sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress in the chamber of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol last week in Washington, DC.Credit: Getty Images via AFP

You acclaimed a man who may shortly become suspected of perpetrating grave war crimes, someone conducting one of the most brutal attacks against a helpless civilian population. You applauded Benjamin Netanyahu.

While many Israelis are cringing with shame at their Knesset’s character and conduct, the most important legislative assembly in the world presented an even greater disgrace: a puppet show, consisting of repeated, almost unanimous standing ovations applauding every mendacious cliché.

Other than abstaining from attending the session, as dozens of Democratic lawmakers did, haven’t you heard of other ways of expressing parliamentary protest? Leave aside gestures of American politeness – were there no reservations? Only the cheers of an inane and senseless flock?

Do all of you really support the killing in Gaza? Something that is possibly a genocide, certainly a “domicide.” Did you actually know what you were cheering for? Why did you rise from your seats dozens of times? What did you honor him for? For mass killings, which no one bothered to mention even once, as if they were non-existent? You cheered for the killers of thousands of children, for those who have turned them into orphans, cripples, amputees, into children who are traumatized, starving, sick and lost.

You applauded a polished and flashy speech, a painfully hollow one containing not one word that was connected to reality. There was not one sentence in the speech which the person delivering it actually meant, starting with his efforts to release the hostages and ending with the vision he presented regarding the future of Gaza, which is no more than a perpetual vision of dry bones.

That is what you applauded, American lawmakers. How can anyone applaud Netanyahu in July 2024? Other than the kaffiyeh worn by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and the demonstrative absence of many of her colleagues, the Senate and House of Representatives got on their feet to tell Israel: What you are wreaking on Gaza is being done in our name.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress.Credit: Getty Images via AFP

We, too, are in favor of killing and destruction. Continue violating international law and ignoring the world’s view, its shock and revulsion –we are with you in your barbarism.

You also bought into all the cheap, embarrassing tricks and shticks of Israeli propaganda, in whose eyes there is only October 7. Nothing happened before or after that date.

Like a beggar exposing his stumps in order to get some alms, Netanyahu showed you a soldier who had lost his hand, a dark-skinned soldier, a soldier on crutches, a released female hostage and a relative of a hostage still in captivity. And you almost wiped away a tear.

What about the tens of thousands of victims, the dead, dispossessed, crippled and wounded Palestinians, as well as the Palestinian hostages rotting in Israeli detention facilities? Have you even heard about them? Does their fate interest you? Why don’t they deserve your compassion and sympathy?

No one was there to salvage the dignity of the legislative assembly of the most important power in the world. No one stood up or uttered even one feeble heckle. A Senate and House of Representatives worshiping a politician suspected of war crimes. As if your eyes were veiled. You bought into the bluff of Israel standing at the forefront of “civilization,” without questioning what sort of civilization kills tens of thousands of people indiscriminately.

What kind of barbarism did the prime minister talk to you about, with his soldiers siccing a dog on a young man with Down syndrome who is then left to die, soldiers who use hammers to smash the only MRI machine in the Gaza Strip? You bought into the bluff that Israel is defending you, even developing for you weapons systems that you are incapable of developing.

You even accepted with silence the comparison between him and Churchill, the comparison between the Nazi threat to the world and the threat posed by Hamas. You bought it all.

Shame on you, you dishonorable lawmakers.

Gideon Levy