LONDON: Israel has “work” to do in winning over young people in the West as polls show collapsing support, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to a UK-based podcast in an interview aired Wednesday.
Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have become increasingly common in capitals across the West, attracting large numbers of young people.
A recent Gallup poll also showed only six percent of 18 to 34-year-olds in the United States had a favourable opinion of Netanyahu and just nine percent approved of Israel’s military action in Gaza.
On the “Triggernometry” podcast, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel could lose the backing of Western governments once “Gen Z” – those born between around 1997 and 2012 – assumes power.
“If you’re telling me that there’s work to be done on Gen Z and across the West, yes,” he responded.
But he said opposition to Israel among Gen Z stemmed from a wider campaign against the West and repeated his unproven claim of an orchestrated plot against Israel and the West, without saying who was behind it.
Netanyahu announces plan to allow foreign reporters into Gaza
Israel’s defence minister approved a plan on Wednesday for the conquest of Gaza City and authorised the call-up of around 60,000 reservists, piling pressure on the Palestinian group Hamas as mediators push for a ceasefire.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 62,122 Palestinians, most of them civilians, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said, in figures the United Nations deem reliable.
Since returning to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump has offered Israel ironclad support.
Netanyahu told the podcast, which bills itself as promoting free speech with “open, fact-based discussion of important and controversial issues”, that Trump “has proven an exceptional, exceptional friend of Israel, an exceptional leader.”
“I think we’ve been very fortunate to have a leader in the United States who doesn’t act like the European leaders, who doesn’t succumb to this stuff,” he added, referring to countries including France and the UK that have vowed to recognise a Palestinian state.
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