Israeli PM Netanyahu meets Italian counterpart, Cypriot President

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides on Saturday amid the conflict in Gaza and the impending ground invasion against the terrorist organization Hamas. “We have to defeat this barbarism,” Netanyahu urged the Italian prime minister, adding that the conflict is between civilization’s forces and “really monstrous barbarians who murdered, mutilated, raped, beheaded, and burned innocent people, babies, and grandmothers.”

“This is a test, a test of civilization, and we will win. And we expect all the countries that lined up to fight ISIS, to line up and fight Hamas because Hamas is the new ISIS,” the Israeli PM’s office posted from its handle on social media platform X.
Meloni assured Netanyahu of Italy’s support for Israel.
“We defend the rights of Israel of defending itself… for its people. We absolutely understand that terrorism has to be fought, and we believe that you are able to do that in the best way, and we are different from those terrorists,” the Italian PM said.
Netanyahu then met Cypriot President Christodoulides, stressing that it was a “battle of civilisation against barbarism”.

The Israeli PM’s office posted on X, referencing his previous speech at the UN, in which he compared Hamas and ISIS: “Hamas, as I said in the UN ten years ago, almost a decade ago, Hamas is ISIS. People didn’t think I was real. They now understand that, as President Biden and Chancellor Scholz stated, Hamas is the new Nazi party and is actually worse than ISIS. The Nazis were opposed by the entire world. The developed world banded together to combat ISIS. The developed world should now support us as we defeat ISIS. This is the aim. Prior to that, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited Israel as part of the ongoing response to the terrorist attacks of November 7.