Former US president Donald Trump has said that Israel is “losing the PR war” in Gaza because of the images coming out of the territory and must end the conflict quickly.
“Every night, they’re releasing tapes of a building falling down. They shouldn’t be releasing tapes like that,” Trump said in an interview broadcast on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Thursday.
“They’re doing, that’s why they’re losing the PR war. They, Israel is absolutely losing the PR war,” he said.
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Palestinian militants also took around 250 hostages, about 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 whom the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 33,037 people, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, and the United Nations has warned of “catastrophic hunger.”
“You’ve got to get it over with, and you have to get back to normalcy,” Trump said. “You have to have a victory, and it’s taking a long time.”
“Get it over with. They’ve got to finish what they finish. They have to get it done,” the Republican presidential candidate said.
Israel has come under increasing international pressure over the toll from its six-month war against Hamas and has drawn increasingly tough rebuke from its main backer Washington.
Relentless Israeli bombardment has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, collapsed the hospital system and created a humanitarian crisis for the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million people.
Trump’s comments came as US President Joe Biden warned Israel of a sharp shift in his policy over the Gaza war, amid growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and mounting domestic pressure in a US election year.
