future agreement would require Israel to retain “overall security control” of all areas west of the Jordan River – including the Gaza Strip.
While calling October 7 the worst day in Israeli history, during which Hamas massacred close to 1,200 people in Israel and took another 253 hostage, the prime minister did not say anything to the news outlet regarding his responsibility for not preventing the attack, an issue he has dodged since the beginning of the war.
Netanyahu did express concern over the growing sentiment against Israel in Western public opinion, specifically mentioning the December congressional hearings of three Ivy League university presidents, in which they refused to condemn genocidal calls against Jews, and a recent poll showing that 20 percent of US adults between the ages of 18-29 hold positive views of Osama bin Laden.
“America is the vanguard of freedom and the guarantor of liberty in this century,” he said. “If a younger generation emerges in America that supports the head-choppers, it is a problem for civilization.”
When asked about the South African case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, Netanyahu said that “what South Africa did was shameful. South Africa is basically aligning itself, in the name of opposing genocide, with the genocidal murderers of Hamas. The only difference between what Hamas did and the Nazis did is capability, not intent.”
Netanyahu repeated this sentiment in a press conference on Saturday night, calling the allegations of genocide against Israel “ridiculous” and saying that they prove “that many in the world have not learned a thing from the Holocaust.”
Netanyahu also told The Wall Street Journal that his actions and close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin prevented Iran from building “a second Hezbollah base” in Syria. However, the premier conveyed disquietude over the Islamic Republic’s warming relations with Russia: “Iran has become the chief arms supplier to Russia, and we’re obviously concerned about Russian reciprocation,” he said.