Benjamin Netanyahu

"This vicious circle will not be solved by power, not be solved by tanks, and not will be — nor will it be solved by troops, only by political agreement and, above all and first of all, lifting this criminal siege, for God’s sake, after 17 years.... Netanyahu is busy with politics. And here comes this Biden and tells Israel what Israel wanted to hear. I would love him also to say some things about the Palestinian suffering, the Palestinian agony. He ignored it totally, and this is very regretful. But by the end of the day, this is what Israel needs now: some kind of leadership. And it totally lacks it. Nobody is around, really, to understand that we have to go for a new way. Nobody is there."

"Two things have changed since Obama's failed attempt to revive peace talks. First, Netanyahu has alienated the large majority of Jewish Americans. The days when Israel could rely on automatic Jewish-American support have gone. For this, the Israeli prime minister is almost single-handedly responsible. In 2015 he broke all protocol when he opposed Obama's signature Iran nuclear deal in a speech to Congress. Since most Jewish Americans are Democratic, and since the US right has increasingly flirted with antisemitic tropes, this was a reckless gamble. Supporting Netanyahu’s Israel became a Republican thing. Second, Israel has the most hard-right government in the democratic world. Netanyahu has borrowed antisemitic imagery about George Soros from the likes of Trump and Hungary's Viktor Orbán. His logic is that Jews can only be safe in Israel, which gives him a warped affinity for nativist groups across the west. To most non-Israeli Jews, and roughly half of Israel, Netanyahu’s ideological bedfellows are repugnant. Yet he is the most moderate member of the government he leads."

"wake up and start responding to the tough challenges that the Israeli economy faces"

"Yesterday, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the war on Hamas his nation's second independence war and warned that it would be long. Meanwhile, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross has called the humanitarian situation in Gaza a, quote, "catastrophic failing that the world must not tolerate."

"The people who are running the show for some time -- which is how we arrived at this disastrous destination -- are these absolutist actors who, they might say "We'll negotiate and here's a condition and here's, y'know, whatever." They might say that to some people, but in practice, we see from, y'know, many years of Netanyahu governance, every single document and statement as you showed of people from Hamas, these are people who want everything, right? They see half of the people on the land as the problem."

"Had [Israel] followed Biden’s advice, they would be waiting for a bomb to drop onto them. But fortunately, you know, Bibi [Netanyahu] calls me quite a bit, and we have a lot of talks. But I always say, ‘Make up your own mind.’ But Bibi has his own opinions."

"The value that even Netanyahu would see in it is the consolidation between the evangelical bases of the Republican Party and the state of Israel during a very, very difficult period where Israel is getting a lot of pushback from Jewish Americans who are offended by what's happening in Gaza and beyond."

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers remarks at 2024 UN General Assembly PBS NewsHour Streamed live on Sep 27, 2024 on Youtube"

"The US is putting enormous pressure on PM, Netanyahu, to abandon the Judicial ‘Reform’, which however constitutes the key-stone undergirding the whole ‘Land of Israel’ edifice: A project that is predicated upon ‘re-taking’ all of the West Bank from Palestinian ‘hands’. An enterprise that has the potential to shake the region to its very core -- and to trigger war."