Antony Blinken Provides Clarity

In a press conference on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that, in the context of the Hamas-Israel War, the USA will continue to focus intensely on four priorities: helping Israel ensure that the terrorist attack it suffered on 7th October can never happen again, bringing the conflict to an end as quickly as possible while minimising the loss of life and the suffering of civilians, getting the remaining hostages back home to their families, and preventing the conflict from spreading whilst moving to a lasting peace.

And later he responded to a question with great clarity about a major failure on the part of the international community:

"I hear virtually no one saying, demanding of Hamas, that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrenders. This [war] is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that. And how could it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor, and only demands made of the victim?"