I say, with a heavy heart, and as someone whose grandparents escaped the Nazis by coming to the UK before the war, that Netanyahu and his kleptocratic war mongers do not represent me in any way.
He has said that he wants to finish Hamas, a goal I agree with, but I am increasingly thinking this means razing Gaza to the ground and making it uninhabitable for years to come. At this rate, it would have been kinder to just nuke it.
We are allowing Israel to do things that no civilised country has done in war since the end of WW2, and that we call Russia war criminals for doing. So many videos posted by IDF are vile and Israel just responds with the stock line that it is an ‘isolated incident and not in line with IDF values’, when clearly it is far from isolated.
I do think that Israel is in an unenviable position and the Hamas attack was their 9/11 and they have every right to respond aggressively. However, they are a democracy with a powerful army and one of the best intelligence services in the world, as well as receiving intelligence from U.S listening and satellites. They can do better than wholesale indiscriminate destruction. And dropping leaflets first, pushing families into tinier and tinier slivers of land with no food or sanitation, does not ameliorate this.
The treatment of POWs is often what distinguishes decent and disciplined armies from murderous rabble.
I think Israel is getting very close to the line where they will lose international and even U.S support. They need to urgently remove Netanyahu and anyone who has made comments supporting the elimination of the Palestinian people and start engaging with the World in finding a long term two state solution.