The Israeli newspaper Haaretz offered a devastating judgement on the country’s leader after the biggest crisis in living memory erupted last Saturday:

The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s cabinet allies Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir are both far-right politicians from settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Earlier this year, Smotrich claimed there was “no such thing” as the Palestinian people, while the US State Department rebuked Ben-Gvir for his “racist, destructive comments” about the supposedly inferior status of Palestinians in the West Bank.