REPLAY: US will 'always be there by your side' Blinken says on Israel visit
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 right now to Tel Aviv, where a joint news conference is underway between U.S. Secretary
00:04 of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Let's listen in.
00:08 Mr. Secretary, my good friend Tony, thank you for your important visit here today.
00:18 Thank you. Thank President Biden.
00:25 Thank you to the American people for your incredible support for Israel
00:30 in our war against the barbarians of Hamas.
00:35 I thank you in English. I want to thank you in Hebrew as well.
00:42 I would like to thank the Secretary of State Blinken and the President Biden and the American
00:51 people for their amazing support in our war against the barbarians of Hamas.
00:58 Mr. Secretary of State, you have come to a pained and fighting nation.
01:07 We are of lions' mane, but we are determined to prevail and win over those evil forces that are
01:18 amongst us. From hour to hour, we hear about the horrific stories, but also the heroic act.
01:29 The horrific stories they say that they perpetrated and the heroic stories are all ours.
01:38 And this heroism will prevail. It will win.
01:44 Mr. Secretary, your visit is another tangible example of America's unequivocal support for
01:52 Israel. Hamas has shown itself to be an enemy of civilization. The massacring of young people
02:01 in an outdoor music festival, the butchering of entire families,
02:07 the murder of parents in front of their children and the murder of children in front of their
02:13 parents, the burning of people alive, the beheadings, the kidnappings of a young boy,
02:26 not only kidnapped, molested, hurt, attacked,
02:36 and the sickening display of celebrating these horrors, the celebration and glorification of evil.
02:45 President Biden was absolutely correct in calling this sheer evil.
02:52 Hamas is ISIS, and just as ISIS was crushed, so too will Hamas be crushed.
03:04 And Hamas should be treated exactly the way ISIS was treated.
03:09 They should be spit out from the community of nations.
03:13 No leader should meet them. No country should harbor them. And those that do should be sanctioned.
03:22 Tony, my friend, I say to you, I say to all of us,
03:32 there will be many difficult days ahead, but I have no doubt that the forces of civilization will win.
03:40 And the reason that's true is because we understand what is the first
03:48 prerequisite of victory. It's what you just said in our meeting, moral clarity.
03:55 This is a time, a particular time, a special time, that we must stand tall, proud and united
04:03 against evil. Tony, you are taking that stand. America is taking that stand.
04:10 Thank you for being here today. Thank you, America, for standing with Israel today, tomorrow and always.
04:21 Mr. Prime Minister, I'm grateful to be back in Israel in this incredibly difficult moment
04:38 for this nation, but in fact, for the entire world.
04:46 If you'll permit me, personal aside, I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of
04:55 State, but also as a Jew. My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled pogroms in Russia.
05:04 My stepfather, Samuel Pizar, survived concentration camps, Auschwitz, Dachau,
05:15 Maidanik. So, Prime Minister, I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas's
05:26 massacres carry for Israeli Jews, indeed for Jews everywhere. I also come before you as a husband
05:37 and father of young children. It's impossible for me to look at the photos of families killed,
05:44 such as the mother, father and three small children murdered, as they sheltered in their
05:49 home in Kibbutz near Oz, and not think of my own children. This was just one of Hamas's countless
06:00 acts of terror. In a litany of brutality and inhumanity that, yes, brings to mind the worst
06:10 of ISIS. Babies slaughtered, bodies desecrated, young people burned alive, women raped,
06:20 parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.
06:26 How are we even to understand this, to digest this?
06:37 And yet, at the same time, the same time that we've been shocked by the depravity of Hamas,
06:45 we've also been inspired by the bravery of Israel's citizens. The grandfather who drove over
06:52 an hour to a Kibbutz under siege, armed only with a pistol, and rescued his kids and grandkids.
07:01 The mother who died shielding her teenage son with her body, giving her life to save his,
07:08 giving him life for a second time. The volunteer security teams on the Kibbutz,
07:14 who swiftly rallied to defend their friends and neighbors, despite being heavily outnumbered.
07:20 And we're lifted by the remarkable solidarity of the Israeli people,
07:25 demonstrated in the long lines of combat, and in the long lines of the war.
07:30 Demonstrated in the long lines of people giving blood, in the hundreds of thousands of reservists
07:35 who've mobilized, some rushing home from abroad. People around the country opening their homes to
07:42 fellow citizens displaced from the south. People of Israel have long and rightly prided
07:49 themselves on their self-reliance, on their ability to defend themselves, even when the
07:55 odds are stacked against them. The message that I bring to Israel is this. You may be strong enough
08:02 on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to.
08:08 We will always be there by your side. That's the message that President Biden delivered to
08:16 the Prime Minister from the moment this crisis began. It's the message that I and my other
08:24 colleagues in the government have delivered to our Israeli counterparts on a daily, even an
08:28 hourly basis. It's the message that I bring with me to our discussions today, and it's what I'll
08:36 affirm when I meet with the members of Israel's newly formed National Emergency Government.
08:39 We welcome the government's creation and the unity and resolve that it reflects across Israel's
08:46 society. We're delivering on our word, supplying ammunition, interceptors to replenish Israel's
08:54 Iron Dome alongside other defense material. First shipments of U.S. military support have already
09:00 arrived in Israel, and more is on the way. As Israel's defense needs evolve, we will work
09:08 with Congress to make sure that they're met. And I can tell you there is overwhelming,
09:13 overwhelming bipartisan support in our Congress for Israel's security.
09:16 Here in Israel and everywhere, we will reaffirm the crystal-clear warning that President Biden
09:24 issued yesterday to any adversary, state or non-state, thinking of taking advantage of
09:31 the current crisis to attack Israel. Don't. The United States has Israel's back.
09:39 We've deployed the world's largest aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean.
09:43 We've bolstered the presence of U.S. fighter aircraft in the region.
09:47 We're providing other support as well. We continue working closely with Israel to secure
09:53 the release of the men, women, children, elderly people taken hostage by Hamas.
09:59 We're pursuing intensive diplomacy throughout the region to prevent the conflict from spreading,
10:05 and I'll be doing that over the course of my trip in the coming days.
10:09 Too often in the past, leaders have equivocated in the face of terrorist attacks against Israel
10:14 and its people. That's why we've been adamant with all countries in the wake of these attacks.
10:21 There is no excuse. There is no justification for these atrocities.
10:28 You heard the prime minister say it. This is – this must be –
10:35 this is – this must be a moment for moral clarity. The failure to unambiguously condemn
10:43 terrorism puts at risk not only people in Israel, but people everywhere.
10:49 Look at what just happened. Individuals from 36 countries
10:54 killed or missing in the aftermath of Hamas's attacks – Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas
11:03 – no region has escaped Hamas's bloody reach.
11:06 Anyone who wants peace and justice must condemn Hamas's reign of terror.
11:14 We know Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinian people or their legitimate aspirations to live
11:20 with equal measures of security, freedom, justice, opportunity, and dignity.
11:26 We know Hamas, instead of promoting the well-being of its citizens,
11:31 rules repressively and dedicates the resources it has to terror tunnels and rockets.
11:37 We know Hamas didn't commit its heinous acts with the interests of Palestinian people in mind.
11:44 We know Hamas does not stand for the future that Palestinians want for themselves
11:49 and for their children. Hamas has only one agenda – to destroy Israel and to murder Jews.
11:59 No country can or would tolerate the slaughter of its citizens
12:02 or simply return to the conditions that allowed it to take place.
12:06 Israel has the right – indeed, the obligation – to defend itself
12:12 and to ensure that this never happens again.
12:16 As the Prime Minister and I discussed, how Israel does this matters.
12:21 We democracies distinguish ourselves from terrorists by striving for a different standard,
12:28 even when it's difficult, and holding ourselves to account when we fall short.
12:32 Our humanity – the value that we place on human life and human dignity – that's
12:39 what makes us who we are. And we count them among our greatest strength.
12:43 That's why it's so important to take every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.
12:50 And that's why we mourn the loss of every innocent life,
12:55 civilians of every faith, every nationality who have been killed.
12:59 Tragically, the number of innocent lives claimed by Hamas's heinous attacks continues to rise.
13:06 Among those, we now know that at least 25 American citizens were killed.
13:12 We join families in Israel, in the United States, around the world,
13:17 in mourning their immeasurable loss.
13:22 Nearly 15 years ago, my stepfather, who I alluded to earlier, Samuel Pizar,
13:27 came here to Yad Vashem to perform the mourner's prayer that he wrote to accompany
13:33 Leonard Bernstein's Third Symphony, Kaddish.
13:35 Reflecting on the unspeakable horrors that he'd endured as a boy in the Nazi concentration camps,
13:42 he wrote, "That man, though created in your image and endowed with the freedom to choose,
13:53 between good and evil, remains capable of the worst as of the best, of hatred as of love,
14:02 of madness as of genius."
14:05 In this moment, where evil, hatred, and madness have once more taken so many innocent lives,
14:16 we must stand together, resolve to confront what is worst among humanity with what is best.
14:25 We must provide an alternative to the vision of violence and fear, nihilism and terror
14:32 presented by Hamas.
14:34 That is what the United States will do, standing with Israel, working together with its people,
14:42 and all those in this region who remain committed to the vision of a more peaceful,
14:46 more integrated, more secure, more prosperous Middle East.
14:52 Thank you very much.