Netanyahu's Dishonest Propaganda Speech

The prime minister lied when he denied that Israel is starving the population of Gaza.

Yesterday Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a dishonest and obnoxious speech to a joint session of Congress. As expected, the prime minister obsessed over Iran and exaggerated the threat from Iran and its proxies. He absurdly claimed that Israel was fighting on behalf of the “civilized” world against “barbarism.” In reality, Israeli forces have been committing countless war crimes and the Israeli government deliberately starves the entire population of Gaza.

It was crude propaganda that insulted the intelligence of anyone that heard it, and to their lasting discredit most of the audience lapped it up and cheered. One exception was Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who sat in silence holding a sign condemning Netanyahu as a war criminal guilty of genocide while her colleagues gave him standing ovations. Using a hostage and war veterans as props, Netanyahu tried to sell the U.S. on war with Iran as he has done so many times before.

Netanyahu also attacked American citizens protesting against this atrocious war as “Iran’s useful idiots.” This is a standard lie that warmongers always tell about the people that oppose them. They cannot defend the real war being fought, so they seek to smear opponents as disloyal or as dupes. This just shows everyone how desperate they are to change the subject from the disaster they have created. It is still an insult to have a foreign leader in the Capitol attacking Americans for exercising their constitutional rights to protest peacefully against policies they oppose.

The prime minister lied when he denied that Israel is starving the population of Gaza. It is an easily debunked lie. Multiple independent humanitarian relief and human rights organizations and numerous U.N. experts have documented how the Israeli government has been starving the people. The ICC prosecutor’s application for the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant said, “the evidence we have collected, including interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses, authenticated video, photo and audio material, satellite imagery and statements from the alleged perpetrator group, shows that Israel has intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival.”

The Israeli government is not only starving the population, but it is clearly doing so on purpose with full knowledge of what the consequences will be. The man-made famine in Gaza is the direct result of a deliberate policy of starvation, and Netanyahu is responsible for causing it. Netanyahu will soon be facing an ICC arrest warrant for this very crime. Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon is also at the heart of the genocide case brought against their government at the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu’s lies are pathetically weak, and any informed person can see right through them.

Netanyahu then lied again when he said that Israeli forces aren’t deliberately targeting civilians. There is extensive evidence of this, including the recent accounts of the surgeons that served in Gaza:

"You're saying that children in Gaza are being shot by snipers?" asked Smith.

"Definitively," said Dr. Perlmutter. "I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn't put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the 'world's best sniper.' And they're dead-center shots."

One of Netanyahu’s dumber talking points is when he emphasizes that Hamas wants Palestinian civilians to die, as if that somehow excuses the Israeli military when it kills them. If Netanyahu is right about what Hamas wants, he has been giving Hamas what it wants every day for more than nine months. Talk about being a useful idiot.

Among Netanyahu’s other ridiculous lies was the claim that Israeli forces hadn’t killed any civilians in Rafah. In reality, there have been many attacks on Palestinian civilians in tent camps that have killed dozens of people in each strike. Most of the war has been like that: indsicriminate attacks on places that were supposed to have been safe havens. Netanyahu’s denials on this score ring hollow.

Netanyahu predictably tried to make Israel look like an asset to the U.S. rather than the liability it is. According to the prime minister, “we also help keep American boots off the ground while protecting our shared interests in the Middle East,” but it is impossible to miss that U.S. soldiers and sailors across the region are in greater danger right now because of U.S. backing for the war in Gaza. The Israeli government knows that it can act as recklessly and aggressively as it does because it can count on the U.S. to bail it out, and in the end that means they assume that the U.S. will go to war to protect them. They pretend that they are keeping “American boots off the ground” while taking for granted that the U.S. will plunge into unnecessary wars on their behalf.

That is where Netanyahu’s “Abraham Alliance” idea comes in. He says he wants a regional anti-Iran security alliance, and of course the U.S. would be at the heart of that alliance. The purpose of such an alliance would be to wage war against Iran, and in that war the U.S. would end up bearing most of the costs. So much for keeping American boots off the ground.

Netanyahu’s presentation is a bait-and-switch. He tries to convince everyone how useful Israel is to the U.S. to justify continued military assistance, but then he switches to trying to lock the U.S. into ever more security commitments in a region that American forces should be leaving. He pretends that Israel is protecting the U.S. when it isn’t so that he can lure the U.S. into fighting more wars to protect Israel.

Perhaps the most absurd part of the speech came later on when Netanyahu pretends that Israel is keeping the U.S. safe. He said, “When Israel acts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons that could destroy Israel and threaten every American city, every city that you come from, we’re not only protecting ourselves. We’re protecting you.” The truth is that every Israeli action against Iran’s nuclear program has backfired and provoked Iran to expand its program.

The Israeli government undermined the nuclear deal that actually prevented Iran from being able to build nuclear weapons and under Netanyahu’s leadership it successfully agitated for the U.S. to renege on the deal. Iran is closer to having a nuclear weapon today than it has ever been because of the Israeli government and Netanyahu himself. Despite all this, Iran has not been trying to build nuclear weapons for more than twenty years. If Israel launches more “preventive” attacks in the future, that could change. Israel hasn’t been protecting the U.S., and with its own nuclear arsenal Israel is already secure. Netanyahu has been fearmongering about an Iranian bomb for most of my life, and everything he has done about it during that time has only made it more likely.