President Biden said Saturday that he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing his own country more harm than good in his handling of the war on Hamas, stressing the need for Israel to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.
Biden made the comment during an interview with MSNBC that aired two days after he was caught on a hot mic at his State of the Union address saying that he and Netanyahu were due for a "come to Jesus meeting."
"He has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas," Biden said when pressed in the interview to elaborate on the hot mic remark. "But he must - he must, he must - pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken."
"He's hurting - in my view - he's hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world," Biden continued, without finishing the thought. "It's contrary to what Israel stands for."
Israel's war against Hamas began on Oct. 7 when the terror group launched a surprise attack on Israel, indiscriminately killing some 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel responded with a large-scale air and land campaign aimed at rooting Hamas out of Gaza. According to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, some 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza.
But the majority of those killed in Gaza - as in Israel on Oct. 7 - have been civilians, prompting international outcry and repeated pleas from the U.S. to minimize civilian casualties.
The ongoing strikes have also created a humanitarian crisis with dire shortages of food, water and medicine, which the U.S. and allied nations recently began attempting to combat through airdrops over Gaza.
Biden said Saturday that he would like to see a six-week cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, centered around a "major, major" exchange of prisoners. He voiced hope that such an agreement could still be reached before the start of Ramadan on Monday.
