Norman Finklestein on Benjamin Netanyahu: "He's an obnoxious, narcissistic, Jewish supremacist"

If you read the liberal commentators or commentators of the West, every few months they're predicting the end of Netanyahu's rule.  It doesn't happen because Netanyahu, he is a reflection and a representation of Israeli society.  He's an obnoxious, narcissistic, Jewish supremacist who thinks that only Jews [howth, inaudible] in God's grand design.  Everybody else - the Goyim, as they're called - they have no place in God's grand design except where Israel decides to situate or place them.

So the first fact is we have to bear in mind he remains, even now, very popular in Israel.  The claim is his standing up to Iran has increased his popularity, but as a general rule.

Number two: Israel is a democracy.  Were it true that his policies were unpopular, another candidate would emerge.  That's the nature of a democracy.  Have you heard of another candidate who has emerged by dissociating himself with or denouncing Netanyahu's policies.  The answer is "no."

Number three: It's not just the Israeli state.  If you look at the Israeli society - I'm not talking about the people at the helm of the state - the Israeli society overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly supports the genocidal war in Gaza.  It's about 95% of the Jewish Israelis...  I have the statistics right here...  "About 60% of Israeli Jews oppose any humanitarian aid to Gaza..."  In polls on the issue of the war, only 1.8% (that was in October), 7% (that was in December) and 3.2% (that's January) of Jewish Israelis believe the IDF was using too much firepower in Gaza.

~ Norman Finklestein, "Norman Finklestein: All you know about Israel is wrong," PoliticsJOE, 0:15 mark, May 2, 2024

Norman Finkelstein on how many young Jews are opposing Israel's war on the people of Gaza

You look at what the evidence shows, not based on biased sources or naturally-biased sources, but on the available evidence.  And I tried to be a strict adherent of the two principles of truth and justice and that's where I landed.  And I think frankly that's where most of the world has landed and it's also, incidentally but not trivially, it's where a large part of the young Jewish population has landed.  If you go to the demonstrations now, the ones that have garnered the headlines, say the one in Grand Central Station, it was overwhelmingly Jewish.  It was all organized by Jewish organizations, young people mostly, but not entirely.  The Statue of Liberty demonstration: again, it was Jewish young people who organized the demonstration.  So this idea that it's somehow polarized ethnically is belied by the facts.

Now I will wholeheartedly admit that when I first started out we were a handful of people, Jews who opposed what Israel was doing.  But the spectrum has radically changed in recent years.  I'm just one among a large number, a sea of Jews who oppose what's going on, not because they're self-hating, not because they're indifferent to the faith of Israelis, but because the evidence is overwhelming.

You started out by saying you're not knowledgeable about the topic.  Fair enough.  There are 10,000 topics I'm not knowledgeable about and where you have much more knowledge, I'm quite certain of that.  But this is not a particularly complicated situation right now.  The Israeli government is openly, unabashedly, flagrantly, blatantly - it's declared a war of genocide on the people of Gaza.

~ Norman Finkelstein, "Israel vs. Palestine with Norman Finkelstein," 8:10 mark, November 17, 2023