Naftali Bennett
Naftali BennettFlash 90

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett was a guest on Monday in the studios of MSNBC, where he was asked about United Nations (UN) institutions in Gaza being damaged during last summer’s counterterrorism Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

The IDF proved that terrorists in several cases fired rockets from the UN schools, prompting an Israeli response.

Bennett was asked if Israel had made “a mistake” by ignoring warnings that civilians were in the schools, and replied, “I think the big mistake was by Hamas, who placed in the UN camps, in hospitals, in schools - it placed missile launchers and shot missiles into Israel. And then we shot back and yes there was, unfortunately, a lot of death, but it’s Hamas who’s butchering its own people by placing a missile launcher.”

“Imagine if you walk on the streets of New York and someone is standing behind his kids and shooting at your kids. You’ll shoot back,” Bennett told the interviewer. “He’s killing his own kids. Hamas was killing their own children by doing that. It’s very unfortunate, but Israel will always defend itself.”

No fewer than three United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools were found, during the course of Israel’s 50-day Operation Protective Edge, to be serving for storage of rockets for the terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad. 

After the first finding of rockets at an UNRWA school, it was reported that rather than destroying the rockets, UNRWA workers called Hamas to come remove them to use in their terror war on Israeli civilians.

In another incident, three IDF soldiers were killed and seven others wounded in a booby-trapped UN clinic that was situated on top of terror tunnel entrances, showing the complicity of the UN in Gaza-based terror against Israel.

During the course of the Israeli operation, it was Israel that was criticized, both by the UN and the U.S., for attacking UNRWA facilities. Washington called one strike on terrorists operating adjacent to a UN school "disgraceful."