Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley visited Israel over Memorial Day weekend and signed her name on Israeli artillery shells in a show of support for the country’s war with Gaza, where an estimated 35,000 Palestinians have been killed so far.
Haley, a former UN ambassador, traveled with Danny Danon, a member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to an Israeli army post and interacted with soldiers serving on the northern border with Lebanon. Danon posted photos on social media of Haley signing the artillery shells and the messages “Finish them!” and “America Loves Israel!”
“This is what my friend, former Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote today about a grenade during a visit to an artillery post on the northern border,” Danon wrote on social media, according to Google Translate.
Although it is not entirely clear where the bombs are intended, the move has been labeled insensitive, just as Israel attacks Rafah in its ongoing campaign in Gaza. Airstrikes on Sunday killed an estimated 50 refugees sheltering in tents in Rafah after being evacuated from other parts of the Gaza Strip. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the airstrikes “a tragic mistake.”
On Tuesday, Haley posted photos of the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel on social media with the caption: “No other country would accept this, neither should Israel.”
Haley also met Monday with Israeli survivors of the Oct. 7 attack, which killed an estimated 12,000 people and took about 240 hostage. She told reporters in Israel that America should not deprive the nation of weapons.
“America needs to do what Israel needs and stop telling them how to fight this war,” said Haley, a former governor of South Carolina. ‘Until you have experienced it, you cannot say how to fight it. You are either a friend or you are not a friend.”
After withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race in March, Haley last week endorsed former President Donald Trump, despite previously calling Trump “unhinged,” “diminished” and unfit to be president.
