Independent US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered staunch support for Israel in an interview with Reuters, calling it a "moral nation" that was justly responding to Hamas provocations with its attacks on Gaza.
Asked if he supported a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Kennedy replied, "I don't even know what that means right now."
He told Reuters that each previous ceasefire "has been used by Hamas to rearm, to rebuild and then launch another surprise attack. So what would be different this time?"
Kennedy pointed out that Israel did not choose this war and added that Hamas was to blame for Gaza's destruction for failing to embrace a two-state solution and for firing thousands of missiles into Israeli cities.
"Any other nation that was adjacent to a neighboring nation that was bombing it with rockets, sending commandos over to murder its citizens, pledging itself to murder every person in that nation and annihilate it, would go and level it with aerial bombardment," he told Reuters.
"But Israel is a moral nation. So it didn't do that. Instead, it built an iron dome to protect itself so it would not have to go into Gaza," he added.
Kennedy’s comments come amid tensions between the Biden administration and the US. While Biden was initially supportive of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, he has changed his tone recently.
During a recent interview with MSNBC, Biden said that an Israeli invasion of Rafah would be a red line but also said in the same breath that crossing it would not result in punitive measures against Israel.
“It is a red line, but I am never going to leave Israel,” Biden said. “The defense of Israel is still critical, so there’s no red line I’m going to cut off all weapons.”
He also criticized Netanyahu and asserted that the Prime Minister “hurts Israel more than he protects” it.
Netanyahu later responded to Biden, telling Politico, "I don't know exactly what the President meant, but if he meant by that that I'm pursuing private policies against the majority, the wish of the majority of Israelis, and that this is hurting the interests of Israel, then he's wrong on both counts."
Kennedy came under fire last summer after The New York Post published a video of him floating a conspiracy theory about COVID-19 and Jews.
In the video, Kennedy quoted a theory that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.” He later added that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
After he was widely condemned for those remarks, Kennedy appeared before a House committee " where he denied making antisemitic comments.
Kennedy told the committee that he had "never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic" and, despite repeatedly spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation on public health issues in the past, insisted that he was not anti-vaccination.