US lashes out at far-right Israeli criticism on deal

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who was controversially brought into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government despite his extreme background, had urged rejection of a US push for talks next week on a truce in the 10-month-old war.

On a White House call with reporters, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby singled out Smotrich and said he “ought to be ashamed” for questioning the intentions of President Joe Biden.

“The idea that he would support a deal that leaves Israel’s security at risk is just factually wrong, it’s outrageous, it’s absurd,” Kirby said of Biden.

Kirby said that Smotrich would “sacrifice” Israeli and US hostages who stand to be freed under the deal in a position that “flies in the face of the national security interests of Israel at this critical stage of the war.”

“He’s saying this as President Biden is actually directing the United States military to the Middle East to directly defend Israel against a potential attack by Iran or other Iranian-backed terrorist groups,” Kirby said.

Biden has sent additional US forces after Israel was suspected of assassinating Hamas’s political chief in Iran, which has vowed retaliation.

Biden on Thursday in a joint appeal with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar called on Israel and Hamas to come to talks in a week’s time to finish work on a ceasefire.

Smotrich denounced the proposal as creating a “delusional symmetry” between Israeli hostages and “despicable Jew-murdering terrorists” who would be freed.

“It is absolutely not the time for a dangerous trap where the ‘mediators’ dictate a ‘formula’ and impose a capitulating deal on us, which would squander the blood we shed in this most just war,” he said.

While the criticism by the United States, Israel’s top ally, was unusually strong, Smotrich has frequently stirred outrage with his remarks.

Earlier this week, he said it would be “justified and moral” to starve to death two million Gazans to free hostages, but complained that the world would not let Israel do so.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas Palestinian militants on October 7 attacked southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 39,699 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details of civilian and militant deaths.