Netanyahu attacks Biden again: US military aid arriving ‘in a trickle’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the administration of US President Joe Biden once again, criticising that US military aid is arriving in Israel “in a trickle”.
Netanyahu told Punchbowl News in an interview: “I raised this issue with Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken. And I said that we are being told by our Defence Department officials that barely a trickle is coming in. He said, ‘Well, everything is in process. We’re doing everything to untangle it. And to clear up the bottlenecks.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s what I expect to happen. Let’s make sure that it does happen. It must happen.’”
Netanyahu divulged in the interview: “We began to see that we had some significant problems emerging a few months ago. And in fact, we tried, in many, many quiet conversations between our officials and American officials, and between me and the president to try to iron out this diminution of supply.”
He also claimed: “The ratio of civilians to combatant casualties in Gaza is roughly one to one. People said you can’t go into Rafah because there are going to be tens of thousands of civilian casualties. You know, how many civilian casualties we’ve had? … The chief of staff told me. ‘Use the word dozens.’ We’ve killed about 600 terrorists in Gaza. So is it dozens? Is it somewhat more than that? It’s still the lowest ratio in recorded urban warfare.”
US Envoy Amos Hochstein told the Israeli prime minister during a meeting last Tuesday that his public comments that the US is “withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel” were “unproductive and more importantly, completely untrue,” as reported by CNN, citing a senior US official.