by Our Correspondent in Doha
Benjamin Netanyahu is not merely a flawed leader; he is a walking catastrophe cloaked in the guise of statesmanship. At a time when Israel and the wider Middle East teeter on the brink of annihilation, Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of power at any cost has transformed him from protector to provocateur, from defender to destroyer. His tenure reeks of calculated deceit, opportunistic warfare, and the cynical exploitation of tragedy — a grotesque spectacle of a leader who trades human lives and democratic principles like chips in a rigged casino. The world’s failure to decisively repudiate this man is no less than complicity in the descent toward chaos he orchestrates with cold precision.
Netanyahu’s political strategy is a masterclass in opportunistic disaster-mongering. Prior to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, he was politically incapacitated — drowning in public outrage over his autocratic judicial overhaul, hounded by corruption scandals that threatened to end his political career, and confronted with mass protests that shook the foundations of Israeli society. Yet, rather than face accountability or seek reconciliation, Netanyahu seized catastrophe as his lifeline. The Hamas attack, a calamity born partly of his own intelligence failures, was cynically weaponised to resurrect his faltering grip on power. In a grotesque perversion of leadership, Netanyahu transformed a national tragedy into political theatre, casting himself as the indispensable saviour rising from the ashes of a crisis he helped stoke.
What followed was an orgy of militaristic overreach. The siege of Gaza was not a proportionate response but a punitive rampage — a demonstration of brutal excess designed to obliterate rather than neutralise. Tens of thousands of civilians perished, their deaths rendered collateral in Netanyahu’s theatrical war of vengeance. This was not warfare; it was state-sanctioned retribution. Instead of quelling resistance, the indiscriminate violence fanned the flames of radicalisation, ensuring that the conflict would bequeath future generations a legacy of blood and hatred.
Netanyahu did not stop at Gaza. His warmongering metastasised, engulfing Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and most dangerously, Iran. His proclaimed “preemptive” strikes are less acts of strategic foresight than the desperate gambits of a leader on the verge of political extinction. Netanyahu’s war on Iran, draped in the language of existential threat, is in truth a bid for political immortality — a grotesque ploy to distract from the legal indictments shadowing his every move and the disintegration of democratic norms under his rule. Endless conflict is his refuge; perpetual warfare his shield against accountability.
The global community bears a heavy burden for tolerating, if not enabling, Netanyahu’s rampage. Cloaked in the rhetoric of civilisation’s defence, he exploits Western fears of terrorism and religious extremism to justify atrocities that flagrantly violate international law and human dignity. He champions democracy while dismantling its institutions, consorting with extremist factions and weaponising nationalism to silence dissent. His accusations of destabilisation against others ring hollow as he unleashes a self-inflicted regional conflagration that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East.
Netanyahu’s rhetorical legerdemain is equally insidious. His invocation of nebulous “existential threats” serves not to clarify but to confuse and intimidate. Every enemy is cast as a monolithic evil, justifying a catalogue of extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and gross human rights abuses. Questioning Netanyahu invites slander — accusations of anti-Semitism or appeasement that paralyse honest debate. This climate of fear and deflection must end. The world cannot afford silence in the face of a leader who weaponises historical trauma to perpetuate unending war.
His regime is no bastion of peace or democracy; it is a citadel of autocracy. Netanyahu has transformed emergency powers into instruments of permanent authoritarianism, crushing opposition and subordinating the military to personal ambition. What once was an outlier in Israeli politics has become the normative blueprint for a state teetering on the brink of democratic collapse.
To support Netanyahu now is to endorse the unraveling of Israeli society and the ignition of wider regional conflagration. It is to legitimise a brutal calculus where might makes right, where fear and annihilation replace dialogue and law. Netanyahu’s longevity is not a testament to his leadership but a symptom of systemic decay — the lingering shadow of a man whose time has long passed.
Israel’s existential crisis is not forged by external enemies but manufactured by the man wielding its highest office. Netanyahu’s ceaseless exploitation of crisis for personal gain endangers not only Israel but the entire region’s fragile stability. His removal would not signify defeat but deliverance — a chance for Israel to reclaim its democratic ideals and for the world to shed complicity in this engineered catastrophe.
The international community must break free from Netanyahu’s spell of narrative manipulation and reject his utilitarian calculus that trades human lives for political survival. Western powers, in particular, must cease their reflexive support and confront the uncomfortable truth: Netanyahu’s Israel is a cautionary tale of democracy’s unraveling, not its triumph.
Benjamin Netanyahu is not simply digging his own grave; he is excavating a chasm beneath Israel’s democratic foundations and beckoning the world to fall in with him. The world must resist. It must reject him — unequivocally, decisively, permanently. Only then can Israel, and the region it destabilises, begin the slow, painful process of healing from the ruin he has wrought.
