Sen. Lindsey Graham, on Sunday, called on the Biden administration to "give Israel the bombs they need to end the war."
He drew comparisons between Israel's war with Hamas and the United States' decision to bring World War II to an end by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by the bombing [of] Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki with nuclear weapons," the South Carolina Republican told NBC News' "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker. "That was the right decision.”
Israel, Graham added, "can't afford to lose."
He condemned Biden after Biden's threats to withhold high-payload U.S. bombs from Israel if they are to be used in a major military operation in Rafah, which Israel claims is a stronghold for Hamas.
More than a million civilians have fled the war in Gaza to refuge in Rafah, the region's furthest-south city, and Biden cited the concern for civilian lives should Israel continue its push.
"Can I say this?" Graham asked Sunday. "Why is it OK for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it OK for us to do that? I thought it was OK."
And to Israel, Graham added: "Do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do."
Welker told Graham that according to U.S. military officials, today's technology has improved greatly since World War II, to which he responded "Yeah, these military officials that you're talking about are full of crap."
Earlier in the program, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Welker that Biden has been "clear for some time that we couldn’t and would not support a major military operation in Rafah.”
He also told her that the United States is concerned about the use of heavy or high-payload weapons in a densely populated city like Rafah.
Graham argued that it is Hamas, not Israel, that should be blamed for civilian casualties after it launched its attacks on Israel last Oct. 7, as they use "their own population as human shields," making it "impossible to mitigate civilian deaths in Gaza."
"I’ve never seen in the history of warfare such blatant efforts by an enemy — Hamas — to put civilians at risk," the senator said. "The last thing you want to do is reward this behavior." Hamas, he added, has said they will attack Israel "again and again.
"They're dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and not helping the Palestinian people," he said. "Israel is surrounded by terrorists that want to destroy the Jewish state and not help the Palestinians. This is 9/11 and Pearl Harbor all rolled into one."
The United States, meanwhile, should be "all in" to help Israel fight its "existential threat" said Graham.
"The one thing Israel and the U.S. have in common is that Hamas would attack us if they could," he added. "Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism that shouts, Death to America, and Hezbollah is in the same camp. I've never heard anybody in Israel chant 'death to America.'"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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