Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a new interview with Time Magazine, apologized for the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists happening on his watch, and warned that the country now faces a “full-fledged Iranian axis.”
Netanyahu had been prime minister for almost a year when Hamas terrorists launched the attack on southern Israel that left 1,200 people dead and hundreds more taken as hostages in Gaza.
In an interview conducted on Aug. 4 at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, Time asked Netanyahu whether he would apologize for the Oct. 7 attack, noting his 17-year cumulative political career has been built on the argument that he is the best leader to ensure Israel’s safety.
“Apologize?” Netanyahu asked. “Of course, of course. I am sorry, deeply, that something like this happened. And you always look back and you say, ‘Could we have done things that would have prevented it?’”
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on July 24, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Ten months after what amounted to the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the Biden administration has increasingly grown frustrated with Netanyahu for failing to deliver a plan to end the war and get the more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas home.
Israel now faces more fronts – in the north with Hezbollah in Lebanon, in the Gulf with the Houthis in Yemen – and now is bracing for an aerial assault from its main enemy, Iran.
“We’re facing not merely Hamas,” Netanyahu told TIME. “We’re facing a full-fledged Iranian axis, and we understand that we have to organize ourselves for broader defense.”
According to a July poll by Israel’s most watched television station, 72% of Israelis believe Netanyahu should resign now or after the conflict ends.
Critics, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war to further his own political ambition.
“Netanyahu is focused on his longevity in power more than the interests of the Israeli people or the State of Israel,” Barak told Time. “It will take half a generation to repair the damage that Netanyahu has caused in the last year.”
Netanyahu argued that Israel must demolish every element of Iran’s “axis of resistance” in the region to ensure that Israel is never subjected to future massacres and that Hamas can no longer lay claim to Palestinian territories.
“Being destroyed has bigger implications about Israel’s security,” Netanyahu told Time, describing the war as existential. “I’d rather have bad press than a good obituary.”
Netanyahu delivered a speech to Congress in Washington, D.C., on July 25 to rally support from Israel’s closest ally, but nearly 130 Democrats and Vice President Harris declined to attend.
“I don’t think that the much-reported erosion of support among some quarters of the American public is related to Israel,” Netanyahu told Time.
“It’s more related to America,” he added, referencing a Harvard-Harris survey in January showing that 80% of respondents supported Israel, while 20% supported Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Herzi Halevi and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at an operations center in Jerusalem on July 20, 2024. (Israeli Prime Minister’s Office / Handout /Anadolu via Getty Images)
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“There’s a problem that America has,” Netanyahu said, noting a significant amount of support for a terrorist organization. “It’s not a problem that Israel has.”
The Biden administration and former President Trump have both expressed a desire for the war to end. Netanyahu has noted in the past that Israel did not start the war, but must be able to end it for its future security.
When U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Tel Aviv earlier this year, he reportedly told Netanyahu to bring the war to a close, because Israeli forces had already ensured that another Oct. 7 couldn’t happen again. Netanyahu reportedly replied that wasn’t his objective. Instead, he said, the goal was to “completely destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.”
“We’ve gone out of our way to enable humanitarian assistance since the beginning of the war,” Netanyahu told Time, responding to allegations brought by Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi that the Israeli operations amounted to “collective punishment” of civilians for Hamas’ actions.
President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at the White House on July 25, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Time noted how Netanyahu embraced a policy over the past 10 years allowing Qatari funds to flow into Gaza after Hamas rose to power first through elections and later by force. It was meant as an incentive for Hamas to govern peacefully but instead financed miles of terror tunnels under civilian infrastructure. Also in January 2023, Netanyahu led government reforms that curbed judiciary powers, prompting large-scale protests.
“You are weakening us, and our enemy is going to see it, and we’re going to pay the price,” former Minister of Defense Benny Gantz cautioned Netanyahu at the time.
The prime minister placed blame on the protesters, many of whom said they would not serve in the Israeli military if the country’s democratic institutions were weakened.
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“The refusal to serve because of an internal political debate – I think that, if anything, that had an effect,” Netanyahu told Time.
Netanyahu said his biggest mistake, however, was not going to war with Hamas in the past, listening to his security cabinet, which opposed such a move. For years, Israel’s strategy was to respond to Hamas’ attacks periodically by striking back and damaging them to the point of the terror group agreeing to a cease-fire that ultimately kept them in control of Gaza, with the ability to bolster their terror infrastructure that includes a complex network of underground tunnels.
Time reported that when Israel did go to war against Hamas for less than two months in 2014, Israeli officials said the security cabinet brought Netanyahu a plan to end the terror organization. The plan was predicted to lead to the deaths of approximately 10,000 Gazan civilians and 500 Israeli soldiers.
“There was no domestic support for such an action,” Netanyahu told Time regarding that plan. “There was certainly no international support for such an action – and you need both.”
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