Following the global outrage over the Israeli strike against Hamas leaders in Doha, Qat,
Michael Freeman is the Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria. In this interview with INNOCENT ODOH, he responds to global outrage over the Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, and debunks accusations of genocide in the Gaza war. He explains that Iran, the main sponsor and coordinator of terrorist activities around Israel, needs to be contained. He also asserts that Israel will continue to carry out strikes against terrorist organisations and their leaders anywhere in the world. How do you respond to the international outburst of condemnation about the attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar by Israel?
I think we need to understand who the people targeted in Doha were. The people targeted in Doha were the leaders of Hamas, these were the same people that on 7 October 2023 were pictured on TV giving thanks to the massacres that were taking place in Israel as thousands of Hamas terrorists came across the border and raped, murdered, tortured and butchered innocent women and children when they were sleeping on their beds at night. They also dragged 250 Israelis into Gaza to be held as hostages. They are still holding 48 people hostage in Gaza.
They were not attacking military bases, they were attacking people in their houses, they were attacking communities, and they were attacking people in a musical festival, who were celebrating peace and togetherness and at the same time these Hamas leaders in Doha were praising and congratulating people responsible for the death of thousands of Israelis.
And anybody that launches such attacks we will make sure that justice is served on them. It was a clear message that there is no impunity anywhere in the world, if you massacre, kill, rape and torture Jews, you will face justice.
The concern is that the attack violated the sovereign right of Qatar. Are you not wavering between deterrence on terror and facing international pressure following the global outrage caused by the attack?
I think there are lots of ways to look at this and I have heard lots of comments about that concern. But when a country is harboring terrorist leaders and there is no way of bringing them to justice, the action we took can be justified. Let me remind you that when the US took out Osama Bin Laden, everyone around the world said that the world is a safer place because one arch terrorist has been killed. Nobody talked about the sovereignty of Pakistan where Bin Laden was killed.
When the Houthis in Yemen fired missiles and drones at Israel, I did not hear anybody say the Houthis were breaching Israeli sovereignty. When Hamas came across the border to attack Israeli people, I did not hear people say anything about breaching Israeli sovereignty. So, I think that we need to understand that we are no longer dealing with traditional warfare between two countries; we are dealing with a non-state terrorist entity where their leaders are living in luxury and boasting about what they are doing and sometimes you need to take action.
You have described Iran as the architect of the ring of terror around Israel, which prompted the 12-day between Israel and Iran. Have you degraded the efforts of Iran in funding these terrorist organisations?
Iran is the head of the snake. We have had attacks from the Houthis, Hezbollah in Lebanon, we had attacks from Hamas, we had attacks from Iraq, and we had attacks from groups in Syria and from radical Jihad groups in Judea and Samaria (West Bank). Iran has been funding and coordinating all these terror attacks, they are the trainers, the ideological sponsors of all these radical terror organizations. So, Iran is the problem and we need to deal with Iran. It has openly called for the destruction of Israel, it preaches that it wants to get rid of Israel one day, and it was moving quickly towards developing nuclear weapons and was on the verge of having enough enriched uranium and the missile capability to deliver that.
When you have a country that talks about destroying you and it has demonstrated its seriousness to do so, you cannot let an ultimate terror country have the ultimate weapon. So, Israel together with the United States acted to degrade their capability but unfortunately we have not degraded their capability to sponsor terrorist organisations and its capability to destabilise other parts of the world including Nigeria and parts of Africa.
How do you respond to the charge of Genocide in Gaza couple with the humanitarian crisis?
The accusation of genocide is as offensive as it is wrong. It is an outrageous accusation. If you really want to understand this, let us see who is really trying to carry out genocide and the way to do that is to say that if tomorrow Hamas were to lay down all its arms, release our hostages and surrender, the war will be over. But if tomorrow Israel were to lay down all of its arms, we know we are dead because they will massacre us. It is Hamas that wants to carry out genocide just like they did on October 7 when they massacred women, children and everyone within sight in their homes and in a music festival.
In war every death is a tragedy and even if we go by the Hamas figure of 60,000 of those killed in the Gaza war in two years, let us say that the number of terrorists killed is 20,000. That means for every terrorist killed, two or three civilians were killed. It is tragic but judging by the history of wars that was less in number. And in the history of wars for every combatant killed there is usually between six and nine civilians killed during war in urban conflicts. So, if Hamas numbers are correct and I don’t think they are, this will be by some measure, the most carefully fought war in history. Yes, a lot of people have died, war is terrible but this is not genocide and there is no possible way that you can come from an objective perspective and call what Israel is doing genocide, it does not make sense.
In World War 2, two million Germans died; does that mean that the Allies were wrong in defeating Hitler’s Nazi Germany? Not all.
Talking about the humanitarian crisis, there is no limit to the amount of aid allowed into Gaza; anyone who wants to bring in legitimate aid is able to do that. But in the last three months, 83% of those aids were stolen by Hamas, according to UN figures, you can check.
Another concern is the number of journalists killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes. What is the justification for that?
We are doing everything to avoid this kind of casualty. The big problem is that some of these journalists are not just affiliated, they are paid by Hamas. There are a number of people who called themselves journalists, who wear a press jacket by day and at night fire rockets on Israel. They wear press jackets by day and by night launch ambushes against Israel, so they are not journalists. Obviously there are some legitimate journalists inside Gaza but Hamas has made it difficult to identify the legitimate ones clearly because they are still using all of these people for terrorist activities.
