Biden: Gaza op will end when Hamas can no longer murder Israelis

(JNS) — U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Israel’s Gaza operation will last until Hamas no longer has the power to commit the types of atrocities witnessed on Oct. 7.

“I think it’s going to stop when Hamas no longer maintains the capacity to murder and abuse and just do horrific things to the Israelis. And they still think they—at least as of this morning, they still thought they could,” Biden said at a press conference in California following a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping.

“When Hamas said they plan on doing the same thing again—what they did on the 7th…  they’re going to go in—they want to slaughter Israelis.  They want to do it again. And they’ve said it out loud. They’re not even kidding about it. They’re not backing off.

“And so, I just asked the rhetorical question, ‘I wonder what we would do if that were the case?’” the president remarked.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told Lebanon’s LBC TV on Oct. 24 that the terror group would continue to carry out massacres like the one it carried out in southern Israel on Oct. 7 until the Jewish state is destroyed.

“The Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 mass terror attack] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth… because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight,” said Hamad.

During the Q&A with reporters Biden said that it was “established” that Hamas uses Al Shifa Hospital and other medical centers in Gaza for its terror warfare against Israel after the White House said on Tuesday that a “variety” U.S. intelligence sources confirmed Israeli claims.

“I think that Israel is also taking risks themselves, about their folks being killed one-to-one going through these hospital rooms, hospital halls. But one thing has been established is that Hamas does have headquarters, weapons, materiel below this hospital and, I suspect, others,” the president said.

The president offered a lengthy response on if he considered the Al Shifa Hospital operation justified:

“Here’s the situation: You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital. And that’s a fact. That’s what’s happened.

“Israel did not go in with a large number of troops, did not raid, did not rush everything down. They’ve gone in and they’ve gone in with their soldiers carrying weapons or guns. They were told… told, let me be precise, we’ve discussed the need for them to be incredibly careful.

“You have a circumstance where you know there is a fair number of Hamas terrorists. Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burn—burning women and children alive.

“And so, the idea that they’re going to just stop and not do anything is not realistic. This is not the carpet bombing. This is a different thing. They’re going through these tunnels; they’re going in the hospital. 

“And if you notice, I… I was mildly preoccupied today, I apologize, I didn’t see everything, but what I did see, whether… I haven’t had it confirmed yet, I have asked my team to answer the question, but what happened is they’re [the IDF] also bringing in incubators. They’re bringing in other… other means to help the people in the hospital, and they’ve given the doctors and, I’m told, the doctors and nurses and personnel an opportunity to get out of harm’s way.”