PM Netanyahu Meets with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today , at the Kirya in Tel Aviv, held a private meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The leaders then issued statements to the media.

Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"Chancellor Scholz, thank you for coming to Israel. Thank you for your solidarity with Israel, you, the government of Germany, the people of Germany, in these trying times.

Eighty years ago, our people experienced the worst savagery in the history of humanity with the Nazi crimes against the Jewish people on the soil of Germany and Europe. I must tell you, my friend, that the savagery we witnessed perpetrated by the Hamas murderers coming out of Gaza were the worst crimes committed against Jews since the Holocaust: the decapitation of people, the shooting of little children with bound hands, the murder of children in front of their parents, the murder of parents in front of their children, the hiding of babies in the attic and the murderers who came to the attic to murder the babies, the rape and murder of women, the abduction of families, the tearing of grandmothers and Holocaust survivors into captivity, the death pits that remind of us of Babi Yar where jeeps surround the depression in the ground where they crowd young people in and they shoot them with machine guns. This is the savagery that we only remember from the Nazi crimes from the Holocaust.

Hamas are the new Nazis. Hamas is ISIS and in some instances, worse than ISIS. And just as the world united to defeat the Nazis, just as the world united to defeat ISIS, the world has to stand united behind Israel to defeat Hamas.

This is a part of an axis of evil: of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Their goal, open goal, is to eradicate the State of Israel. The open goal of Hamas is to kill as many Jews as they could and the only difference is they would have killed every last one of us, murdered every last one of us if they could, they just don’t have the capacity, but they murdered an extraordinary 1,300 citizens which in American terms is many, many, many 9/11s.

So obviously we must take action to defeat Hamas to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. But this is not only our battle, it is our common battle. The battle of civilization against barbarism. And if it’s not stopped here, this savagery will reach you very soon and reach the entire world. We have a vested interest, an abiding interest, to make sure that doesn’t happen and it can only be achieved with the solidarity of the civilized world.

I hope and I believe that many, many around the world see ISIS for what it is and see Hamas for what it is, which is a reincarnation of ISIS.

We appreciate the fact that you came here to stand with us in this battle for the future of civilization.

Thank you, Chancellor."

The Prime Minister added:

"Thank you, Chancellor. I appreciate all your statements, including your last reference to protecting the Jewish community. We discussed this in our conversation as well.

The question of the safety of civilians is something that is raised by Hamas' actions. Hamas is committing a double war crime. Not only is it targeting civilians with unprecedented savagery, it’s hiding by civilians, their own civilians.

We are calling on the civilians to leave Gaza, go south to safe zones and Hamas is preventing them often at gunpoint from doing so. Hamas wants to keep them there as a human shield and prevent the people from leaving and getting out of harm’s way.

It’s important that the entire world understands this. The responsibility for the civilians who are there, both the abducted people and both the people who are kept there at force, the citizens of our country, and the citizens of dozens of countries and the Palestinian civilians themselves, that responsibility sits squarely on the shoulders of the Hamas war criminals.

They’re committing a double war crime: attacking civilians, hiding behind civilians as human shields. The entire world should condemn it and should support Israel in its just war.

Thank you very much, Chancellor."