Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has been forced to backtrack on comments that he wouldn’t rule out a nuclear attack on Gaza.
Israel has taken heavy flak from other countries over the intensity of its bombardment of Gaza, with even the United States asking Tel Aviv to use “smaller bombs” to reduce civilian deaths.
Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has been forced to backtrack on comments that he wouldn’t rule out a nuclear attack on Gaza.
Speaking to Radio Kol Berama and asked whether Israel might consider nuking the besieged Hamas-governed territory, the Jewish National Front politician said “that’s one way…that’s an option.”
He went on to compare the Strip’s residents to “Nazis,” assuring that “there are no non-combatants in Gaza” and that the territory does not deserve humanitarian aid. “There is no such thing as uninvolved people in Gaza,” he said.
Gaza’s residents “can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves,” Eliyahu added.
Asked about the risks that Israel’s intensive bombing campaign poses to the estimated 240+ hostages held by Hamas, the minister said that while he was hoping for their safe return, “in war, you pay a price.”
Eliyahu’s comments quickly sparked outrage in Arab-language media and online, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announcing Sunday that the minister had been suspended from cabinet meetings “until further notice.”
“Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality. Israel and the IDF are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents. We will continue to do so until our victory,” the office said in a statement.
The suspended minister later took to social media to defend himself, suggesting it was “clear to anyone with a brain that the nuclear remark was metaphorical,” but went on to defend his “Nazi” remark. “A strong and disproportionate response to terrorism is definitely required, which will clarify to the Nazis and their supporters that terrorism is not worth it,” he said.
A spokesperson from Hamas, whose supporters Eliyahu lambasted as people who “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the Earth,” characterized the minister’s comments as evidence of “unprecedented criminal Israeli terrorism [which] constitutes a danger to the entire region and the world.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid called Eliyahu’s words a “horrifying and insane remark by an irresponsible minister,” and urged Netanyahu to “fire him” immediately.
Former Israeli opposition leader and ex-Netanyahu cabinet ally Benny Gantz blasted Eliyahu’s comments about the Israelis being held captive, saying they “added to the pain of the hostages’ families at home.”
Israel does not formally refer to itself as a nuclear weapons state, but doesn’t deny possessing them either, in a policy referred to as “deliberate ambiguity.” The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that the country has up to 80 nuclear weapons, and aircraft, missiles and warships to deliver them. At the same time, Tel Aviv reserves the right to target any country in the Middle East which it suspects may be harboring ambitions to build a nuke, with that policy known as the Begin Doctrine. Israeli and US security analysts have referred to Israel’s nuclear weapons policy as a last resort ‘Samson Option’, a reference to the Old Testament Biblical figure Samson, who toppled the Philistine temple, killing himself and thousands of Philistines in the process, rather than be held as a slave. Similarly, the Samson Option posits that Israel would launch its nukes at enemy targets across the region if it was threatened with being overrun even by a conventional enemy.
Eliyahu’s comments are not the first time that Israeli officials have evoked nuclear weapons in the wake of last month’s escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.
This week, anonymous officials told US media that their Israeli counterparts had privately referenced the bombings of WWII-era Germany and Japan, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in justification of potential large-scale civilian casualties in Gaza. Publically, Israeli officials and lawmakers have threatened to turn Gaza into “Dresden” – the German city firebombed into oblivion by the Western Allies in the closing months of World War II, while Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly cited the 1944 Royal Air Force bombing of the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, which missed its target and struck a school, killing scores of children.
The IDF has dropped over 25,000 tons of explosives in Gaza over the past month – equivalent to more than 1.5 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.
The month-long escalation in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis has now claimed the lives of over 10,000 Palestinians and at least 1,448 Israelis, with tens of thousands more wounded and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa, Turkiye and dozens of other countries have called for an immediate ceasefire at the United Nations. The United States has vetoed Security Council resolutions on the matter, citing Israel’s right to self-defense, and tabled its own resolution calling on the international community to condemn Hamas.
