Posted on 03/05/2024 8:00:52 PM PST by Milagros
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that Israel must “finish the problem” in its war against Hamas, his most definitive position on the conflict since the terror group killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages on Oct. 7.
“You’ve got to finish the problem,” Trump said on Fox News on Tuesday when asked about the war. “You had a horrible invasion that took place that would have never happened if I was president.”
When asked on the program whether he supported a cease-fire in Gaza, Trump demurred, avoiding an explicit position on Israel’s military effort that has now also left ... people dead in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The likely 2024 Republican nominee has not provided his own position on U.S. or Israel's strategy throughout the five months of the war.
Though a stalwart defender of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration during his presidency, Trump has also attempted to strike an anti-war posture on the campaign trail in the last year, attempting to contrast himself from President Joe Biden and his remaining Republican rival, Nikki Haley.
“Frankly, they got soft,” Trump said on Tuesday about the Biden administration, claiming that the aggression by foreign adversaries would not have happened if he were still president.
“That should never have happened. Likewise, Russia would never have attacked Ukraine," he said.
While Tuesday’s comments offered the strongest signal yet from Trump of what direction Israel should take, he has yet to offer specific thoughts or proposals on how much the U.S. should be involved financially, how hostage negotiations should be handled, the plight of Gaza’s civilian population or whether leaders should pursue a one- or two-state solution to the conflict.
Reached for comment by NBC News, the Trump campaign promoted the former president’s record on Israel and blamed Biden for the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East.
“President Trump did more for Israel than any American President in history, and he took historic action in the Middle East that created unprecedented peace,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said in a statement, adding, "When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end.”
Just days after Hamas attacked Israel, Trump, in a video posted from his Mar-a-Lago estate here, declared: “I kept Israel safe. Nobody else will. Nobody else can. And I know all of the players — they can’t do it.”
Trump did lay out a few markers in the three weeks that followed the Hamas attack. He said on Oct. 11 that a future Trump administration would “fully support Israel defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terrorist group Hamas,” while telling the Republican Jewish Coalition later that month that Hamas fighters “will burn forever in the eternal pit of hell." That month, his campaign also said that, if elected again, he would bar Gaza residents from entering the U.S. as part of an expanded travel ban.
In the four-plus months since, however, the former president’s once-ardent public backing of Israel has gone mostly quiet.
That silence has run parallel to Biden increasingly coming under fire from left-wing and Muslim American voters for his support of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack. A coalition of voters is campaigning for Democratic primary voters to vote “uncommitted” or for similar ballot choices, as some backed in Michigan, where the “uncommitted” vote earned more than 13% in last week’s Democratic presidential primary there — a small uptick from the nearly 11% who voted “uncommitted” in the 2012 primary, when then-President Barack Obama ran unopposed.
Self destruction was jihadifascist regime’s aim all along. To gain sympathy.
suspicious indeed. Sounds too much like ‘final solution’ in democrat translations. This is more trump/nazi talk from the mainstream media. They’re coding to base.
The problem is the forever war global deepstate in league with the scammers on internatioanal relief in league with thoss who hate western civilization [which includes a lot of self-loathing leftist "westerners"]. So we have the UN through UNWRA maintaining terrorist infrastrucure at the expense of the US and other Western taxapayers. So Hamas leaders living in the lap of luxury while channeling relief funds to desperate people on the condition they engage in teerrorism is the result.
In what world do you allow terrorists witting and unwitting to grift off of your tax base? Only a sick one that thinks that the global institutions from which they themselves get their own grift need to be sustained in the face of the best interests of their own People.
Every where you look our institutions and our civic so-called leaders are corrupt to the core. CIA/MI6; UN;UNWRA;WEF;DOJ/FBI;Boris Johnson and the Uk Torry party; the governments of Europe who have turned against their own farmers; Dade Phelan; Kemp: Maricopa County; Paul Ryan, Adam Schiff...... and on and on.
Our society is worm-eaten with corruption locally and globally.
Hamas has u point out has gotten money in some fashion from everyone including Israel
I asked upthread why they did what they as in what to gain from such butchery
Of course why does Isis do it
Etc
I suspect a divergence between fat rich happy Hamas leadership in Qatar etc and the terrorists combatants in Gaza
Internal power rub but that’s just a guess as one facet of their intent
I really don’t know
“Finishing the problem” should also apply to Ukraine - give them what they need as fast as possible and finish the invasion.
To the disappointment of pro-Hamas Freepers. https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4221907/posts https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4221893/posts
What’s taking so long? Appeasing the rest of the world isn’t going to do Israel any favors. That teeny little strip of land is the exact size of Las Vegas so get on with it.
Well said.
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