Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter pushed back forcefully on accusations against Israel of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and starvation.

The official X account of the Israeli Embassy in the U.S. posted a video in which he said that if Israel had really done what it’s accused of doing, his son would be alive today.

“My son would be alive today if what we’re accused of, we actually did,” he said.

Leiter had explained this more fully in August 2025 in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“My own son was killed because we do not kill innocent civilians,” Leiter said. “He went in on foot into Gaza and led the troops at the beginning of the war and was killed when he went into a Hamas booby trap.”

This explanation refers to the idea that it would be safer for the IDF to deploy more airstrikes against Hamas rather than fight them in close-quarters combat on the ground. While airstrikes kill more civilians but prevent the deaths of IDF troops, ground combat prevents harm to civilians while imperiling soldiers’ lives.

“A country that’s capable of taking out the control of all of Iranian airspace in 72 hours, allowing for the B2s of the United States to come in and obliterate the nuclear weapons operations in Iran, is not capable of ending this war sooner? Of course we are, but it’s because we’re taking precautions that no other country has ever taken,” Leiter told Tapper.

No other country “has had to face a situation of 450 miles of terror tunnels under an area that’s 24 miles long,” he added. “We’re dealing with a ghoulish, fiendish organization that’s not only hiding behind civilians, but is using civilians as cannon fodder. They enjoy this. This is a death cult. They say this.”

Leiter’s son, Maj. (res.) Moshe Yedidyah Leiter, was killed at the age of 39 just one month after the Oct. 7 invasion of Hamas into Israel. Serving as a paramedic, he was due to complete his hospital training to become a doctor. He left behind a wife and six children, the youngest of whom was three months old.