Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued during an interview with CNN on Sunday that the Americans should consider the war he declared against Hamas “theirs”.

“It’s not just our war, it’s yours too,” Mr Netanyahu said. “It is a war of civilization against barbarism,” he continued, warning that the “scourge” of Hamas, if not defeated by Israel, would spread beyond the Middle East, to Europe and the US: “you will be next.”

Once again the prime minister of Israel, despite being under increasing pressure and criticism from abroad and at home, rejected any responsibility for the number of civilians killed in the Gaza Strip. “Israel fights in accordance with international law” and Chahal, the Israeli army, “does an exemplary job in trying to minimize civilian casualties,” he insisted. Every civilian life lost is a tragedy, he acknowledged, but again blamed Hamas, which he said prevents civilians from leaving the operation zones, “sometimes at gunpoint.”

Hamas “opened fire on the safe zone and the safe corridor that we opened (…) to prevent people from leaving, so that they don’t get hurt. He puts rockets inside schools and hospitals, he has underground tunnels under children’s beds”, he further argued, stressing that the international community should not offer moral support to “evil”.

At least 11,180 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including 4,609 children, have been killed in Israeli shelling of the Gaza Strip since the war broke out, according to the latest death toll from Hamas’ health ministry, released late Sunday night. on the 7th of October. On the Israeli side, the authorities speak of at least 1,200 dead, also mostly civilians, since the day the Palestinian Islamist movement attacked Israel.