Washington DC - South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham kept up his extreme rhetoric on Sunday by suggesting Israel should be allowed to wipe Gaza off the map via nuclear weapons.

Ranting angrily at NBC's Kirsten Welker during an appearance on Meet the Press Sunday, the Republican congressman told Israel "to do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state" – up to an including inflicting nuclear cataclysm on Gaza.

In response to President Joe Biden's threats to withhold weapons if Israel defies global opposition to a full-scale invasion of Rafah, Graham asked: "Why is it OK for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it OK for us to do that? I thought it was OK."

"Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war," he added. "They can't afford to lose."

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Somewhere between 110,000 and 210,000 people were killed when the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The catastrophic environmental and residual health effects have made a more precise reckoning impossible.

After October 7, when Hamas and other Palestinian militant killed just over 1,100 people, Graham falsely pushed the notion that the US and its ally were involved in a "religious war" and urged the country to do "whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourselves."

"Level the place," he insisted, mirroring the genocidal language of Israeli leaders cited in South Africa's historic case at the International Court of Justice.

The 68-year-old has seemed particularly excited on the idea of Israel using its nuclear arsenal on Palestinians, making the same World War 2 analogy during a Senate hearing last week.

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Already subject to one of the most damaging blockades in history before the current war, Gaza has since been largely reduced to rubble after Israel dropped the equivalent firepower of more than three nuclear bombs on a territory with a far higher population density than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Some 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, with famine and disease running rampant as Israel has destroyed the strip's health care system and continues to block the entry of humanitarian aid.