Netanyahu: ‘We don’t obliterate them’
Netanyahu says that Israel doesn’t ‘obliterate’ Palestinian civilians and has no battle with anyone other than Hamas, but that the brutality results from Hamas’ tendency to place rocket launchers near civilian targets – a tactic which he says is intentional.
People would say in the United States, as they’re telling me, obliterate the people. We don’t obliterate them. We don’t want to – we don’t have any battle with the Palestinians in Gaza.
He adds that having the right to self-defense also means being able to use it:
I appreciate the support we have received from President Obama and many world leaders for Israel’s right to self-defense. But others are saying, yes, you have the right of self-defense, as long as you don’t exercise it. What can a country do? What would you do? What would the people of the United States do if – if your cities were rocketed now, 2,000 rockets falling in American cities?
Netanyahu: Hamas baits Israel into killing civilians
Netanyahu tells Blitzer that Hamas baits Israel into killing civilians in order to create ‘telegenically dead’ victims that they can use to influence public opinion in the 2014 Gaza conflict:
What choice do we have? We have to protect ourselves. So we try to target the rocketeers. We do. And all civilian casualties are unintended by us, but intended by Hamas. They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can, because somebody said they use – it’s gruesome. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause. They want the more dead the better.
Kidnapping ringleader arrested
The alleged ringleader of the 2014 Israel kidnappings has been arrested in connection with the abduction of 19-year-old Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel and Gil-ad Shaar, both 16, from a West Bank hitching post and their subsequent murder. Hussam Kawasme, a 40-year-old resident of the West Bank city of Hebron, is detained while trying to cross the border with Jordan with false documents/ His arrest and investigation will remain secret for close to a month before being revealed to the public in court proceedings over whether punitive demolition of homes belonging to him and other suspects in the case can be carried out.