(White House) U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Wednesday: "This is a war that Hamas has brought on itself. And while we all want it to stop because any war is horrific, Hamas has pledged to repeat October 7th again and again and again. It has pledged to annihilate Israel and to kill as many Jews as possible. It's still holding over a hundred hostages.... A unilateral ceasefire with a terrorist group like Hamas is not the answer." "We don't believe a ceasefire right now is the right thing to do, because what it would do is validate what Hamas did on October 7th. This is basically like saying, 'Hey, it's okay that you went in there and slaughtered 1,200 people and took a couple hundred of them hostage.' It would leave them in control of Gaza, which is unacceptable not only to the Israeli people, but to President Biden." The Israelis "have published online maps of places [in Gaza] where people can go or not to go. That's basically telegraphing your punches, and there's very few modern militaries in the world that would do that. I don't know that we would do that - to put a map out there and say, 'Hey, here's where you can go where it's safe, and here's where you shouldn't go because we might be striking there.'"
2023-12-14 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive