President Joe Biden appeared to confuse the Israeli port city of Haifa with the Palestinian town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip during an interview on Wednesday in his home town Scranton, Pennsylvania.
In video circulated by the Republican National Committee — but evidently cut from the version of the interview that eventually aired on TV stations — Biden claimed credit for having pressured Israel not to launch an attack on its own city:
BIDEN: “I made it clear to the Israelis — don’t move on Haifa!”
Haifa is a major city *IN* Israel. pic.twitter.com/BdNgoDlGkM
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 18, 2024
The president was apparently trying to claim credit for pressuring Israel, in response to a question about how he had responded to anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protesters who have followed him for months.
Biden has tried to pressure Israel not to enter Rafah, a city in Gaza on the Egyptian border that is thought to be the location of the last Hamas battalions, and the remaining Israeli hostages.
Members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement, attend the funeral of their comrade Mohammed Abed during his funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 16, 2022. – Mohammed Abed, 24, died after one of the tunnels used by the armed wing collapsed in Gaza City. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP) (Photo by SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images)
Haifa is considered Israel’s third city, after Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It features a large port in a natural harbor. It is also seen as an example of coexistence between Arabs and Jews, and is a headquarters for the Baha’i faith.
Israel has said it will invade Rafah to destroy the remnants of Hamas, and that it has prepared a plan to evacuate the Palestinian civilians from elsewhere in Gaza who have taken refuge in the city.
The Israeli government reiterated Thursday to Breitbart News that it had set a date for its attack on Rafah, though it did not say when that would happen.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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