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US Senator Lindsey Graham and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Photo: US Embassy Jerusalem, via Wikimedia Commons)

“To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do.” – Lindsey Graham 

Comparing Israel’s war on Gaza to the US war with Japan during World War II, US Senator Lindsey Graham said on Sunday that Israel should do whatever it needs to do to win the war. 

He implied that Israel should drop nuclear bombs over Gaza. 

“When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki with nuclear weapons,” Graham said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press. 

“That was the right decision,” Graham said regarding the use of nuclear weapons by the US.

“Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose and work with them to minimize casualties,” he further said.

Defending the US decision to drop an atomic bomb on Japan, Graham said “I thought it was okay” when the US dropped the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end “their existential threat war.”

“To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do.”

Graham’s  remarks came after the US reportedly halted a sizable weapons shipment to Israel because of worries about their potential use in Rafah, which is home to 1.5 million displaced Palestinians.

A US official, who requested anonymity, said the shipment included 1,800 bombs of 2,000 pounds (907 kilograms) and 1,700 bombs of 500 pounds (227 kilograms). The official stressed concern about the use of the 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated areas of Gaza, NBC news reported.

‘Genocide Mentality’ 

The Palestine Resistance movement Hamas denounced Graham’s implicit call for dropping nuclear weapons on Gaza, which echoed similar statements by top Israeli officials in recent months. 

Hamas termed the US senator’s remarks as “shocking,” indicating “his deep moral decline and the genocide and colonialism mentality that he harbors.”

This mentality also exists “among the US political elite, who align themselves with a fully-fledged genocidal crime committed by the morally free Israeli army against isolated civilians,” it added in a statement.

Hamas said Graham’s comments came “in the context of pledging allegiance to the fascist (Israeli_ occupation , making their proponents complicit in the genocidal war.”

The US gives Israel around $3.8 billion in weapons and defense systems annually.

Last month, however, the US Congress approved a military aid package worth $15 billion for Israel, which includes around $5 billion for replenishing weapon stocks.

Gaza Genocide

Similar statements to that of Graham were made by Israeli officials and media pundits in recent months. 

On November 5, Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said in an interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “one of the possibilities”.

Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7. 

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 35,091 Palestinians have been killed, and 78,827 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.

Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip. 

Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children. 

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba. 

Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’. 

(Anadolu, PC) 

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