‘Israel won’t bow to any external pressure,’ says Smotrich after drawing US ire
John Kirby, a White House adviser, said that the Jewish state’s finance minister was jeopardizing Israeli and American lives.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, drew unusually harsh criticism from the Biden administration on Friday after he opposed an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire deal.
John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor, told reporters that attacks of the deal “from some quarters in Israel” in recent days are wrong “not only in substance, but also jeopardizing the lives of the hostages and running counter to Israel’s own national security interests.”
Kirby added that Smotrich’s “arguments are dead wrong” and are “misleading the Israeli public” and that anyone, like he, who questions the motives of US President Joe Biden “ought to be ashamed.”
“Simply put, the views being taken against this agreement, the views expressed by Mr. Smotrich specifically, would, in fact, sacrifice the lives of Israeli hostages, his own countrymen, and American hostages as well, and flies in the face of the national security interests of Israel at this critical stage of the war,” Kirby added.
Smotrich, who leads the Religious Zionism party and is a key figure in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu’s governing coalition, wrote in Hebrew on social media on Saturday that he respects the US position and thanks it for its support of the Jewish state “in the face of regional threats.”
“But I expect it to respect Israeli democracy and the position of the citizens of Israel and its elected officials in relation to decisions that will affect the security of the country,” he wrote. “Just as the United States would reject international pressure to reach a surrender agreement with al Qaeda and bin Laden, so Israel will not submit to any external pressure that would harm Israel’s security.”
“No criticism and no attack will distract me from the goal,” he added.
‘Delusional symmetry’
Smotrich’s comments about the deal came after Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar signed a joint statement on Thursday calling for the urgent conclusion of talks. Soon after the announcement, Netanyahu’s office said that it would send a negotiation team to Doha or Cairo on Aug. 15.
On Friday, Smotrich called for Netanyahu not to fall into a “dangerous trap” that would send the wrong message to Israel’s allies and enemies and leave both Hamas and Hezbollah in place to carry out further attacks. He also said the joint statement created a “delusional symmetry” between Israeli hostages and the terrorists who would be released. (The joint statement made no mention of security prisoners.)
Kirby said on Friday that Hamas agreed in July to a key demand of Netanayhu’s, that Israeli forces avoid full withdrawal from Gaza, as a component of the first part of a multi-phased deal, “even as the lives of the hostages—all the hostages in the category of women, older men, those who are wounded and sick—are saved and returned to their families.”
Kirby also intimated that claims of a “surrender” by freeing Palestinian security prisoners is a strawman argument.
“On suggestions that prisoners should never be traded for hostages and that doing so at this stage is somehow a surrender, let me remind you that most of Hamas’s top leaders are now dead. Hamas’s organized military structure and capacity has been destroyed. Israel has now completed nearly all of its major military objectives, other than the explicit war aim of bringing the hostages home,” Kirby said.
“And, yes, sometimes prisoners are traded for hostages. We just returned home to their families 16 innocent people, including four Americans, in exchange for a number of Russian criminals. It does not mean that they’re equivalent. Evan Gershkovich is not equivalent to Vadim Krasikov,” Kirby added. “But sometimes, countries that value the lives of their citizens, as we do in the United States and as Israel does, make these kinds of trades to save lives— innocent lives. There’s no surrender in that. It speaks incredibly well of our principles and our values, what we stand for.”
Kirby added that Smotrich’s claim that Biden was forcing a “surrender agreement” on Israel is “outrageous” and “absurd.”
“Think about that for a minute. He’s saying this as President Biden is actually directing the United States military to the Middle East to directly defend Israel against a potential attack from Iran or other Iranian-backed terrorist groups,” Kirby said. “President Biden is fully prepared to defend Israel yet again, with the United States military. And again, this is the second time that he will have done this in four months.”
“Anybody who knows President Biden and how staunchly he’s been a defender for Israel, for the entirety of his public service, ought to be ashamed for thinking anything different,” Kirby said.
In his social media post on Saturday night, Smotrich wrote that the “Sinwar surrender agreement, which leaves most of the abductees to die, which frees many murderers, returns the terrorists to the north of the Gaza Strip, abandons the border and allows Hamas to smuggle weapons and restore its strength in order to return and attack Israel as an arm of Iran, is bad for Israel and endangers its security.”
“We will oppose it with all our might,” he added.
Smotrich has drawn the ire of the Biden administration several times, including regarding his criticism of humanitarian aid entering Gaza without the release of the hostages.
During Smotrich’s March 2023 visit to Washington—after he called for Israel to “wipe off the map” the Palestinian village of Huwara, from which numerous deadly terror attacks have emanated—Biden administration officials wouldn’t meet with him.
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