I then asked for Mr. Kennedy’s response to Joe Biden’s recent decision to withhold aid from Israel. He told me: “I think Israel's war is a moral war. They've been attacked for 16 years by Hamas. And then, on October 7th, in this, you know, extraordinarily brutal invasion, every nation has a right to self-defense. And, you know, self-defense means destroying Hamas.”“It's not Israel's fault that Hamas uses civilian shields. Any other country, any nation faced with this kind of onslaught from a militarily superior nation, would give up and surrender to save their civilian population. Why is Hamas not doing that?" he added."Hamas has no negotiating position. It says that the only concession that Israel could make is the annihilation of the Jewish state. And it actually has, in its charter and in all of its public statements, said that any negotiation with Israel is a violation of Islamic law, except as a ruse.”Mr. Kennedy continued, explaining that Israel has “no choice” but to destroy Hamas: “So people are out there demanding a ceasefire, but there have been five ceasefires, and every ceasefire Hamas has used to regroup, to rearm, to hoist the banner, and then to do another surprise attack. Well, I don't see that Israel has any choice but to destroy Hamas.”Speaking about the collateral damage of the war, he commented: “Of course, it's horrible. The civilian deaths are horrifying to all of us. But look, if you have a bank robbery and one of the robbers takes a hostage, is holding a hostage in his arms as a shield and firing at the police, and the police fire back and the hostage by mistake is killed, you don't blame the police. The law and public opinion blame the bank robber. And the same thing is true in Gaza. Hamas is victimizing the Palestinian people. It's pursuing an agenda by Iran, and the Palestinian people are suffering. Gaza should be one of the, you know, it should be a Mecca of economic development.”Responding directly to President Biden withholding aid, he commented: “President Biden pulled a kind of bait-and-switch, and I think the longer they prolong the war—and U.S. policy, President Biden's policy, has, I think, prolonged the war and amplified the human suffering. I think the best thing for Palestine, for Gaza, is if the war ends quickly, which means the elimination of Hamas as quickly as possible and with as little civilian casualties as possible.”
