Opinion | The World, Not Trump, Defeated Netanyahu

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) arrive for a press conference in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC on September 29, 2025. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

"Israel can't fight the world, Bibi!" U.S. President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Well, despite the mountains of hollow words spewed by Trump, in one lucid moment, he expressed a simple truth, one that deserves to be engraved in golden letters.

Before anything else, we must examine the commonly heard slogan: "The whole world is against us." Or perhaps more accurately: "We are against the whole world." After Hamas' October 7 massacre, almost the entire world stood with Israel. Still, when Israel transformed the campaign against Hamas into a wholesale assault on the Gaza Strip – its sons and buildings – global attitudes dramatically changed.

The more the Israel Defense Forces struck lethal blows on civilians, the more the world came to understand that this was an unrestrained killing machine.

The horrors unfolded in full view of the world. If, in the past, the habit here was to hit and cry foul, the strategy nowadays seems to be to strike and boast. The list of blood-curdling, hair-raising remarks made by senior Israeli officials and influencers could fill an entire book. The world could scarcely believe that genocide was taking place in plain sight – let alone carried out with such sickening pride by the descendants of Europe's 20th-century victims.

Protests against Israel's deeds raged around the world. I cannot remember, nor perhaps those older than I, such waves of solidarity that swept city squares around the world. Palestinian flags popped up in the remotest of places. Rescuing Palestine has become the world's conscientious decree.

I ask myself what motivates an Italian citizen to give up his business one day, his safe routine, to join a stormy protest on the streets for other people, foreign people, living thousands of kilometers away with a different culture and language. Is it antisemitism, as Israelis are quick to claim? Love of Palestine? Or something deeper? I make no pretension to explain this phenomenon. This does merit serious study to figure out how such a heartwarming phenomenon of this magnitude is taking place, mainly in Europe.

Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly last monthCredit: Charly Triballeau/AFP

I believe these are deep pangs of European guilt. Having repressed the Jews, Europeans handed Arabs the job of atoning for their sins. The brunt of the burden was given to the Palestinian people, the majority of whom were displaced from their homeland overnight.

Meanwhile, Western public opinion, in light of the horrors happening in Gaza, began to abandon the concept that required it to support the state of Israel in whatever it does – in order to atone for the sin of the Holocaust.

Netanyahu liberated Europe from this decree, with the public there treating Israel as it would any other country. Europeans came to realize that it was not only Europe that was perpetrating crimes – So does Israel, when it can.

Israel's conduct in Gaza lends legitimacy to the European public's condemnation of Israel's crimes, without feeling any pangs of guilt.

President Donald Trump listens during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the State Dining Room of the White House, Washington, in September.Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

The state of Israel can no longer act with impunity, at least not according to the world's public opinion. This is a very positive development for the Israeli public as well, because impunity had become, with time, a monster – inwardly, too. Prolonged impunity distorts, not just in Gaza but also in Tel Aviv. I suggest we hurry and look at the river of people who are returning to the Gaza Strip. The edict of life appears grander and more impressive than the edict of destruction and extermination.