US lawmakers give Netanyahu over 50 standing ovations as jets pound 'safe zones' across Gaza
During his speech, the Israeli premier urged US officials to increase military aid to 'finish the job' in Gaza and called anti-genocide protesters 'Iran's useful idiots'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his much-anticipated address to a joint session of the US Congress on 24 July, receiving well over 50 standing ovations by lawmakers during an hour-long speech in which he repeated several disproven claims and outright lies about the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Chief among these lies was saying that Tel Aviv has gone “beyond what international law requires” to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.
To rapturous applause, Netanyahu claimed that during a recent visit to Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah, he was told by an army commander that “practically [no civilians were killed], with the exception of a single incident where shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot and unintentionally killed two dozen people.”
“The war in Gaza has one of the lowest ratios of combatant to non-combatants in the history of urban warfare,” Netanyahu said.
Several rights groups and the UN have accused Israel of regularly flaunting international law and directly targeting civilians in Gaza, where it has displaced more than 90 percent of the population and wiped out entire neighborhoods.
Israeli soldiers recently revealed that there are no firing regulations inside Gaza, describing most of the strip as “free fire zones” where civilians are killed with no repercussions. A US doctor who volunteered in Gaza has also accused Israeli snipers of deliberately shooting Palestinian children.
Netanyahu also compared the 7 October Palestinian resistance operation to the 11 September attacks in New York and to the Pearl Harbor bombing, calling it “a day that will live forever in infamy” and “heaven turned into hell.”
“These monsters, they raped women, they beheaded men, they burnt babies alive, they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents,” Netanyahu, again to a standing ovation, even though no evidence exists about any of those claims.
“This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization,” Netanyahu told US lawmakers, adding, "For the forces of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together. Because when we stand together, something very simple happens: We win, they lose.”
He also said that “total victory” against Hamas is a precondition for peace, laying out his post-war vision for Gaza that involves Israeli troops maintaining control over the strip.
“The day after we defeat Hamas, a new Gaza could emerge,” Netanyahu said. “My vision for that day is of a demilitarized and deradicalized Gaza. Israel does not seek to resettle Gaza. But for the foreseeable future, we must retain overriding security control there to prevent the resurgence of terror, to ensure Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.”
He then urged the gathered US officials to increase military aid and deliver it more rapidly. “Fast-tracking US military aid can dramatically expedite an end to the war in Gaza and help prevent a broader war in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said, adding, “Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster.”
As he spoke, Israeli jets continued to pound dozens of targets across the besieged Gaza Strip, killing dozens of displaced Palestinians who have nowhere left to run.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned in a situation report on Monday that “as of 22 July, nearly 83 percent of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders or designated as ‘no-go zones’ by the Israeli military.”
“Frequent evacuation orders and relentless hostilities continue to further devastate Gaza’s health system and make it increasingly difficult for repeatedly displaced populations to access essential services, particularly people suffering from chronic diseases,” the report added, coincided with the outbreak of the poliovirus across the devastated enclave.
Later in his speech, Netanyahu said that the US and Israel must forge a regional alliance “to counter the influence of Iran,” describing it as an extension of the so-called Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states.
“I have a name for this new alliance. I think we should call it the Abraham Alliance,” Netanyahu said.
The Israeli premier also took aim at thousands of protesters who gathered outside the US Capitol building in Washington to demand that Netanyahu be arrested for his role in the countless war crimes committed against Palestinians.
“Incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters, many choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They should be ashamed of themselves,” he said, calling anti-genocide protesters “Iran’s useful idiots.”
He also claimed that Tehran is “promoting and funding” anti-genocide protests in the US. “For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protesters” outside the Capitol right now, he added.
As Netanyahu spoke, Capitol police arrested several relatives of Israeli captives held in Gaza for “disrupting” the speech. They were reportedly charged under a Washington, DC statute that makes it a crime to "parade, demonstrate, or picket within any of the Capitol Buildings."
Elsewhere in his speech, the Israeli leader took aim at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and prosecutor Karim Khan, calling the charges against him and his government of using starvation as a weapon of war “a complete fabrication.”
“If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it. It’s because Hamas is stealing it,” he said.
Last week, over a dozen NGOs accused Israel of systematically obstructing the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, highlighting that only 53 of the 115 relief missions they had planned have been approved.
The statement from the aid groups slammed what it called Israel's "siege tactics" and said that the so-called "humanitarian zone" where most of the strip's population of 2.4 million people now reside has become "an active combat zone" and “extremely unsafe.”