John Oliver Discusses Israel, ‘Unfavorable’ PM Benjamin Netanyahu

Tonight’s episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver delved into the topic of Israel, specifically its intermittent prime minister since 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu, tracking the leader’s “increasingly unfavorable” ratings both in the country and in the U.S., his worsening effect on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and his longstanding corruption charges.

Before tackling the weighty topic, Oliver faked out audiences by announcing the leading segment would be “forced monkey labor” before pivoting to the Middle Eastern nation, joking that the former idea no longer sounded as heavy.

“Just this year, he’s continued to preside over the longest and deadliest war in Israel’s history, he’s starved Gaza, bombed Iran and carried out airstrikes in Qatar, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon,” Oliver said of Netanyahu. “It seems like someone gave him a ‘Rise & Grind’ coffee mug, and he took it sociopathically literally.”

Oliver outlined how the longest-serving PM has aligned himself with extremist figures within the Israeli government, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said “it may be just and moral” to starve 2 million Gazans. He also delved into Netanyahu’s allegations of corruption, which date back a decade.

Of the Abraham Accords — signed in 2020 and mediated by president Donald Trump during his first term — which sidestepped Palestinian veto power of new agreements between Arab states and Israel via diplomatic normalization, Oliver noted: “Of course it was a ‘F— you’ to the Palestinians, that shouldn’t be surprising; everything Netanyahu does has that side effect. If he could pour a bowl of cereal in a way that makes conditions in Gaza meaningfully worse, he would do that, and don’t think that he doesn’t have Israel’s top geopolitical cereal scientists working on how to make that dream come true.”

Recently, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory reached the findings that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, urging the country and all states to fulfill their “legal obligations under international law to end the genocide and punish those responsible for it.” The world’s leading association of genocide scholars concur, per the BBC. In late August, the World Health Organization cited a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis that found more than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths. Doctors Without Borders has since suspended its work in the region due to the danger to its workers caused by the Israeli military.

Elsewhere in the show, Oliver addressed former FBI director James Comey’s indictment, saying of Trump, “His authoritarian tendencies seem, if anything, to be getting worse. Just this week, he suggested some prominent donors to liberal causes should be investigated for possibly funding domestic terrorism. He’s essentially inverting our entire criminal justice process; instead of identifying crimes and figuring out who did them, he seems to be identifying who he wants labeled as criminals and figuring out what crimes he can stick to them. It is bewildering, it is horrifying.”