March 31 (UPI) — Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan has released a statement standing by his belief that Israel should drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, even as Israel faces charges of genocide.
Walberg was asked during a town hall meeting with constituents about the administration of President Joe Biden currently building a port off the coast of Gaza to deliver more humanitarian aid, according to a video shared online on Friday.
“We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima, get it over quick,” Walberg had told his constituents.
The lawmaker said building the port is “Joe Biden’s reason” to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. But he said he doesn’t believe aid should be provided to suffering Palestinians.
“I don’t think any of our aid that goes to support Israel to support Israel — to support our greatest ally, arguably maybe in the world, to defeat Hamas and Iran and Russia and probably North Korea‘s in there, and China to, with them in helping Hamas,” Walberg said, seeming to fumble over his words. It was not immediately clear what Walberg was trying to say in referencing other nations.
Walberg, a pastor, was blasted for his rhetoric seemingly advocating the use of nuclear weapons leading him to release the statement standing by his previous comments.
“As a child who grew up in the Cold War Era, the last thing I’d advocate for would be the use of nuclear weapons. In a shortened clip, I used a metaphor to convey the need for both Israel and Ukraine to win their wars as swiftly as possible, without putting American troops in harm’s way,” Walberg said.
He said his advocating for the use of nuclear weapons is so that “fewer innocent lives will be caught in the crossfire,” suggesting that he believes more Gaza lives would be lost in a continuing grand war than by dropping a nuclear bomb.
For comparison, Little Boy claimed the lives of 140,000 people when the United States dropped it on Hiroshima. Israeli forces have killed 33,000 people in Gaza.
“The sooner Hamas and Russia surrender, the easier it will be move to forward,” Walberg said. “The use of this metaphor, along with the removal of the context, distorted my message, but I fully stand by these beliefs and stand by our allies.”
In November, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry condemned remarks from an extremist Israeli politician, Amichay Eliyahu, who called dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza “one of the possibilities” in handling the conflict.