Former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sparked controversy with his remarks on the war on the Gaza Strip, after he sought to combine an acknowledgment of the scale of humanitarian suffering endured by Palestinians with a defense of Israel by denying that it deliberately targeted civilians, claiming that military operations were primarily aimed at Hamas.
Blinken's remarks came during his first public appearance alongside former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo since both left office, at the opening session of the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, held in Washington on Sunday, which addressed the war on Gaza, Iran and the future of US military support for Israel.
Blinken said Israel was not seeking to harm Palestinians and that its goal was to eliminate Hamas, while acknowledging that large numbers of civilians fell victim to military operations and endured severe humanitarian suffering.
The remarks, however, refocused attention on the contradiction between the scale of destruction and human losses in the Gaza Strip and the narrative adopted by Washington and Tel Aviv regarding the nature of the military operations as a war targeting Hamas, without offering clear answers on the large number of civilian casualties.
The figures reflect the scale of the humanitarian tragedy in the Strip: the toll of the Israeli war of extermination since 7 October 2023 has reached about 74,618 martyrs and 175,925 wounded, according to the figures cited in the text, while a number of victims remain under the rubble and on the roads, with ambulance and rescue crews unable to reach them.
A total of 1,602 Palestinians were also recorded as martyred and 5,799 others wounded since the ceasefire agreement took effect on 11 October 2025, alongside the retrieval of the bodies of 847 martyrs from under the rubble.
Despite acknowledging Israeli failures in protecting civilians, Blinken did not abandon his position rejecting the characterization of the targeting of Palestinians as deliberate, noting that the Israeli army's conduct reflected on many occasions a disregard for the safety of Gaza's residents, and that Israel made only minimal efforts to avoid harming them.
In the same context, Blinken stressed the need to recognize what he described as the legitimacy of Israel's response to the 7 October attacks, saying: "We have to recognize the rightness of Israel's response after October 7."
His intervention reflected his continued defense of the Israeli position, while treating the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as a result of military operations, without decisively addressing responsibility for the violations and losses inflicted on civilians.
For his part, Mike Pompeo adopted a tougher position in defending Israel, calling on its supporters to continue promoting what he described as the moral foundations of the Israeli cause and the nature of the operations carried out by the occupation army, and considering that criticism of Israel rests on an unjustified moral equivalence between it and Hamas.
Pompeo also defended the continuation of the security and intelligence partnership between Washington and Tel Aviv, noting that Israeli intelligence repeatedly contributes to protecting American lives and helped preserve his own personal safety amid Iranian threats.
On military aid, Pompeo played down the significance of US annual aid estimated at about four billion dollars compared with the value of the strategic partnership between the two countries, stressing the need for security and military cooperation to continue even if direct financial support stops in the future.
Blinken, in turn, indicated that the Israeli government realizes that US aid is not guaranteed forever, and that it is working to prepare its citizens to bear a larger share of the costs of military procurement in the future.
Concluding his remarks on the future of the conflict, Blinken rejected calls for Israel's disappearance, affirming his continued support for its survival.
