The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.
Benjamin Netanyahu
As the humanitarian crisis intensifies in Gaza, the world is idly standing by, waiting for one man to change course. Despite a conclusion from a UN Special Committee that Israel’s warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide, there appears to be no movement from Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, to stop this onslaught.
The question is, does he want it to stop?
It seems not! His latest plan is to fully reoccupy the Gaza Strip! It seems he’s forgotten about why the conflict started! He’s forgotten about the hostages. No wonder conspiracy theorists are suggesting October 7th, 2023, was a false flag and that this is a concentrated effort to wipe the Palestinian people from existence.
"The die has been cast. We're going for the full conquest of the Gaza Strip – and defeating Hamas," local Israeli journalists quote a senior official as saying.
And unbelievably – quite unbelievably – world leaders have no concrete method of stopping him! He has become an untethered monster! A pariah of the 21st century.
His supporters refer to him as "King Bibi", and his tenure has been characterised by warnings about the persecution of Israeli Jews and the imminent threat from Iran. However, not all of Israel had supported him until Hamas' 2023 strike and declaration of war.
News outlets, like CNN, claim that the act of terrorism by Hamas unified Israel in a way not seen in a long time. Netanyahu declared war with these ominous words: "The enemy will pay an unprecedented price. [Israel will] return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known."
He wasn’t wrong!
Netanyahu is on the right.
Benjamin Netanyahu, born on October 21, 1949, in Tel Aviv, Israel, has had a long and contentious political career marked by accusations of corruption, divisive rhetoric, and a hardline approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Netanyahu got his extreme views from his father, Benzion Netanyahu, a Revisionist Zionist historian who denied Palestinian indigeneity and pushed for Jewish dominance. As prime minister, he has often prioritised security and territorial claims over peace negotiations, which has led to significant controversies throughout his tenure.
Netanyahu is a nationalist! This ideology, which emphasises Jewish sovereignty and security, has influenced Netanyahu from an early age. He served in the Israeli Defence Forces and later studied architecture at prestigious institutions in the United States, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a degree.
During the height of the Vietnam conflict in the 1960s, Netanyahu studied in Philadelphia, USA.
Some of his old classmates told the Washington Post about him. Deborah Lefco said he was anti-counterculture.
"It was the Vietnam era, and we were all against the war in Vietnam because we were kids. He was the lone voice in the wilderness in support of the conservative line in those days."
Others regarded him as affable but serious, a chess club and soccer team member, and emotionally older and more jaded than his years.
Image: Wikipedia
In Israel in 1972, four members of the terrorist group Black September hijacked Sabena Flight 571, forced the pilot to land at Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion Airport), and threatened to kill everyone on board unless 315 Israeli-held Palestinian prisoners (convicted on various terrorism charges) were released.
The mission to retake the plane was called Operation Isotope, and it featured Israeli soldiers camouflaged as mechanics and technicians who approached the plane before storming it. What happened in those moments is rarely recounted.
Netanyahu was detaining one of the hijackers, 18-year-old Theresa Halsa, who would survive to serve a 220-year prison sentence and be released early in 1983. When another Israeli commando slapped her with his gun, causing it to discharge, the bullet passed through Halsa and then into Netanyahu's arm.
From his book From Night Flak to Hijack: It’s a Small World Flight 571, Captain Reginald Levy wrote:
There were shots being fired but I couldn’t tell from where they were being fired or at whom. There were no loud reports but a sort of ‘pop’. I was trying to find Dora but, of course, everyone was down on the floor. Everyone that is, except one unfortunate young Danish girl who stood up to see what was going on and got a bullet in her head and later died. I kept calling ‘Dora, Dora,’ and eventually I saw a small hand waving over the seat where I knew Dora was sitting and found her there protecting the little six-year-old girl. I picked up the child and took her out of the plane and handed her to one of the soldiers then returned to Dora again.
In the end, two of the four hijackers and one passenger were killed. Two additional people were hurt, along with Netanyahu.
Entebbe Airport crisis 1976 Image: AFP
Four years later, two militants of Wadie Haddad's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked a 248-passenger Air France Airbus on June 27, 1976. The hijackers demanded the release of 40 Palestinian and allied militants and 13 in four other countries.
The hijackers diverted the flight to Entebbe International Airport in Uganda, under the leadership of notorious dictator Idi Amin at the time. Following the jet's landing, Amin personally welcomed the hijackers at Entebbe, receiving support from 100 Ugandan military personnel. The hijackers separated Israelis and several non-Israeli Jews into a room after bringing all the hostages to a derelict airport. The following two days, 148 non-Israeli hostages were released and flown to Paris. Most of the 94 survivors, who were primarily Israelis, along with the 12-person Air France crew, remained imprisoned.
Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, initiated a military rescue effort by the Israeli forces to combat Amin's Ugandan Army.
On the night of July 3, 1976, Israeli transport planes flew 100 commandos to Uganda. Three hostages died, but 102 were rescued in 90 minutes. After the Israeli rescue mission, Ugandan officials assassinated Dora Bloch, a hostage who was sick during the hijacking and evacuated from the plane for treatment before the commandos arrived.
The leader of the Sayeret Matkal squad during the rescue effort died in Operation Entebbe. It was Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan Netanyahu. He was the only military fatality in the operation.
Last known picture of Yoni Netanyahu (photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
“To receive the ‘knock on the door’ about my brother and then to be the one who knocked on my parents’ door made it seem as if Yoni had died twice.”
“As long as I breathe, I will never forget his cry and that of my dear mother.”
Benjamin Netanyahu
After the death of his brother, Netanyahu started an anti-terrorism foundation known as the Jonathan Institute. His grief also pushed him into politics. Some commentators believe that the death of his brother continues to influence Netanyahu's beliefs today.
In 1996, Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister for the first time, becoming the first Israeli leader born after the state’s founding and the first to be directly elected by the public, albeit by a margin of only approximately one per cent.
During this period, his government took a hardline stance against Palestinian negotiations, famously labelling the Palestinian Authority as a terrorist organisation. Despite this, he met Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat for the first time. This culminated in an agreed partial withdrawal of Israeli troops from Hebron in January 1997, in accordance with the 1993 Oslo Accords. However, he was pressured by his coalition to decrease the amount of land given to the Palestinians during subsequent withdrawals.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Erez Crossing on the Gazan border on January 15, 1997, to finalize and sign the Hebron agreement (Avi Ochayon/ GPO)
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister (1996–1999, 2009–2021, 2022–present). However, his rule has brought endless conflict, entrenched apartheid, and eroded Israeli democracy. His refusal to pursue peace, his corruption, and his alliances with fascistic elements have made him one of the most destructive leaders in Israel’s history. Nevertheless, through manipulation and fear, he continues to cling to power—leaving a trail of bloodshed and division in his wake.
During his tenure, Netanyahu has escalated settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, violating international law and making a two-state solution impossible. His governments have:
- Expanded apartheid policies, enforcing separate legal systems for Israelis and Palestinians.
- Ordered brutal military assaults on Gaza (2008–2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023–present), killing thousands of civilians.
- Supported settler violence, encouraging far-right militias to terrorise Palestinian villages.
- Pushed racist rhetoric, calling Palestinians a "demographic threat" and warning of Arab voters "coming in droves."
His 2018 Nation-State Law enshrined Jewish supremacy, declaring that only Jews have the right to self-determination in Israel, further marginalising Palestinian citizens.
Netanyahu celebrates victory in 2009. Image: Getty Images
Netanyahu’s grip on power has been sustained by corruption and legal manipulation. He faces multiple indictments for:
- Bribery (trading regulatory favours for positive media coverage).
- Fraud and breach of trust (accepting luxury gifts in exchange for political favours).
- Undermining the judiciary to escape accountability, sparking mass protests in 2023.
Despite these scandals, he has clung to power by forming alliances with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, trading political favours for loyalty.
He stays in power by using fear, division, and authoritarianism. Simply put, Netanyahu is a fascist. As an outsider, I am both appalled and astonished that a Jew, whose people suffered at the hands of far-right extremism, is now inflicting similar oppression on others who happen to hold different beliefs.
As a fearmonger, he paints himself as the only leader who can "protect" Israelis from Palestinians and Iran, despite his policies fostering more violence. Stoking hatred against Arabs, leftists, and critics to rally his base has divided Israeli society.
Like every fascist dictator, he has weakened the court system and attacked the free press, while allying with extremist figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Excerpts from Microsoft Co-Pilot 2025
Netanyahu takes advantage of US support, and with Trump at his side, he is confident that he has unwavering military and political support from the US, regardless of the human rights violations in his policies.
Image: CNN
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a surprise and unprecedented assault on southern Israel, marking the deadliest day in the country’s history. The attack, which was timed to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, began with a massive rocket barrage—over 4,000 projectiles—followed by coordinated ground incursions through breaches in the Gaza-Israel barrier.
Hamas fighters infiltrated Israeli towns and military bases, killing approximately 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others, including attendees of the Nova Music Festival. This operation, dubbed the Al-Aqsa Flood, overwhelmed Israel’s defences and exposed critical intelligence failures.
Israel responded with a full-scale military campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas, resulting in over 61,000 Palestinian deaths according to Gaza’s health ministry, though the figures do not distinguish between militants and civilians. The war has since escalated into a prolonged humanitarian crisis, characterised by widespread famine and accusations of war crimes committed by both sides.
Even with Netanyahu's demeanour, conspiracy theorists had suggested from the outset that he and his far-right cronies orchestrated this attack. Not only would it fuel his ideology, but it would also deflect from the mounting indictments against him.
As soon as the event happened, false information and misleading stories started to spread that denied Hamas's involvement and played down the violence. Many people claimed that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) planned the attacks to gain permission to invade the Gaza Strip and that the IDF was responsible for killing all or most of the Israelis who died in those attacks.
Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, said that people spreading false information took its reporting out of its original context on purpose so that they could "falsely claim that Haaretz confirmed the false hypothesis that the IDF conducted mass killings of its people."
BBC Verify's expert on false information, Shayan Sardarizadeh, said that the "denialist narrative" that "Israel killed its citizens on October 7th, not Hamas" has "unfortunately become popular online."
Later, it was proven that IDF soldiers and kibbutz security teams did fire on civilians who were trying to escape or who were being detained and taken to Gaza during the October 7 strikes.
Hamas has confessed to the attacks. They had planned the attack for years, and Israel was aware that the militant group had smuggled huge quantities of weapons into Gaza via Egypt and built a vast tunnel network. The intelligence community received numerous indications in the lead-up to the invasion, but these were all ignored because a misconception had taken hold that Hamas was “deterred” and had no intention of attacking Israel.
Despite conspiracy theories being put to bed, the fact that some believe Netanyahu could do such a thing is damning. Indeed, writer Lilly Cheslaw on Tortoise, in March 2025, wrote, ‘Last week an investigation by Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, concluded that Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy to allow Qatari money into Gaza was one of the key failures that precipitated the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7.’
Demonstrators hold a banner that reads “The fighting kills the hostages” during a protest in Tel Aviv [Nir Elias/Reuters]
Netanyahu’s purpose towards Gaza is not about freeing hostages; it’s about gaining complete control of the territory. No wonder there are still conspiracy theorists out there. He no longer listens to reason, even when the voices are coming from the families of the hostages.
Speaking at a rally in Tel Aviv in May 2025 was Einav Zangauker, the mother of captive Matan Zangauker, who directly addressed Netanyahu: “Tell me, Mr Prime Minister: how do you go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning? How do you look in the mirror knowing that you’re abandoning 58 hostages?”
📖 ‘How do you go to sleep?’: Israeli captive families slam Netanyahu at rally
The Israel Democracy Institute revealed that about 73 per cent of Israelis say Netanyahu should take responsibility for October 7 and either resign now or after the war. That is unlikely to happen. And despite the findings, which have intensified calls for an independent investigation and scrutiny of Netanyahu’s leadership, it seems he is not in the least perturbed.
The walls may seem to be closing in on Israel’s prime minister. However, as he fends off charges, damning poll numbers, and growing calls from hostage families to mount a national inquiry, the truth is that the more divisive the international community is, the more fuel for the fire being stoked by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sources: History of War, January 2015
The Untold Truth of Benjamin Netanyahu 2023
United Nations 2024
The Jerusalem Post 2015
Netanyahu: The Early Years
October 7 findings put Netanyahu under fresh scrutiny 2025
Netanyahu to propose full reoccupation of Gaza, Israeli media report 2025
Israel, October 7th, 2023: What went wrong? The Irish Times 5 October 2024
Denial of the October 7 attacks - Wikipedia
© Copyright Thomas Ferguson 2025 (for The Amnesia of History)