Israeli Official Suspended After Talk of Nuclear Attack

Israel's heritage minister has been suspended from office indefinitely after suggesting in an interview that Israel could drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the action after Amichai Eliyahu's radio interview aired Sunday, Politico reports. Reasoning that there are "no non-combatants in Gaza," Eliyahu said that deploying an atomic weapon there is "one of the possibilities" in Israel's war with Hamas. An outcry followed, per the New York Times. "Eliyahu's statements are not based in reality," Netanyahu posted on X.

Eliyahu later tried to pull back from his statement, posting, "It is clear to anyone who is sensible that the nuclear remark was metaphorical," per the Guardian. A member of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party, Eliyahu is a junior cabinet member and not part of Israel's war cabinet. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who's in Netanyahu's Likud party, attacked Eliyahu's comment as irresponsible. "It's good that these are not the people in charge of Israel's security," he wrote on X. (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)