By Romana Rubeo 
Benjamin Netanyahu wants to fix Islam, not necessarily everywhere, but certainly in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Benjamin Netanyahu wants to fix Islam, not necessarily everywhere, but certainly in the besieged Gaza Strip.
His remarks on Islam were reportedly communicated during his discussion with US billionaire, and owner of X, Elon Musk, during the latter’s trip to Israel on Monday.
Netanyahu said that he will purge Gaza’s mosques and schools of their “poisonous” Islamic ideology once the war is over, Russia Today reported.
Speaking to Musk in an interview live-streamed on X, Netanyahu said that the destruction of Hamas would be a “precursor” to more systemic changes in Gaza, RT reported.
Earlier in November, the Israeli army forced families to evacuate Al Nasr Hospital, leaving behind their premature babies in the intensive care unit.https://t.co/PgJIUHeyjR pic.twitter.com/CWzKdbUPpe
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) November 29, 2023
“We have to demilitarize Gaza after the destruction of Hamas. We have to de-radicalize Gaza, and that will take some time,” he stated. “Especially work on the mosques and on the schools, that’s where children imbibe their values. And then we have to rebuild Gaza.”
Netanyahu pointed out that the UAE and Bahrain, two Arab countries that unconditionally normalized ties with Israel, are the perfect examples of Arab states that have undergone this process – meaning the process of ‘de-radicalization’ which led to normalizing ties with Israel.
An invited group of prominent Muslim Americans to the White House have expressed their concerns to US President Joe Biden about the dehumanization of their community.https://t.co/Endlu7cCJa pic.twitter.com/TAP8gdgqqZ
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) November 29, 2023
Now, the far-right Israeli prime minister, whose government includes the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, wants to apply that same process to Gaza.
WWII Connection, Again
Insisting on making reference to World War II, as he has done since the beginning of the war, Netanyahu said that to ‘de-radicalize’ Gaza, “you first have to get rid of the poisonous regime, as you did in Germany, as you did in Japan in World War II.”
On November 5, Israeli Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said during a radio interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the besieged Gaza Strip is “an option”.
A few days earlier, on October 30, the New York Times reported that the Israeli government was willing to kill large numbers of Palestinian civilians to defeat Hamas in Gaza, and informed its US partners about its intentions.
#Hamas’ position has not changed. The same cannot be said about #Israel. The Israeli position, whether political or military, is that of confusion and contradictions.https://t.co/NUUR1xP6qI pic.twitter.com/AkqyDBvpeV
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) November 28, 2023
“In private conversations with American counterparts, Israeli officials referred to how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries,” the report read.
Until a ceasefire was announced on Friday, November 24, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that over 15,000 Palestinians, including over 6,150 children and more than 4,000, with another 36,000 wounded.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals. She holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature and specializes in audio-visual and journalism translation.
