The Moral Collapse of Bibi Netanyahu by Cesar Chelala

 To have a moral collapse, one needs have morality as the starting human feature. I have problem with this heading, which assumes that Bibi the bastard, child-killer, genocidal maniac, guilty of war crimes in Gaza, had any morality to begin with. He did not. -- HS

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Benjamin Netanyahu, once determined to be remembered as Israel’s ultimate protector, has instead presided over one of the most damaging periods in the nation’s history. It is a tragic fate for a man who sought the mantle of heroism and now finds himself associated with unprecedented harm to Israel and to Israelis.

Following the war in Gaza — and especially after the October 7, 2023 attack — antisemitic incidents surged worldwide. The violence continued through 2024–2026, with 2025 becoming the deadliest year for antisemitic attacks, with fatalities recorded across three continents: Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) reported a 21 percent increase in U.K. antisemitic incidents in the first half of 2026 compared with the previous year, including record-high assaults, synagogue-related attacks, and repeated assaults on Jews and Israelis in public spaces.

One of the most severe and authoritative criticisms of Israel’s prime minister came in 2023, when members of the Entebbe rescue squad published a letter accusing Netanyahu of “sacrificing the State of Israel and the people of Israel for your own interests.” The veterans condemned Netanyahu and his allies for smearing anti–judicial overhaul protesters as anarchists and terrorists. “Deliberately, for years, you have been practicing ‘divide and rule,’ separating and pitting Israelis against each other. The Israeli public that does not support you has become ‘small,’ ‘weak,’ ‘traitors,’ and ‘anarchists.’”

Belittling his opponents has long been Netanyahu’s weapon of choice. When dozens of delegates walked out during his speech at the United Nations on September 24, he dismissed them as “moral cowards.” At the same time, he lashed out at every country that criticized him — France, Britain, and Turkey among them.

The international community, initially slow to respond to the Israel Defense Forces’ actions, has grown increasingly critical. Its voice is crucial in halting the Israeli government’s destructive policies. As Gideon Levy, the noted Israeli journalist, recently told Counterpunch “Israel is on a race to the abyss and will only stop if forced to. It is up to the international community to impose sanctions to stop Israel’s criminal delirium.”

As if the killing of more than 22,000 children in Gaza — their hands reaching out from bombed buildings in desperation — were not enough, Netanyahu has now ordered the displacement of West Bank residents in an apparent attempt to terrify them into abandoning their land. A United Nations report released last June found that “financial and military support” from Israeli authorities had “enabled settler attacks.”

A September 2026 report by B’Tselem, titled The Elimination Project, examined Israeli policies and practices affecting Palestinian collective life in the occupied West Bank. Drawing on 2,000 testimonies and extensive field research, the report describes policies and acts that international law recognizes and prohibits, including annexation, settlement construction, forcible transfer, persecution, systematic violence, and the denial of fundamental Palestinian rights.

The U.S. government has imposed no restrictions on settlement expansion, illegal annexation, military operations, or settler violence — all of which have reached record levels under Netanyahu’s administration, the most far-right, pro-settler government in Israel’s history. Asr Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, has written, “Under this government, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, has expedited the destruction of Palestinian homes while streamlining the building of Israeli ones, whereas Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, has distributed arms to Israelis by easing regulations for licenses, adding around 7,000 firearms to settlers.”

Adding further fuel to the crisis, several retired IDF generals visited the West Bank in August 2026 and publicly denounced the government for allowing settlers in the occupied territory to carry out violent acts against Palestinians. Asaf Agmon, a retired Air Force general, said the attacks resembled the pogroms once suffered by Jews in Europe. Ephraim Sneh, a retired brigadier general and former minister of health, was even more direct: “This is ethnic cleansing, to put it simply.”

These facts are not the end of Netanyahu’s troubles. He now faces renewed questions about whether he had prior knowledge of Hamas’s October 7 attack. In early September, Haaretz reported that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates, had secretly warned Netanyahu that Hamas was considering a major operation. Predictably, Netanyahu and Israeli security leaders denied the report.

The elections of October 27, 2026, will determine whether Netanyahu remains in power. He has already inflicted considerable damage on Israel and on the Jewish people. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the great physician and humanist, winner of the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote, “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” In Netanyahu’s case, the answer is painfully clear: what died in him is his moral compass.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of the 1979 Overseas Press Club of America award for the article “Missing or Disappeared in Argentina: The Desperate Search for Thousands of Abducted Victims.”