Efforts by Israel Defense Forces to “dismantle Hamas” and free the remaining hostages remains a work in progress that requires worldwide support, according to one Israeli diplomat.
As Israel marked 100 days since the Oct. 7 attack on Sunday, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people, including 30 Americans, and led to hundreds being taken hostage by the infamous terror group. Though more than 100 hostages have been released from Hamas custody, several have been presumed dead and more than 130 are believed to remain in captivity.
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Anat Sultan-Dadon, the consul general of Israel to the southeastern United States, insisted that many within the media and international community are doing the Palestinian people and Israel a disservice by concluding that this is a war between Israel and the Palestinians – a notion she rejects.
“While we are still working in order to dismantle Hamas, make sure that it no longer has control of Gaza or the ability to carry any such attack in the future… we still have over 130 hostages who were brutally, as we know, taken that day into captivity in Gaza,” said Sultan-Dadon.
Anat Sultan-Dadon, the consul general of Israel to the southeastern United States, told Fox News Digital that the media and international community are doing the people of Palestine and Israel a disservice by concluding that this is a war between Israel and the Palestinians. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
“We continue to see the United States and others standing with us,” she added. “The fight against this terror organization that is an extension of the murderous Iranian ayatollah regime is not just Israel’s fight.”
Sultan-Dadon, who joined the Israeli diplomatic corps in 2004, said she believes there are some within the international community “who are standing on the wrong side of history.”
“Rather than stand against terror, they are choosing to side with terror as we are seeing it unfold now in the outrageous claims that South Africa has made to the ICJ,” she said, referencing South Africa’s case against Israel in the United Nations’ International Court of Justice that accuses the war-torn country of committing genocide.
People visit the site where revelers were killed on Oct. 7 in a cross-border attack by Hamas at the Nova music festival in Re’im, southern Israel, Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. Sunday marks 100 days of war between Israel and Hamas, after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7th, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 250 others hostage. In the Gaza Strip, health authorities say the death toll already has eclipsed 23,000 people. ((AP Photo/Leo Correa))
Amid the country’s continued effort to eradicate Hamas, Sultan-Dadon insisted that some media outlets have not been “helpful in making the right distinction about what the two sides to this war are.”
“Rather than placing Israel and the free world, as well as the Palestinian people, on the same side against Hamas, against terror, against those who glorify death and destruction, many in the international community and in the international media are drawing the false equation as if on one side is Israel, and on the other side is the Palestinians,” she said.
“This is not about the Palestinian people,” she added. “The Palestinian people are, themselves, the victim of this Hamas terror organization. They deserve to be free from the rule of a terror organization as well. By standing with and on the side of a terror organization, these countries, these people are doing a disservice to the Palestinian people they claim to be supporting.”
An Israeli army tank in the Gaza Strip during ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)
Sultan-Dadon also highlighted the many calls demanding a cease-fire from Israel and questioned why more isn’t being asked of Hamas, which continues to engage.
“With all of these calls for a cease-fire, I think that there should be more questioning of Hamas and calling on Hamas for a cease-fire,” she said. “I think that so many people want to see a cease-fire. Why is that not directed at the terror organization who decided to open this attack, and who continues to fire rockets?”
Noting that more than 14,000 rockets have been fired toward Israel by Hamas, Sultan-Dadon added, “Why are the demands for a cease-fire not being made of the terror organization that instigated this, that orchestrated this, that is continuing to attack Israel, and that is continuing to hold hostages?”
Supporters of Palestinians gather at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Oct. 14, 2023. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
Regarding the rampant antisemitism that has swept across college and university campuses, Sultan-Dadon said she hopes to see the “wider community” step up and get involved.
“The current situation and the need to address it is being placed on Jewish organizations’ shoulders, and I think that we need to see the wider community step up,” she said. “Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem. Antisemitism is a moral deficiency of the entire society. I think that is how it should be looked at and that is how it should be addressed. It cannot be addressed effectively if it is considered to be a Jewish problem.”
Several from within the United States and around the world have called for a two-state solution, creating a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. However, many argue that is not a viable option considering Hamas’ actions.
Ofri Bibas Levy – whose brother Yarden was taken hostage, with his wife Shiri and two children, Kfir, 10 months, and Ariel, 4 – and her friend Tal Ulus hold pictures of them during an interview with Reuters in Geneva, Switzerland, Nov. 13, 2023. (Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File Photo)
As the war in the Middle East rages on, the Biden administration’s insistence on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians is facing renewed criticism.
“I do not think a two-state solution is possible, and, even if possible, it is not advisable. For more than 50 years, hundreds of self-proclaimed ‘peacemakers,’ led by the United States, have attempted to coerce Israel and the Palestinians into a two-state solution,” former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told Fox News Digital last week.
This image made from undated bodycam video footage taken by a downed Hamas terrorist and released by Israel Defense Forces shows a Hamas terrorist walking around a residential neighborhood at an undisclosed location in southern Israel on Oct. 7. (Israel Defense Forces via AP)
Friedman, who served as the U.S. ambassador under former President Trump, said, “The efforts repeatedly fail regardless of who’s in charge and the reasons are profound and immutable: 1) the Palestinians are not willing to accept a Jewish state; 2) the likelihood of a Palestinian state becoming a terror state is extremely high, presenting an existential threat to Israel; and 3) the West Bank (referred to by biblical adherents as Judea and Samaria) is biblical Israel and, absent Israeli control, hundreds of Jewish and Christian holy sites will be destroyed.”
President Biden penned a November 2023 opinion article in the Washington Post, where he called for a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. “The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own and a future free from Hamas,” Biden wrote at the time.
According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the Palestinian Authority, which oversees parts of the West Bank, and its ruling Fatah Party “have yet to condemn the Hamas [for the] October 7, 2023 mega-terror attack in southern Israel.”
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ terror chief, appears during a ceremony on May 24,2021, in Gaza City. (Laurent Van der Stockt/Getty Images))
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to do everything he can to defeat Hamas, pledging last month to continue on with war efforts “until the end” and until “total victory” is achieved over the terrorist group.
Netanyahu has also pledged to “do everything possible” to free the remaining hostages who remain under Hamas control.
Fox News’ Benjamin Weinthal contributed to this report.
