Arab News Japan

TOKYO: Israeli Ambassador to Japan Gilad Cohen termed the Hamas militants who attacked Israel as “animals” and “savages” at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, illustrating his points with graphic images from the slaughter in his country.

However, he said Israel was not at war with the people of Palestine. His target was the “terrorists” of Hamas who, he said, were worse than ISIS. “Hamas is our enemy and they will pay the price for what they did to us,” he stated. “We are at war.”

Israel, he pointed out, left Gaza completely in 2007 only to see Hamas, aided by Iran, effect a brutal coup d’état against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority. 

“We evacuated Gaza unconditionally and gave the keys to the Palestinian Authority in order for Gaza to thrive, in order to live in peace side by side,” he explained. “We provided them with electricity, gas, food, and medicine. We tried, really tried, to have Gaza as a peaceful place. We got Palestinian workers from Gaza because we wanted their economy to thrive. We wanted their economy to be good and in return we got hundreds of thousands of missiles against Israel.”

“But this terrorist organization did not want to take care of its citizens. They just want to kill Jews and Israelis and their ideology is not to have peace. It’s not political. I want you to differentiate between the Palestinians, the ordinary Palestinians, West Bank and others that do not want to fight with Israel, and Hamas. What is the ideology of Hamas? It is that the Jews for them are monkeys and pigs. They are distorting Islamic values.”

Cohen gave a graphic account of how the Hamas fighters raped, killed, and abused their victims, showing pictures and videos of the carnage and pointing out ISIS flags on the ground. He also praised the response of President Joe Biden, Japan, and other Western nations for supporting Israel and warned that they must be in the fight together.

“The international community stands by Israel because we are going to fight the fight of the international community against terrorism. Because if you surrender now, it will come to the doorstep of Japan, Australia, and Europe. Because terrorists all over the world will understand that they can go with it. This is for us our 911, but I want to make one thing clear: We are going to win this war. We are going to win this war because we don’t have any other choice.”

His warning to Iran was stark. “We also call to Iran and Hezbollah. As President Biden said, don’t do it, don’t interfere. Iran’s president was saying I want to kiss the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Praising this as an act of heroism to murder innocent children and to rape women. This is the leader of Iran saying it. What kind of a leader of a nation, of a member of the United Nations can call for this kind of act?”