Florida Senator Marco Rubio said Washington will provide "all the support" Israel needs after Islamic militant group Hamas launched an attack on the Jewish state over the weekend.
Rubio told Israeli-based news outlet i24 that lawmakers would have "the mechanism to deliver" aid to Israel in a Thursday interview with the outlet.
“I think what’s important is that we understand that the baselines are already there," Rubio said. "The authorities are already there."
"At some point, if more is needed – and it probably will be – we’ll need to know exactly what that is, and I don’t think there’ll be any impediments to getting it done," he added.
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The Florida senator stressed Hamas "needs to be wiped out," though conceded the effort was an uphill battle.
“Urban warfare [conducted by] a nation that is going to rely on reservists, many of whom just got off a flight 48 hours ago – flying in from Miami, where I live, planes were full of reservists reporting for duty – it’s not [easy]," Rubio said. "Urban warfare is difficult with groups that have tunnel systems and are willing to conduct long-term insurgency-type campaigns. As that develops, the material that Israel may need to resupply on might be different than what’s anticipated.”
Rubio also took aim at Iran and suggested Hamas would not have possessed the capability to execute their attack on Israel without Iranian support.
"Even if this money (the $6 billion the Biden administration released to Iran) hadn’t been released, this money was coming," he continued. "They would have freed up other monies that they had available to them to continue to sponsor terrorism, not just for Hamas, but for ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and obviously for Hezbollah. [The Biden Administration’s reversal] is good news, and I’m glad that it’s happening, and I hope that will be a permanent move.”
The Florida senator warned Israel faced an enemy that sought the state's complete destruction.
"When a group has done that, you have no choice but to eliminate them and severely degrade them to the point where they can’t come back and ever do that in the future," he said.
Rubio added the U.S. has no choice but to assist Israel's "fight against pure evil."
"If Hamas is not eliminated, if Hamas is not substantially degraded, they will come back, and they will do this again," Rubio warned. "And they will do it worse, and other groups will look at this as an example of what they need to do, and they will do the same."
“If this isn’t stopped now, it’s going to lead to more loss of life, more bloodshed," Senator Rubio concluded. "If we’ve learned anything from history, it is that if you don’t confront and defeat evil, evil will grow, evil will spread, and evil will come for you.”
