{"id":48697,"date":"2024-07-25T07:02:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T15:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=48697"},"modified":"2024-07-25T07:02:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T15:02:56","slug":"ben-gvir-endorses-trump-says-hes-more-likely-to-back-war-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/25\/ben-gvir-endorses-trump-says-hes-more-likely-to-back-war-on-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben-Gvir Endorses Trump, Says He’s More Likely to Back War on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir endorsed former U.S. President Donald Trump \u2013 the 2024 Republican nominee \u2013 for the White House in an interview published Wednesday in which he accused the Biden administration of preventing Israel<\/a> from winning its war on Gaza. <\/a><\/p>\n

“I believe that with Trump, Israel will receive the backing to act against Iran,” Ben-Gvir, who heads the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, told<\/a> Bloomberg<\/em>. “With Trump, it will be clearer that enemies must be defeated.”<\/p>\n

“A cabinet minister is supposed to maintain neutrality,” the 48-year-old minister conceded, “but that’s impossible to do after [U.S. President Joe] Biden.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“The U.S. has always stood behind Israel in terms of armaments and weapons, yet this time the sense was that we were being reckoned with \u2013 that we were trying to be prevented from winning. That happened on Biden’s watch and fed Hamas with lots of energy,” added Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism after he advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/ruthbenghiat\/status\/1816075502152466815?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1816075502152466815%7Ctwgr%5E4936f3e153a6a72485f0893459ac90385fdde733%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fben-gvir-trump<\/a><\/p>\n

While Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other administration officials have decried<\/a> Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza and high civilian casualties \u2013 at least 140,000 Palestinians killed, injured, or missing, according to local and international agencies \u2013 the U.S. has approved<\/a> billions of dollars in new military aid and more than 100 arms sales<\/a> to Israel since October.<\/p>\n

During his White House tenure, Trump \u2013 who boasted<\/a> that he “fought for Israel like no president ever before” \u2013 moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and brokered the Abraham Accords<\/a> between Israel and Arab nations Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n

Trump has said that Israel should “get the job done” in Gaza, while criticizing the Israel Defense Forces for posting videos showing its obliteration of the embattled Palestinian enclave.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know why they released wartime shots like that. I guess it makes them look tough. But to me, it doesn’t make them look tough,” Trump said<\/a> in April. “They’re losing the PR war. They’re losing it big. But they’ve got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life.”<\/p>\n

While Trump says<\/a> he wants a deal with Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, as president he unilaterally withdrew<\/a> the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action \u2013 also known as the Iran nuclear deal \u2013 and oversaw a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran featuring deadly economic sanctions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the advice of Iran hawks in his administration including then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump also ordered the January 2020 assassination<\/a> of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir’s interview was published as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to address a joint meeting of U.S. Congress Wednesday in Washington, D.C. A growing number of Democratic lawmakers have called for not only a cease-fire<\/a> in Gaza but also a suspension<\/a> of U.S. military aid to Israel, whose conduct in the war is on trial for genocide<\/a> at the International Court of Justice.<\/p>\n

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders<\/a> of Vermont have signaled they will skip<\/a> Netanyahu’s speech. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also the Senate president, said<\/a> she will not preside over Wednesday’s session. Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in the wake of Biden’s withdrawal from the race on Sunday, said she will meet privately with Netanyahu on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Echoing calls from groups including CodePink and the Council on American Islamic Relations, Rep. Rashida Tlaib<\/a> (D-Mich.) said<\/a> this week that the prime minister should be arrested for war crimes and genocide.<\/p>\n

Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, has applied for arrest warrants<\/a> for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination committed on and after October 7.<\/p>\n

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams<\/a>. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams<\/a> and is reprinted with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir endorsed former U.S. President Donald Trump \u2013 the 2024 Republican nominee \u2013 for the White House in an interview published Wednesday in which he accused the Biden administration of preventing Israel from winning its war on Gaza. “I believe that with Trump, Israel will receive the backing to act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-48697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"The Israeli security minister, who leads the far-right Jewish Power party, accused the Biden administration of thwarting Israel's victory against Hamas."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48697"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48703,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48697\/revisions\/48703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48697"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=48697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}