Jake Tapper Blasts ‘Racist Comments’ by Netanyahu Cabinet Minister Who Called All Gazans ‘Nazis’

On Monday’s episode of The Lead, CNN’s Jake Tapper hit out at the “outrageous” and “racist” comments made by Benjamin Netanyahu’s finance minister that were aimed at all Gazans.

“In our world lead, as the United States government, the Biden administration, say they are trying to reduce the violence in Gaza, that mission was likely made all the more difficult by the latest, outrageous, and frankly racist, comments from the far right extremist Israeli finance minister and a member of the Netanyahu government, Bezalel Smotrich.”

Tapper played video of Smotrich that was translated into English:

The Jewish settlement should be established in the territory of the Gaza Strip so that there will be Jewish presence there for a long time, so that terrorism does not grow there. If not, there are two million Nazis in Gaza who want to destroy us when they get up every morning, and we will wake up in 10 or 15 years to a new October 7th.

“Two million is, of course, the population of Gaza,” Tapper said. “So, take that in for a moment. Two million, quote, unquote, ‘Nazis’ in Gaza? Babies, two-year-olds, three-year-olds, old ladies, all of them Nazis?”

Prime Minister Netanyahu, himself, has referred to Hamas as “the new Nazis.”

“This is the savagery of, that we only remember from the Nazi crimes in the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said just days after the Hamas terror attack.

“Hamas are the new Nazis. Hamas is ISIS – in some instances, worse than ISIS,” Netanyahu said. “And just as the world united to defeat the Nazis, just as the world united to defeat ISIS, the world has to stand united behind Israel to defeat Hamas…the savagery that we witnessed, perpetrated by the Hamas murderers coming out of Gaza, were the worst crimes committed against Jews since the Holocaust.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.