Benjamin Netanyahu has evoked the spirit of London during the blitz, and pointed to his own family’s sacrifice amid the blood, toil, tears and sweat of his nation: the second postponement of his son’s wedding.
The Israeli prime minister’s remarks, solemnly delivered to the cameras against the backdrop of a missile-struck hospital building in the southern city of Beersheba, set off a howl of derision that echoed around the Hebrew-language internet, at the height of a war that Netanyahu unleashed on Friday.
The stunning comments also added grist to the arguments of his critics that the PM is increasingly cut off emotionally from the daily realities of Israel and the region, after more than 17 years in office.
Seeking to underline his family’s shared hardship with ordinary Israelis, Netanyahu adopted a Churchillian tone when pointing out that this was not the first time his son Avner’s wedding had needed to be postponed, and that Avner’s fiancee was also disappointed, not to mention the thwarted mother of the groom, Netanyahu’s wife, Sara.
“It really reminds me of the British people during the blitz. We are going through a blitz,” Netanyahu said, referring to the wartime Nazi bombing of Britain in which 43,000 civilians died.
Unfathomably tone deaf, the people he’s bombing are unable to attend their children’s weddings, because the bombs are killing those children.
Also the headline is ridiculous, scraping the bottom of the barrel for anything positive, there’s nothing remotely stunning here.
I think they were saying it was stunningly stupid and tone deaf. No one is actually stunned, it’s more that it’s unbelievable to everyone that he actually said it. It was a bit tongue in cheek.