Opinion: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has no moral compass – he merely wishes to keep up appearances for his patrons in the West.
The following was Haaretz’s lead editorial on May 20, 2025, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctant decision to renew humanitarian aid going into Gaza forced him and his coalition members to launch a public relations offensive aimed at appeasing their electorate – the same voters who had been promised collective punishment on the Palestinians in the form of starvation.
After telling his ministers that “there’s a global campaign about so-called hunger in Gaza, along with pressure from our allies in Europe and the United States,” Netanyahu was compelled to release a video on social media to justify the decision to his disappointed electorate, insisting there was no other choice. “A problem has arisen,” he said, adding that Israel is “approaching the red line” of hunger in Gaza.
For anyone who still believes that a “red line” represents a moral threshold a state mustn’t cross – it’s time to wake up. Israel is far past that point. The red line Netanyahu mentioned is that of public diplomacy.
“Our best friends worldwide, the most pro-Israel senators… they tell us they’re providing all the aid, weapons, support and protection in the UN Security Council, but they can’t support images of mass hunger,” Netanyahu said. This is precisely what a nation’s leader sounds like when mass starvation is wielded as a weapon against a civilian population.
But someone like Netanyahu wouldn’t disappoint his voters without promising them something aggressive in return. Immediately after announcing the renewal of humanitarian aid, the prime minister explained that the “war and victory plan” is, in fact, “to take control of the entire territory.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich followed, eager to clarify that the decision to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza shouldn’t be mistaken for him or the government developing, heaven forbid, a moral backbone. “I understand the anger and frustration,” he said, adding that if the starvation continued, “the world would force us to stop the war, and we’d lose.”
He then sought to reassure his voters with a promise of total destruction, saying, “The IDF is operating in Gaza with five divisions, with a force unseen since the beginning of the war. No more raids and in-and-out operations. We’re occupying, cleansing and staying there until Hamas is destroyed.”
To make sure this message gets across, Smotrich concluded with chilling clarity: “On our way to destroying Hamas, we are destroying everything that’s left of the Strip.”
Netanyahu and Smotrich aren’t attempting to conceal the crimes they’re already committing or those planned for the near future: the destruction of Gaza, its occupation and the orchestration of mass transfer.
To them, the humanitarian catastrophe is merely a public diplomacy issue. In a reality many Israelis refuse to see – but the world watches in astonishment – what Israel is doing in Gaza isn’t a matter of public diplomacy, but a collective war crime. The images emerging from Gaza are an indelible stain on Israel’s moral conscience.
Instead of prolonging this catastrophe, the government must allow substantial humanitarian aid to immediately halt the mass starvation of Palestinians and end the war through a cease-fire agreement that secures the return of all the hostages.
RELATED:
