This article was originally published on JNS.org on August 11, 2025.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not known for seeking out journalists, especially not the foreign press corps that has, for years, attacked him personally and politically while accusing Israel of the worst imaginable crimes. But on August 10, he broke form.
In flawless English and with his trademark communicative vigor, Netanyahu met face-to-face in Jerusalem with representatives of the very media outlets that have turned Gaza into a theater of blood libels and the IDF into their chief villain.
The reason? To take the fight directly to the “eighth front” of the war—the avalanche of disinformation that has become as dangerous as rockets or tunnels. Since Israel announced its expanded operations in Gaza, anti-Israel activists and complicit journalists have gleefully called it an “occupation,” reviving the same tired propaganda Hamas has relied on for decades.
Palestinian leaders openly admit this is their greatest weapon. Fatah’s Jibril Rajoub called Oct. 7, 2023, “the Palestinian Holocaust—our winning card.” Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad boasted, “The whole world is now against Israel, accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
Netanyahu knows the stakes. As he spoke, he faced a storm at home: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatening to quit, hostage families calling for a nationwide strike, and critics accusing him—yet again—of political opportunism, corruption, even “fascism.”
Yet he pressed forward with a single message while blasting the international media’s malicious caricature of Israel as a cruel, warmongering Jewish state: Israel will dismantle Hamas and rescue its hostages.
He forcefully rejected the lies that Israel uses hunger as a weapon of war, seeks to destroy an entire people, or wages battle out of some “perfidious” national instinct. On the contrary, he reminded the press that Israel has allowed in two million tons of food into Gaza, aid Hamas seized, and the United Nations failed to distribute.
He stressed that Israel’s goal is not occupation but security—handing civil power in Gaza to trustworthy Arab partners, not to the corrupt Palestinian Authority or genocidal Hamas.
“Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war and the best way to end it speedily,” he insisted. Seventy-five percent of Gaza is already under IDF control, with Hamas holding only Gaza City and the central refugee camps. Israel is pushing civilians to safe zones before final operations.
And he made one thing clear: The Palestinians have never wanted a state of their own that we offered since 1948—they only seek Israel’s destruction. “The Palestinians were offered a state many times, including in the partition resolution and they turned it down,” he said. “They were offered statehood by my predecessors, with lavish, lavish concessions. They turned it down.”
Netanyahu’s analogy was stark: You would not have left the Nazis in Berlin in 1945; neither will Israel leave Hamas in Gaza in 2025. His strategic vision extends beyond Gaza, toward the defeat of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime—with the backing of the United States.
Despite political fractures at home and the anguish of hostage families, Netanyahu is betting on a larger transformation—a postwar Middle East in which Israel survives not by begging for sympathy but by winning decisive victories. The foreign press may not want to hear it, but for Israel, victory is not optional.
