2024-02-17 07:07:29
New York Governor Kathy Hochul apologized Friday for remarks she made at a Jewish charity event in New York City that went viral on social media and suggested that “Israel has justification to destroy Gaza” in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack.
“If Canada attacks Buffalo one day, I’m sorry, my friends, there will be no Canada the next,” Hochul said in part of her speech, Thursday, at a United Jewish Appeal event in New York.
She added, “This is a natural reaction. You have the right to defend yourself and make sure this does not happen once more. This is Israel’s right.”
On Friday, she said in a statement reported by The New York Times that she regretted the “inappropriate analogy” and apologized for her “poor choice of words.”
She said in a statement, “While I have been clear in my support of Israel’s right to self-defense, I have repeatedly said and continue to believe that Palestinian civilian casualties should be avoided and that more humanitarian aid should be sent to the people of Gaza.”
Israel launched its attack on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip following the attack launched by the Palestinian movement on October 7th on Israel, which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli statistics. Subsequent Israeli military actions and strikes flattened much of the densely populated Strip and displaced almost all of its residents.
The humanitarian crisis has left Gaza’s population of more than two million on the brink of famine. Nearly 29,000 people were killed in the Israeli attack, and regarding 70,000 were injured, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The United Nations has called for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds, which the United States opposes, saying it would allow Hamas to reorganize its ranks.
American society has also had to deal with the impact of the war, according to Reuters, and human rights advocates have noted a rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias in the United States since the beginning of the war.
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