39. The Political Cynicism of Benjamin Netanyahu

I strongly believe that the October 7 massacre, when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged through southern part of Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping some 240 to Gaza, was a terrorist attack.

This I’ve to declare because lately I’ve received some messages that I’m against Israel, for some reason and advocating lies that suits Hamas and Gaza. 

I’ve also received calls, from unknown landline callers, abusing me for going against my country’s well established political line.

Anyway, I’ll keep writing because I’ve the right to express my views – I’m not bound to follow the policy my country’s political establishment has designed for itself. 

After all I’m in India, an Indian citizen with a valid passport, and not in countries like Afghanistan.

Isreal is a friend of India but that doesn’t mean I have to justify all its action. And let me also clear this fact that the Indian government, led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will never justify what Israel is doing in Gaza. I’m sure about it. India’s policy has been Vasudhaiv Kutumbkam – the whole world is a family. 

Besides PM Modi has at many forums even said in front of Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin sentences that one just couldn’t have imagined regarding stopping war. After all, Russia is far more important than Israel.

Neither the fact that one of my favourite daughters is based in Tel Aviv since 1999, now an Israeli citizen with her kids and an Israeli husband. She lived with my family and we raised her like our own after one of my friends dropped her home on a rainy day. Every second of the day my family pray for her wellbeing.

And we are equally worried about any other child in Gaza.

That makes my point very clear to all those idiots and also those abusers who don’t have guts to tell me even their names.

I believe, it’s not about Israelis and Palestinians. Rather it’s about individuals. Not all the Germans were against Jews in 1939 and vice vera. My first meeting with a Jew husband-wife happened way back in 1980 at Egmore in Madras (now Chennai) where they were running a private library. 

They told me the fare to come to India by ship was provided by one of his German friends, who realized that it was not safe for them to be in Berlin. To make their story short – it was the reluctance of his friend’s 10-year-old son to invite them on his birthday. His friend said to him that the minds of younger generation have been fully radicalized and they must leave the country. It was the summer of 1941 when both of them fled Germany never to go back.

I can understand the hate Mr. Netanyahu has against Palestinians. It is so much that in 2015 he was willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews. It is horrific to even imagine that he would go to that extent.

Remember his claim that “Adolf Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews - he had only wanted to expel Jews from Europe, but Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they'll all come here.' And Hitler asked, 'So, what should I do with them?' Husseini said: 'Burn them.’”

However, the chief historian at Israel's memorial to the Holocaust said this account was factually incorrect while Angela Merkel said Germany “abides by its responsibility for the Holocaust”. 

Still Netanyahu insisted the Mufti supported the Final Solution.

Husseini was a Palestinian nationalist leader who continued his campaign to oppose British plans to partition it into a Jewish state and an Arab one, allying himself with the Nazis. Husseini met Hitler in Berlin in November 1941 but only after the Final Solution began. He tried to persuade the Nazi leader to declare his support for the creation of an Arab state.

Now after so much bombing, killing and forcing people to die in hunger, Israel has lost the sympathy of the world. So much so that the transformation of Israel's image from righteous to wrathful has tarnished its reputation in the U.S. also.

A Gallup poll found that only 32% of Americans back Israel's military action in Gaza, down from 50% in late 2023. In the survey, only 9 percent of respondents under the age of 35 said they approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza.

In July 2022, to mark the visit of US President Joe Biden to Israel, the Pew Research Center published a survey on American perceptions of Israel and found that the majority of younger Americans view Israel unfavorably.

After a year in December 2023, the monthly Harris Poll survey found that over half of young Americans surveyed on Israel’s conflict with Hamas believe the Jewish state should cease to exist, and instead be replaced by a Palestinian entity. 

According to an Economist/YouGov survey released on August 5, 2025, a plurality of the electorate believes that Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza are unjustified, only 27% are supportive of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and 84% favor an immediate ceasefire. 

More than seven in 10 believe that there is a hunger crisis in Gaza; not surprisingly, there is strong support for more humanitarian aid to Palestinians. The survey also reveals that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians as only 31% disagree. 

Breaking All the Rules of Humanitarian Law

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has openly criticized: “Protecting your country and your society is one thing, but bombing hospitals and killing innocent boys and girls with hunger is another thing entirely. What Prime Minister Netanyahu presented in October 2023 as a military operation in response to the horrific terrorist attacks has ended up becoming a new wave of illegal occupations and an unjustifiable attack against the Palestinian civilian population".

Fed up with the conduct of Israel, hundreds of actors, directors and other film industry professionals have signed a new pledge vowing not to work with Israeli film institutions - “In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror. We answer the call of Palestinian film-makers, who have urged the international film industry to refuse silence, racism, and dehumanisation, as well as to ‘do everything humanly possible’ to end complicity in their oppression.” The pledge has 1,200 signers.

To top it all now the Israel’s supreme court has ruled that “the government has failed to provide Palestinian security prisoners with adequate food for basic subsistence and ordered authorities to improve their nutrition.” 

A rare case in which the country’s highest court has ruled against the government’s conduct during the nearly two-year war. And the court has proof - Last year, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the prison system, boasted that he had reduced the conditions of security prisoners to what he described as the bare minimum required by Israeli law.

Mr. Netanyahu must know that Israel becoming a pariah state would be all too convenient for the antisemites and Jews everywhere would suffer. A strong Israel serves as a security blanket for the Jewish people in a hostile world, and its future is essential. 

I hope the US president Donald Trump will succeed to tame the man who is, by his actions, hell bent on justifying the deeds of Adolf Hitler.