Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett swatted aside talking points from MSNBC host Katy Tur and the international community Monday as they debated about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As Israel has begun responding to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist with military strikes and a ground invasion of Gaza, many in the international community have objected to their methods, claiming they are disproportionate or genocidal, a critique that makes many Israelis bristle.
Tur grieved at the horror children are facing and the overall violence that occurred in the October 7 attack, then asked, "But I’m sure that there are Palestinians that can show images of their own kids that they’re worried about that have died in this, and much of the world is calling for a ceasefire. A lot of allies are saying at the very least, a pause, if not voting for a ceasefire in the U.N., why do you think that so much of the world is asking Israel to stop for a moment?"
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Bennett said he did not have an answer, but suggested that Israel is being "held to a different standard."
"Imagine if America, instead of Mexico, had a state of Al-Qaeda, with 240 American hostages, including babies, there, and this Al-Qaeda state entered Florida and raped women and murdered parents in front of their children, and vice versa and burnt them, would anyone ask America to cease fire against this Al-Qaeda state?" He asked.
Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but Hamas took over shortly after in elections there and has not held voting since. Bennett, who served as prime minister from 2021 to 2022, suggested that many Israelis assumed that if Palestinians "just have good enough lives, they’ll get off our case," but instead "they created a nightmare." He then declared that Israel can no longer tolerate any Hamas presence near its border.
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Tur noted that many think a two-state solution will be the best longterm solution for the conflict, so Gazans can have "everything that a nation enjoys on their land."
Bennett rejected the proposal, saying it has been done in the past and failed.
"We tried precisely that. I want to be very clear to the viewers now. Until 2005, Israel occupied Gaza. In 2005, we pulled out of Gaza, back to the 1967 borders. We handed the entire territory over to the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. There was no blockade, nothing. They had the chance to form the Palestinian state that everyone’s talking about. No one stopped them. They have beautiful beaches and beautiful weather, and they dedicated those 17 years to shooting rockets at us, and to killing us, so would you try it again?" he asked.
Tur appeared to blame Israel for the government in Gaza, implying it was only because they weren't a true state that Hamas "became radicalized."
"Gazans haven’t had a vote in 17 years because Hamas took over and hasn’t held an election, and although you gave the territory back to Gazans, and yes, they voted for Hamas, and then Hamas became radicalized, they weren’t a state," she argued. "It wasn’t like you handed over statehood," also arguing that it wasn’t enough because Gaza wasn't connected to the West Bank.
"But that’s beside the point. We’re talking about Gaza. The West Bank is the West Bank, and Gaza is Gaza. They got everything they wanted," Bennett said. "Would you try that again? Would you experiment again after what they did? I can tell you that Israelis left and right, there’s consensus, no one wants to try experiments, dangerous experiments, again."
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