US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview published by the New York Times on Saturday that he is not afraid of being seen as a supporter of genocide because of his role in supporting Israel's war on Gaza.

“Are you, Secretary of State, concerned that you might be presiding over what the world might see as genocide?” Blinken was asked.

"No," Blinken replied. "First, this is not a genocidal war. Second, as to how the world views this, I can't fully answer that. But everyone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts."

The interview came after several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others, concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a conclusion that Blinken's State Department rejected.

Blinken claimed to be concerned about the massive civilian casualties in Gaza, but he also defended U.S. support for the massacre, which he described as Israel’s “just defense” of an October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. “We have been, and remain, fundamentally committed to the defense of Israel,” he said. The U.S. secretary of state also defended the Biden administration’s actions in the proxy war in Ukraine, which he described as successful despite the lack of a path to a Ukrainian military victory and the hundreds of thousands killed in the conflict.

Asked if it was time to end the war, Blinken said it was up to Ukraine to decide. “These are decisions for the Ukrainians to make,” he said. “They have to decide where their future is and how they want to get there.”

However, in the early days of the war, the United States and its allies discouraged Ukraine from signing a peace deal with Russia, and now Kyiv stands to lose more territory than it would have lost had it reached an agreement in 2022.