Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday blasted President Biden’s policy approach to Iran in a “scorched earth” final address to the parliament — comparing the US return to the Iran nuclear deal to President Franklin Roosevelt declining to bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz when he had the opportunity.
In his last Knesset address as prime minister, a defiant Netanyahu spoke for more than half an hour, declaring that he would no longer keep his foreign policy disagreements with the Biden administration “behind closed doors.”
“The new US administration requested that I save our disagreements on the Iran nuclear deal for behind closed doors, and not share them publicly,” Netanyahu said Sunday, according to the Times of Israel. “I told them I won’t act that way.”
“In 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to bomb the railway leading to the extermination camps, and refused to bomb the gas chambers, which could have saved millions of our people. We hoped for others to save us, and they didn’t come. In the face of the threat of extermination, we were helpless,” he went on.
“Our voice was not heard among the nations. We had neither a state or an army. But today we do have a voice. We do have a state, and we do have defensive power.”
The prime minister was ousted Sunday, when the parliament voted to install a new government after Netanyahu in March failed to form a government after elections. Naftali Bennett, who is reportedly opposed to the Iran deal, will serve two years as prime minister, and will be replaced in 2023 by centrist Yair Lapid, according to the agreement.
Netanyahu, who has served as prime minister since 2009, accused the new coalition taking over of not being ready and able to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
“I’ve heard what Bennett said [about standing firm against Iran], and I’m concerned, because Bennett does the opposite of what he promises,” Netanyahu said.
“An Israeli prime minister has to be able to say no to the president of the US on matters that endanger our existence. I’ll be happy if this doesn’t come true, but from the moment the US returns to the Iran deal, this government will not approve operations against Iran to stop their armament,” Netanyahu said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
This is an excerpt from the New York Post.
