On Friday night, Israel’s former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu made an appearance on the HBO Show of the US pundit Bill Maher called ‘Real Time’.
He was questioned if Israel wanted to respond to the controversial comments that had been put forth by US rapper Kanye West.
The opposition lawmaker dismissed the anti-Semitic remarks that the rapper had made recently as nothing but ‘stupidities’.
Anti-Semitic statements
Maher questioned Netanyahu if they would take any action against the West, which has come under a great deal of criticism recently because of a series of anti-Semitic statements.
This included Kanye West’s declaration of going ‘death con 3’ on Jews. Netanyahu appeared amused by these remarks and said that they dealt with bigger issues than these ‘stupidities’.
But, he added that Jews were blamed of being communists by the capitalists and the communists blame Jews of being capitalists.
Netanyahu said that it is an old trope to blame the Jews for a problem, which is not something that happens in civilized discourse.
He went on to say that this had been the reason behind establishing a Jewish state because they wanted the people to be able to defend themselves against these absurdities that often come with violence.
He said they wouldn’t let that happen again.
Palestinians
Maher also brought up the topic of Palestinians in the interview with Netanyahu citing remarks from unnamed US lawmakers over the years about Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.
Maher is staunchly pro-Israel and he asked Netanyahu if they were an apartheid state and whether they were doing an ethnic cleaning by massacring Palestinians.
Netanyahu denied all of these charges and called them ridiculous, saying that they were a democracy in the Middle East that defends freedom, upholds human rights and is the biggest ally of the US.
He also said that it was Palestinians who oppress women and gays and are working with Iran, which is tormenting its people and also oppressing women.
Netanyahu’s accusations
The former Israeli premier said that the brave Iranian women should be supported for the courage they are showing.
He also accused Palestinians of not wanting peace, which made them the biggest obstacle in resolving the issue between Israel and Palestine.
Last week, Instagram had barred West because of a series of statements he had made that had been deemed hateful and bigoted.
He had then switched to Twitter where he said that he was sleepy, but he would go death con 3 on Jews when he woke up.
He had also said that he could not be anti-Semitic because black people are also Jews. He added that these people blackballed anyone who went against their agenda.
The rapper had tweeted the first time in two years. The term ‘death con 3’ was a mistaken use of ‘DEFCON 3’ that the US military uses for alerting purposes.
West had also talked about who had begun the cancel culture on social media.