MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Friday on his show “Morning Joe” that the United States should consider withholding aid from Israel until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is removed from power.
The panel was discussing a New York Times report that the Israeli government had received warnings over a year ago about the kind of terror attack launched by Hamas on October 7.
Scarborough said, “We mourn the terror attack as a nation and we support the Israelis. At this point, we still support the Israelis. But this idea that we’re going to continue supporting Netanyahu’s government and have them saying, ‘Well, you know, we’ll get to it when we get to it.’ The United States could say that after 9/11, because the United States was fighting that war. And we had allies, but we were funding the overwhelming majority of it. The Israelis know it, certainly our enemies across the Middle East know it: We are the primary funder of Israel and we are propping Israel up so they can continue this fight not only against Hamas, but for their very existence.”
He continued: You see something like this: you keep looking at the mistakes the Netanyahu government makes, and let me add: You look at the chaos in the West Bank that I lay all at the feet of Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies over the past ten years. People, listen closely I didn’t, I didn’t blame his policies for the attack in Gaza, but the chaos in the West Bank that threatens any peace process moving forward and also threatens another, a second front in this war, possibly a third front in this war.”
Scarborough added, “The United States has the right to say, ‘If we’re going to continue propping up your government, if you don’t have faith in this guy who knew this was coming a year away, we need a better partner.’ And Benjamin Netanyahu is not that partner. When do we get to that point? Because if I were in Congress, this is what I’d be saying, and if I’m saying it as one of the biggest supporters of Israel, then there have got to be a lot of other people saying it. We’re not going to throw money down a rat hole for a government that knew this was coming for a year and didn’t do anything.”
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