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Netanyahu: I Tried Addressing "Diminution" of U.S. Weapons Privately before Going Public
(Times of Israel) Jacob Magid - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday in an interview that he had tried to resolve the issue of the Biden administration withholding weapons shipments to Israel privately for months with no success. "We tried, in many, many quiet conversations between our officials and American officials, and between me and the president to try to iron out this diminution of supply. I felt that airing it was absolutely necessary after months of quiet conversation that did not solve the problem." After Netanyahu issued a video statement on Tuesday slamming the "inconceivable...bottlenecks" that the U.S. had placed in transferring weapons and ammunition, the Biden administration insisted it had no idea what Netanyahu was talking about. Netanyahu responded that he was prepared to incur criticism as long as Israel "receives the ammo it needs from the U.S. in an existential war." Netanyahu said that "I'm not talking about F-35s or F-16s that are years down the line. I'm talking about what is necessary now to both win the war in Gaza quickly and avoid a war in Lebanon that - in the absence of such a correction - the risks of it breaking out are increasing....I think it could be solved instantaneously with goodwill. It could be solved right away." Netanyahu added that a component of Gaza's post-war stabilization would be "some kind of deradicalization process that would begin in the schools and the mosques to teach these people a different future than the one of annihilating Israel and killing every Jew on the planet."