(JNS) British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s July 25 statement regarding the recognition of a Palestine state was “shameful,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a recent interview with Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, co-hosts of the popular UK podcast “Triggernometry.”
Netanyahu posted the Aug. 20 interview in its entirety to his X account on Thursday.
Asked by Kisin whether recognition of a Palestine state would “encourage Hamas to continue their resistance,” Netanyahu said, “Of course, it does.”
Speaking of the terrorist group, which invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Israeli prime minister said, “They commit the greatest savagery against Jews since the Holocaust, and the prime minister of Britain says, ‘We’ll reward you with a de facto state,’… which is committed openly to repeating the October 7 massacre over and over and over again.”
Western leaders like to repeat that Israel has a right to defend itself, but “they recognize Israel’s right to defend itself as long as Israel doesn’t exercise that right,” Netanyahu said.
Western nations were applying a dangerous double standard to Israel by suggesting concessions to terrorists—something they would never accept for themselves if faced with a similar level of mass killing and hostage-taking, he said.
The capitulation of leaders of the UK, France and others is a product of weak leadership caving in to distorted media, social media manipulation and radical extremist minorities, the Israeli leader said.
Those extremist protesters oppose not just Israel but also Western democracies, Netanyahu stressed. Many of Israel’s enemies are also America’s enemies—Iran-backed forces that have killed Americans and attacked US interests—so support for Israel aligns with defending the West, he said.
Describing as “shameful” the way Western leaders in Britain, France, Canada and New Zealand, “buckle under,” Netanyahu added that 80 years after the Holocaust, European leaders want to “give a prize for those who would destroy the one and only Jewish state.”
צפו בראיון שקיימתי ל״טריגרנומטרי״, אחד הפודקאסטים הגדולים בבריטניה >> pic.twitter.com/Nk6AFXMVr6
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) August 27, 2025
Podcast co-host Foster asked Netanyahu about the loss of support for Israel among Gen Z (ages 13-28), and as they will become the future decision-makers, whether that poses a serious long-term risk to Israel’s support.
Netanyahu responded that anti-Israel sentiment among young people was not something spontaneous, but part of an organized, well-funded campaign aimed at eroding support for the Jewish state. He said because it was organized, it can also be countered strategically.
However, Netanyahu acknowledged that Israel is losing the public relations war. “This is a big challenge. I don’t want to dismiss it. But, look, we Jews have been fighting and losing the propaganda war for about 2,500 years. What’s different now is that we’re winning the ground war,” he said, noting the sooner Israel wins that, “the faster the propaganda war will dissipate.”
He dismissed as a “fraud” the genocide and starvation accusations. He likened the starving children slander to the blood libel during the Middle Ages claiming Jews killed Christian children.
“If we wanted to commit genocide, we would have done it in one afternoon,” he said, noting that Israel has the “capacity” to do so, but maintained one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratios in urban warfare.
He said Israel had taken unprecedented steps to protect civilians, issuing millions of warnings to residents in areas where the IDF plans to conduct combat operations, while Hamas forces people to stay, shooting those who try to leave.
The podcast hosts pushed Netanyahu on comments made by his coalition partners, particularly Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which sounded like support for the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, and whether the prime minister’s failure to speak out against such comments contributed to Israel losing public support.
“In a parliamentary system, people are free to say, sometimes they say things they don’t quite mean. It happens all the time,” Netanyahu said.
He declared that he was opposed to ethnic cleansing and had no intention to build Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip.
Kisin voiced skepticism about the future of a Gaza run by a civil administration that wouldn’t be hostile to Israel—as Netanyahu outlined in a Jerusalem press conference on Aug. 10— noting that polls show that the Gazan population harbor a deep hatred of Jews and Israel, making peaceful coexistence seem impossible.
Netanyahu pointed to Germany and Japan, which were deradicalized after World War II, and also to some Gulf state countries, which he said have introduced successful deradicalization programs.
Responding to the argument made by opponents of the war against Hamas that continued fighting would only further radicalize the Gazan population, creating a next generation of terrorists and leading to a “forever war,” Netanyahu said the truth was exactly the opposite, that only by fighting against Hamas would there be an end to a “forever war.”
He pointed out that Gazans seeking to free themselves from Hamas’s reign of terror have already begun fighting the terrorist group.
Asked what lessons he wants people to take from history, Netanyahu said that the key lesson Jews have drawn from history is to take threats of annihilation seriously and act before it is too late.
Islamist radicals seek to dominate Arab society, destroy Israel and target Christians, while also developing missiles that could strike Europe, he said. “Western leaders can go on blaming Israel for this, for fighting this common menace. Or they can do something about it. And it remains to be seen whether they’ve drawn the lesson,” he said.
Israel has returned to its ancestral homeland and isn’t going anywhere. “So we fight them, but we’re not fighting them only on our behalf. We’re fighting them on your behalf too,” Netanyahu said.
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