©Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a campaign rally at the Fox Theater in Tucson, Arizona, February 5, 2024. REUTERS/Rebecca Noble/File Photo
By Stephanie Kelly
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr offered staunch support for Israel in an interview with Reuters, calling it a “moral nation” that is rightly responding to Hamas’s provocations with its attacks on Gaza and questioning the need for a six-week ceasefire supported by President Joe Biden.
Biden has also been a strong defender of Israel since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, but he has recently applied pressure to stem the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and hasten a six-week ceasefire to release hostages and hand over prisoners. help.
Asked whether he supported a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, Kennedy told Reuters: “I don’t even know what that means right now.”
Kennedy said that every previous ceasefire “has been used by Hamas to rearm, rebuild and then launch another surprise attack. So what would be different this time?” He said.
Kennedy, 70, spoke to Reuters in a wide-ranging interview on Monday from his office in his Spanish-style home in Los Angeles, hidden by tropical plants and hedges.
Support for Israel has become a political issue within the Democratic Party, as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 30,000 and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to push an assault on Rafah.
Kennedy’s policy proposals, including pledges to make homeownership easier and crack down on business subsidies, have gained some popularity among U.S. voters unenthusiastic about Biden, a Democrat, or his Republican rival Donald Trump in the Presidential Elections.
According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, Kennedy is supported by 15% of registered voters, compared to 39% for Biden and 38% for Trump.
This level of support means Kennedy could have a significant impact on November’s election, with strategists arguing he could help Trump by winning more votes from Biden. He will announce a running mate on March 26; leaked names include football player Aaron Rodgers, who refused the COVID vaccine, lawyer Nicole Shanahan and U.S. Senator Rand Paul.
His opposition to the ceasefire and his full support for Israel may be at odds with many young voters, whom he considers one of his strongest constituencies.
Speaking from an office filled with bookshelves, stuffed animals and insect specimens, Kennedy told Reuters he sees wars as moral crusades that should be pursued or wars of choice that should be avoided.
“World War I was an immoral war. It was a war of choice. We should never have gone,” he said.
Israel did not choose this war, he said, comparing it to the United States’ involvement in World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Kennedy said Hamas was responsible for the destruction of Gaza for failing to embrace the two-state solution and for firing thousands of missiles at Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv.
“Any other nation adjacent to a neighboring nation that was bombarding it with rockets, sending commandos to kill its citizens, pledging to kill every person in that nation and annihilate it, would go and level it with aerial bombardment,” Kennedy said.
“But Israel is a moral nation. So it didn’t do that. Instead, it built an iron dome to protect itself so it wouldn’t have to enter Gaza.”
He said Hamas gave Israeli leaders no choice after fighters stormed into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
Kennedy added that he thought an American president should contact the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Egypt to put an end to Hamas.
Since the Hamas attacks on October 7, nearly 32,000 people have been confirmed dead in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to Palestinian health officials, and thousands more are feared lost to the rubble.
A United Nations-backed report on Monday said famine in Gaza is likely by May without an end to fighting in the more than five-month-old war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Palestinian enclave of 2.3 million people.
“POLITICAL COSTS ARE IRRELEVANT”
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has spent years promoting anti-vaccine messages, told Reuters as president he would not restrict abortion, repeal many provisions of Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and seek to close the southern border to incoming immigrants. illegally in the United States, while people seeking asylum will await trial in Mexico.
He distanced himself from Trump but said he supported a recent Supreme Court decision that allowed the former president to remain on the ballot in 2024.
“I intend to beat him in this election. I want to beat him on a level playing field. I don’t want to beat him because of a court case,” he said.
Kennedy said he considered many IRA subsidies “absolutely catastrophic for the environment.”
“You know, virtually all carbon capture subsidies are actually huge subsidies to the oil industry and the carbon industry. We shouldn’t be doing that. We shouldn’t be increasing big agriculture… I would eliminate them altogether,” he said. said.
He spoke in front of a taxidermied tiger that was a gift to his late father from the late Indonesian President Sukarno. On the shelves of his bookcase there were skulls of various animals, dead spiders in vials and a river of wooden ducks, some ancient and others handed down from his father, the senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968.
The shelves contained photo archives of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, as well as books about the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and classics such as Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.”
Kennedy was banned from Instagram in 2021 for spreading misinformation about vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic, but was later reinstated. He lost a legal bid to force YouTube owner Google (NASDAQ:) to restore videos in which he questioned the safety of COVID vaccines.
He disputes the anti-vaccine label, but is president of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that focuses on anti-vaccine messaging. As president he said he would not stop people from getting vaccinated, but did not answer a question about how he would prevent a rise in measles cases.
“It doesn’t bother me if people don’t agree with me,” Kennedy said in response to a question about how his position on Gaza might affect his standing among young voters.
“If someone proves me wrong on an issue, I will change my opinion.”
Reuters/Ipsos polls show Kennedy is supported by 16% of respondents aged 18 to 39, compared with 28% for Biden and 26% for Trump.
Fifteen percent of respondents aged 40 and older said they supported Kennedy Jr., compared with 33% for Biden and 36% for Trump.