Demonstrators including some holding a banner reading “Stop Genocide take part in a”Red Line“protest demanding”government action to stop the genocide in Gaza" in Amsterdam on Sunday.Credit: Koen Van Weel/AFP

The government’s conduct in dealing with the flotilla headed to Gaza is the essence of a lethal blend of folly, evil and a misunderstanding of reality.

The overabundance of “public diplomacy” has clogged Israel’s ears to what the world is trying to tell it: After two years of war and over 65,000 deaths, including nearly 20,000 children, most of the world views Israel not as a country under attack that is fighting for its life, but rather a thuggish military power that is determined to continue the war until the death of the last defenseless Palestinian.

Instead of allowing the flotilla to reach Gaza’s shores in a symbolic humanitarian step, Israel sent its naval commandos to stop it with violence. Thus, a harmless token gesture was turned into an international incident, sparking demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people in Europe, Asia and South America.

With the entire world shocked over the sights of starvation and destruction in Gaza – sights which most media outlets in Israel have voluntarily refrained from showing the public, thereby creating an unbridgeable gap between awareness in Israel and in the rest of the world – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is insisting on proving anew its unfitness to rule.

While the navies of Spain and Italy had to take action and protect their citizens from the Israel Defense Forces, and newspapers worldwide reported the mistreatment of flotilla activists and the forcing of Greta Thunberg to cover herself in the Israeli flag and kiss it – the Foreign Ministry was publishing pathetic announcements about “the provocation by Hamas-Sumud,” while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was using the humiliated activists for filming propaganda videos, calling them “supporters of murderers” and boasting of how they “would well feel conditions here.”

This is a government of pyromaniacs detached from the world.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks with journalists before setting sail in Sicily, August.Credit: Salvatore Cavalli/AP

Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli joined the fray, inviting to Israel the racist Tommy Robinson, a key figure in Britain’s extreme right wing, as the government’s guest of honor. How shameful.

When the organization representing Britain’s Jewish communities dared to criticize Chikli, the minister for Diaspora Affairs responded like a common right-wing bot, arguing that Jewish organizations in Britain are “woke” and “pro-Palestinian.”

He thereby proved that the threshold qualification for membership in Netanyahu’s government is a lack of judiciousness. One could not imagine how low we have sunk: Israel’s government is embracing extremist racists in the name of “combating antisemitism.”

This government’s conduct constitutes a concrete danger to Israelis and Jews worldwide. Israel is hallucinating that it’s protecting the West, while digging in on the wrong side of history.

Amid all this insanity, Netanyahu chooses to give an interview to a Ben Shapiro podcast, in which he declares that the war must go on, while as usual, trying to give Hamas an excuse to torpedo the deal, rather than allowing negotiations over the hostages’ release to proceed in a practical way.

Netanyahu and his government are damaging Israel. This war must be stopped immediately: to save the hostages, to desist from killing Gazans and to halt a total collapse.

Haaretz Editorial