Amos Regev, the editor-[in-chief] of Israel HaYom, is a personal friend and my conversations with him are not within the framework of my job. - Benjamin Netanyahu

They say that a military confrontation with Iran would undermine the efforts already underway, that it would be ineffective, and that it would provoke even more vindictive action by Iran. I've heard these arguments before. In fact, I've read them before. In my desk, I have copies of an exchange of letters between the World Jewish Congress and the US War Department. The year was 1944. The World Jewish Congress implored the American government to bomb Auschwitz. The reply came five days later. I want to read it to you: “Such an operation could be executed only by diverting considerable air support essential to the success of our forces elsewhere... and in any case would be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources”... And here's the most remarkable sentence of all. And I quote: "Such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans." Think about that – "even more vindictive action” — than the Holocaust.

In the first day of the fighting, America's new president, Joe Biden, called me. We had known each other for close to forty years, from the time we both came to Washington, he as young senator from Delaware, and I as deputy chief of Israel's embassy to the United States. Four days after the 2020 elections Biden was declared president-elect. In the twenty four hours after that declaration I followed twenty other world leaders in offering my congratulations. This elicited the ire of President Trump, who to this day believes that I was the first to do so.

I, the Prime Minister of Israel, care more about Palestinians than their own leaders do. Israel cares more about Palestinians than their own leaders do.