A senior Israeli official said Tuesday that President Joe Biden should focus on toppling the Hamas terrorist group, rather than trying to topple the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli source was commenting in the wake of a report Monday that said U.S. intelligence agencies “expect” the Israeli prime minister’s coalition government to collapse. The assessment, in the middle of a war, was the latest political attack by the Biden Administration against the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu pushed back, and told Fox News on Monday morning that “[t]o the extent that Hamas believes that there’s daylight between us, that doesn’t help,”
In a statement provided to Israeli media outlets, the source — said to be at the highest level — used sharper language.
The Times of Israel reported:
“Those who elect the prime minister of Israel are the citizens of Israel and no one else,” says the official in a statement issued to the media, interpreting the intelligence report as an effort to unseat Netanyahu.
“Israel is not a protectorate of the US but rather an independent and democratic country whose citizens are the ones who elect the government. We expect our friends to work to bring down the terror regime of Hamas and not the elected government in Israel,” the official says.
Biden has pushed for a Palestinian state, over Netanyahu’s objections, and has claimed Netanyahu is “hurting” Israel more than he is helping it. Netanyahu has pointed to the fact that most Israelis (and Americans) support his positions.
There is growing concern among Israelis that Biden’s insistence that Israel not attack Hamas in its last stronghold in the city of Rafah, near Gaza’s border with Egypt, until civilians could be evacuated is giving Hamas time to regroup.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.