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Fact-Checking Netanyahu’s 2024 TIME Interview

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Learn our full cowl story on Benjamin Netanyahu right here. You can too learn a full transcript of the interview right here.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down for a wide-ranging interview with TIME on Aug. 4 at his Jerusalem workplace. Throughout the dialogue with TIME Correspondent Eric Cortellessa, Netanyahu made a variety of claims that lacked context, weren’t supported by details, or weren’t true.

Following is a assessment of Netanyahu’s false statements in the course of the interview. TIME has additionally printed a full transcript of the dialog.

What Netanyahu Mentioned: Relating to Israel’s tacit and direct assist for Hamas earlier than Oct. 7, “It’s not only my government. It’s the previous government, the government before me, and the government after me. It wasn’t bankrolling Hamas.”

The Facts: The Qataris started funding Hamas shortly after the Islamist terror group took over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Ehud Olmert was Prime Minister then, however Israel was in a roundabout way concerned in these preliminary money infusions. It wasn’t till 2014, underneath the approval of Netanyahu, that the Israeli authorities turned instantly concerned within the monetary transfers of $30 million a month. From 2012 to 2018, Qatar funneled roughly $1.1 billion into the Strip, directing the funds to cowl humanitarian assist, gasoline, and authorities salaries, in response to an evaluation offered to Israeli ministers. It’s unknown simply how a lot was diverted by Hamas to construct its huge community of underground tunnels and navy installations.

Netanyahu’s authorities was so invested within the coverage that when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sanctioned Hamas in 2018 and reduce off salaries for presidency employees in Gaza, the Israeli authorities delivered the cash into Gaza by cash-filled suitcases. On the time, Netanyahu’s Training Minister Naftali Bennett opposed the funds, calling it “protection money” that may purchase solely short-term quiet. Bennett would succeed Netanyahu in 2021, the primary Prime Minister in a unity authorities that lasted practically 18 months. Whereas Bennett continued to permit Qatari cash to fund Hamas, considered one of his first moves because the Israeli premier was to cancel the cash-filled suitcases despatched into Gaza.

What Netanyahu Mentioned: Relating to the impression of that assist, “I don’t think it made that big a difference, because the main issue was the transfer of weapons and ammunition from the Sinai into Gaza. That’s what made them—it wasn’t so much a question of money. It was a question of availability.”

The Facts: With the multiple billion {dollars} Qatar funneled into Hamas’ coffers with Israeli cooperation, the group was in a position to purchase and smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip. “Money is fungible,” Chip Usher, a retired senior analyst for the CIA, told the New York Occasions. “Anything that Hamas didn’t have to use out of its own budget freed up money for other things.”

What Netanyahu Mentioned: Relating to his reported admission of assist for Hamas, “That’s a false statement. I never said that.”

The Facts: A number of Israeli information shops reported Netanyahu’s quote from a 2019 Likud Occasion convention. He additionally reportedly instructed the journalist Dan Margalit in 2012 that he wished to maintain Hamas as a counterweight to the Fatah-controlled PA. Others in Netanyahu’s authorities have explicitly stated that the technique of funding Hamas was to stop the emergence of a Palestinian State. In a 2015 interview, Netanyahu’s present Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said “the Palestinian Authority is a burden, and Hamas is an asset.”

What Netanyahu Said: “Oct. 7th showed that those who said that Hamas was deterred were wrong. If anything, I didn’t challenge enough the assumption that was common to all the security agencies.”

The Facts: Israeli security agencies did not uniformly say before Oct. 7 that Hamas was deterred. In fact, as Netanyahu was asked about in the interview, his own security chiefs warned him that Hezbollah and Hamas saw the societal division over his plan to diminish the power of the Supreme Court as weakening Israel’s deterrence. If Netanyahu challenged his security agencies, it was in the opposite direction: he refused to heed the warnings that Hamas saw an opening to strike Israel.

At the same time, Netanyahu himself said publicly on numerous occasions that Hamas was deterred from attacking Israel. Just months before Oct. 7, Netanyahu appeared on Israel’s Channel 14, a friendly right-wing network, to say that he fended off future attacks from the Gaza Strip after an 11-day round of fighting in 2021. In his 2022 memoir, Bibi, Netanyahu wrote that Hamas was sufficiently constrained and that he didn’t want to wage all-out war in Gaza when he was more concerned about Iran. “Did I really want to tie down the IDF in Gaza for years when we had to deal with Iran and a possible Syrian front?” he wrote. “The answer was categorically no. I had bigger fish to fry.”

What Netanyahu Said: Regarding the lack of prosecution of Israelis impeding aid to Gaza, “They have. I don’t know. I don’t know that they’re not prosecuted.”

The Facts: While Israelis caught trying to divert humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip have been detained for questioning, there have been no known indictments, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation’s legal affairs reporter Avishai Grinzaig.

What Netanyahu Said: Regarding his trial on corruption charges, “That trial is unraveling now. You do not hear about it very a lot, however it’s actually unraveling.”

The Facts: Netanyahu’s trial on corruption fees has been shifting ahead. Over the summer time, Netanyahu sought to delay giving testimony for his corruption trial to March 2025. Israel’s State Legal professional’s Workplace opposed the request, and the Jerusalem District Court docket ruled in opposition to Netanyahu, ordering him to start his testimony in December 2024.

What Netanyahu Said: Regarding illegal West Bank settlement activity, “I’ve not sought annexation.”

The Facts: This isn’t true. In January 2020, after President Donald Trump unveiled his Israeli-Palestinian peace plan on the White Home, Netanyahu promised to annex the Jordan Valley and the settlements in the West Bank. The Prime Minister pushed a plan to extend Israeli sovereignty over that territory, roughly 30% of the West Bank, triggering a backlash in Israel, the United States, and throughout the Middle East.

Netanyahu caught Trump off guard. According to Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, the former President turned to his aides once he exited the stage and said, “What the hell was that?” Netanyahu was ultimately forced to withdraw his annexation proposal under pressure from the Trump Administration.

When Netanyahu returned to power in Dec. 2022, he appointed far-right ministers to key positions overseeing the West Bank: Bezalel Smotrich as Finance Minister and Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. Both have undertaken a systematic effort to expand Israel’s footprint in the occupied territories, with Smotrich approving unauthorized outposts and streamlining settlement activities. As part of the coalition agreement, Netanyahu transferred substantial governing powers in the West Bank, except over security control, from the army to an apparatus headed by Smotrich. Israeli lawyers and human rights activists say the move amounts to de jure annexation. Netanyahu’s own coalition partners have said as much. In June, Smotrich told settlers of his plan to effectively annex the West Bank and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. “I’m telling you, it’s mega-dramatic,” Smotrich said. “Such changes change a system’s DNA.”

What Netanyahu Said: Regarding his control of the coalition government in Israel, “I run the show, I make the decisions. I formulate the policy.”

The Facts: Given Netanyahu’s fragile coalition, holding 64 seats in a 120-member parliament, he’s beholden to far-right cupboard members who’ve the ability to topple his authorities and set off snap elections. The White Home has cited Smotrich as an impediment to a ceasefire deal, saying his obstinacy was “jeopardizing” the hostages. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have each threatened to stop and collapse the governing coalition if Netanyahu agrees to the proposed ceasefire deal by President Joe Biden. Collectively, they maintain 13 seats in Netanyahu’s four-seat majority.

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