Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced today (Sunday) that he has suspended Minister Amihai Eliyahu from government meetings until further notice, due to his mentioning nuclear weapons as “one of the options” for Gaza in a radio interview. It should be noted that this punishment is a formality, as the government is not convening, anyway, due to the war in Gaza.
Earlier today, Netanyahu condemned the Heritage Minister’s statement, saying that “The statements of Minister Amihai Eliyahu are detached from reality. Israel and the IDF are following the highest standards of international law to avoid harm to non-combatants, and we will continue to do so until victory.” Defense Minister Gallant also said that he “condemns the baseless and irresponsible words of Minister Amichai Eliyahu. It is good that these are not the people charged with Israel’s security.”
Both statements are a response to an interview Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu gave this morning (Sunday) to Kol Beramah radio, where he expressed his opposition to the introduction of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. “There is no room for the Gaza Strip, there does not need to be an existence for the northern Strip. Any who wave a PLO or Hamas flag do not need live on the earth,” Eliyahu argued. “We would introduce humanitarian aid for the Nazis, we wouldn’t say harm to non-combatants, there are no non-combatants. They aren’t afraid of death, we need to understand what deters them. 50 years, they’ve been breaking IDF deterrence.”
At this stage, Eliyahu was asked by interviewers Yisrael Cohen and Yaki Adamkar if “we need to drop an atom bomb on all of Gaza,” and the minister responded that “this is one of the possibilities.” When asked about the hundreds of Israeli hostages, Eliyahu responded that he “prays and hopes for their return, but there are also costs in war.”
In the wake of the firestorm of his words, Eliyahu clarified that “it is clear to anyone rational that talking about atomic weapons is metaphorical. But we definitely need a powerful and disproportionate response to terrorism, which makes it clear to the Nazis and their supporters that terrorism doesn’t pay. This is the only formula which democratic countries can make use of with terror. At the same time, the State of Israel is clearly committed to do everything to return the hostages safe and sound.”