MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Netanyahu suspends minister who wanted to nuke Gaza

Eliyahu’s words are detached from reality,” Netanyahu said

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday banned Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu indefinitely from all cabinet meetings following his statements hinting that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “an option” in the ongoing war after the Oct. 7 attacks by the terrorist group Hamas.

Eliyahu, a member of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, also said in a radio interview that he was not entirely satisfied with the extent of Israel’s retaliatory actions and said he was willing to put the lives of the more than 240 hostages held by Hamas in danger. ”In a war, a price has to be paid. Why are the lives of the hostages (...) more important than those of our soldiers?” he said. His comments were quickly disavowed by Netanyahu, who also suspended him from all cabinet meetings.

“Your expectation is that tomorrow morning we’d drop what amounts to some kind of nuclear bomb on all of Gaza, flattening them, eliminating everybody there…,” the Radio Kol Berama interviewer said.

“That’s one way,” Eliyahu replied. “The second way is to work out what’s important to them, what scares them, what deters them… They’re not scared of death.”

Eliyahu, who has no connection to the three-member war cabinet conducting the offensive against Hamas nor is he part of the broader security cabinet, also objected to any humanitarian aid into Gaza: “We wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” he stressed. “There is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza,” he added.

“Amichai Eliyahu’s words are detached from reality,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Israel and the IDF are acting in accordance with the highest standards of international law in order to prevent harm to uninvolved people, and we will continue to do that all the way to victory.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also condemned the “baseless and irresponsible” remarks in a post on X, adding he was glad “these are not the people in charge of Israel’s security.”

Opposition Leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid called on Netanyahu to fire Eliyahu, branding his comments “a horrifying and insane remark by an irresponsible minister.”

“He offended the families of the captives [being held in Gaza], offended Israeli society, and harmed our international standing,” Lapid said. “The presence of the extremists in the government endangers us and the success of the war goals — defeating Hamas and returning the hostages.”

Hamas said Eliyahu’s comments were an “expression of the occupiers’ Nazism and [their] genocidal practices,” which came after Israel’s “military failure in the face of the [Palestinian] resistance.”

Eliyahu later argued that it was “clear to anyone with a brain that the remark about the atom bomb was metaphorical.”