Kanye West’s latest outbursts against the Jews seems to be all anyone can talk about, so it was little surprise that former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked about it while appearing on a late night talk show last week.

Bibi tried to put the matter to bed, not by defending West, as some conservative commentators have done, but by labeling the rapper’s charges as the type of “stupidities” that necessitated Israel’s rebirth.

“We’ve dealt with bigger problems than these stupidities,” said Netanyahu when asked by show host Bill Maher. “But, you know, the communists blame the Jews for being capitalists, the capitalists blame the Jews for being communists.

Kanye West, said Netanyahu, is regurgitated age-old antisemitic tropes, and the fact that cultural icons are still spewing such venom is precisely why the State of Israel is so important:

“You have a problem, blame the Jews. It’s old stuff. It shouldn’t have any place in civilized discourse. That’s the reason we established the Jewish state — so the Jewish people would have defense against these absurdities, and sometimes they’re coupled with violence. We don’t let that happen again.”

In a series of bizarre social media posts and media interviews, West has expressed muddled versions of several conspiracy theories that most consider to be antisemitic. West’s descent into this type of rhetoric appears to have been sparked by his being banned from Instagram, which is part of the Meta network of social media apps owned by Mark Zuckerberg.

Netanyahu’s take was that the rapper’s words shouldn’t be given much credence.

Moving on to issues of actual importance, Maher asked Netanyahu, “Are you massacring Palestinians? Are you ethnic cleansing? And are you an apartheid state?”

Bibi’s response was emphatic:

“No, no, and no. I mean, these are ridiculous charges against the one democracy in the Middle East, the one democracy that upholds human rights, that defends freedom, and is America’s best ally.”

Netanyahu went on to explain that the Palestinian state everyone so badly wants to create has demonstrated that it will be an oppressive and apartheid state in the same vein as ayatollah-ruled Iran.

But the real obstacle preventing an agreement, said the Israeli, is that “the Palestinians don’t want peace.”