Our Wednesday News Analysis | Netanyahu's Last Stand: When Reality Is Low, Go Lower

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a news conference in Jerusalem on Monday. Credit: Ronen Zvulun/AFP

The real problem for Netanyahu is that each accusation in the three-minute mini-drama actually happened.The video is a deadly efficient reminder that under Netanyahu's government, citizens really were arrested for criticizing Israel's wars on Facebook
or dragged from their homes for handing out flyers supporting the release of hostages.

Israelis know how hard the Netanyahu's government is working to undermine independent media, and how it has energetically filled key professional positions with fundamentalists or political loyalists, in the Shin Bet, the police, and Mossad, and even most recently, Netanyahu's personal lawyer as the state comptroller (in a Knesset vote currently being challenged in the High Court, which on Thursday proposed a revote).

And nobody can forget that the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, has been handing out weapons to Jewish civilians like candy.

Just a few weeks ago, political adverts for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition were kind of funny. The cleverly scripted video poking fun at caricatures of secular-left-wing Israelis, while a closeted right-wing family member tried to "come out" as a Netanyahu supporter, made even some lefties chuckle at themselves. Now things have taken a darker turn.

This week, the videos pumped out by the prime minister and his loyalist entourage, some AI-generated, raise a grimace rather than a smile. There are no cheeky, surrealist Iranian-sponsored, antisemitic Lego-hip hop trolling videos; rather, the scenes look like they were developed by solitary incels, trolling the dark web for evidence of conspiracies against them.

Moreover, each of the two prominent pro-government (rather, anti-opposition) videos look guaranteed to backfire. One was posted by the prime minister himself. It shows a perturbed looking young man, alone in his dimly-lit room reading George Orwell's "1984." The guy then turns on the TV and watches escalating incidents of political persecution against right-wingers by a new government led by Naftali Bennett and other opposition figures.

These include his buddy getting arrested for a right-wing Facebook post, police raiding the ultra-right-wing Channel 14, and the nefarious new government replacing all major appointments to Israeli security services with political loyalists. The anti-government protest movement from 2023 Brothers and Sisters in Arms then establishes a civilian militia. The clip repeats age-old accusations that such a coalition includes an Arab party and is establishing a Palestinian state while paralyzing security policy...

Read more: Netanyahu's Last Stand: When Reality Is Low, Go Lower

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ISRAEL AND THE US: THE END OF THE ‘SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP’

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israel-and-the-us-the-end-of-the-special-relationship/

By Jeremy Salt
Published June 23, 2026

This is hard to imagine, but it would surely go down well with the American people. They’ve had enough of Israel.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

In public, the ‘special relationship’ was still special, but the cracks were beginning to show. A special friend wouldn’t kill US citizens (apart from the murdered Liberty crew, Rachel Corrie in Rafah in 2003, and then Furkan Dogan in the attack on the Mavi Marmara in 2010) or steal your plutonium and steal your secrets, as the Mossad agent Jonathan Pollard did. All of this is surely what enemies do.

In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published The Israeli Lobby, the first full-length critical study of the US-Israel relationship.
The fact that it could be published at all, and in New York by Farrar, Straus and Giroux no less, was itself a sign of changing times.

The basic conclusion of the authors was that there should be no special relationship, that Israel should be treated like any other country.
Morally and legally, the relationship was damaging to the US.
The message hit home, despite the slanderous attacks on Walt and Mearsheimer by the Israeli lobby and its outliers.

It took a long time, but the ‘special relationship’ between the United States and Israel has finally begun to end.

It began with Henry S. Truman in the 1940s. He supported unlimited Zionist settlement in Palestine. He overrode the advice of professional policymakers in the State Department and proclaimed US recognition of Israel in 1948. This followed the manipulation of the vote on partition. Without US intimidation of vulnerable states a year earlier, it never would have passed.

By early 1948, the US had walked back from its commitment to a two-state division of Palestine. The reason was the rapidly spreading bloodshed across the still British-occupied territory. The new policy was to place Palestine under a UN trusteeship for the time being.

This was the official policy up to May 1948, when Truman unilaterally declared recognition of Israel in a statement from the White House. Even as the news spread through the UN General Assembly, the US delegation had still not been officially informed.

Someone was sent to the Secretary-General’s office to find out what was going on, and the ticker tape announcement of recognition was found screwed up and tossed into the wastepaper basket.

There was fury in the US delegation at this betrayal. One person was so enraged he had to be held down in his chair. The head of the delegation, Warren Austin, walked out and went back to his hotel (the Waldorf Astoria), leaving it to his deputy to step forward and confirm the news...

Read more: Israel and the US: The End of the ‘Special Relationship’

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OPINION: ISRAEL IS CONDUCTING A SYSTEMATIC CAMPAIGN OF ETHNIC CLEANSING AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IN THE WEST BANK

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-06-18/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israel-is-conducting-a-systematic-campaign-of-ethnic-cleansing-in-the-west-bank/0000019e-db02-d7a4-a99f-dfce00a20000

By Ehud Olmert
Published June 18, 2026

These are unprecedented and harsh accusations against the Israeli government and the defense establishment, especially from a former prime minister. But after years of restraint, I have no choice but to make them

Israeli troops walk amid smoke rising from a fire started by crowd control grenades, during a protest against a settlement near Hebron in the West Bank, June 9, 2026. Credit: Mussa Qawasma/Reuters

Can anyone seriously believe that the violence Israelis inflict on Palestinians can simply be brushed aside –
And that people around the world, who see the destruction, hatred, persecution, arson,
And brutality carried out by Israelis will close their eyes to it as so many of us do here?

It is time to stop the self-righteousness, the hypocrisy and the charade – and confront the enemies within.

The fight against Jewish terrorism in the West Bank must advance to the next stage and be waged with greater determination. The daily terrorism that is managed, directed, encouraged, and supported by the Israeli government can no longer be tolerated.

What is happening across the West Bank today is not the work of "70 kids … from broken homes," as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once tried to claim, disingenuously. Nor are these the crimes of a small, anomalous minority among settlement residents, as some leaders of the settler movement often contend.

Today, it must be said that the State of Israel is conducting an organized, systematic, state-funded campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Not in the Gaza Strip, not in southern Lebanon, not in Syria, but in areas of the West Bank that are under the exclusive security control of the state and its security and law enforcement apparatus.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, last year. Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

At the forefront of this campaign are the prime minister, Defense Minister Israel Katz and the rest of the cabinet, of course. The drive behind these acts is reflected in the statements and actions of senior ministers who seek the full annexation of the West Bank without their Palestinian inhabitants remaining there. I am referring specifically to Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and the other ministers who support, through word and deed, policies that amount to the expulsion of Palestinian residents.

These are harsh words. Never before have such serious accusations been leveled against an Israeli government and the entire defense establishment, certainly not by someone who once held ultimate responsibility for Israel's security. But after a long and painful period of restraint, there is no choice but to say these things plainly and in full.

Nothing can justify turning a blind eye to what is happening daily in Palestinian villages across the West Bank: pogroms, children and adults injured in and outside their homes, fields and property set ablaze, and large-scale theft – especially of cattle and sheep, the primary source of livelihood for many residents. Faced with all this, it is impossible to remain calm, forgiving or unwilling to confront the perpetrators, their supporters and their leaders...

Read more: Opinion: Israel Is Conducting a Systematic Campaign of Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in the West Bank