He is the most dangerous leader in the world today. An unhinged psychopath in charge of nuclear weapons who has spent a lifetime dehumanising his enemy, and dismissing them and their children as animals.

Instead of being condemned by the so-called civilised world, however, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being supported and defended even though — or perhaps because — he is committing war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Watch his performance on this video . This is a man erupting with toxic hubris who will never recover from the public humiliation delivered to him by Hamas fighters last weekend. Zionist keyboard warriors will be thumping outraged responses to my words, I’m sure, but before they do, they should take some time to read this article from the Jerusalem Post.

Astonishingly, an overwhelming majority of 86 per cent of respondents, including 79 per cent of Israel’s far-right coalition government supporters, said the surprise attack from Gaza was a failure of the country’s leadership. Yes, that’s right. Four out of five Jewish Israelis believe that the government and Netanyahu are to blame for the mass infiltration by Hamas into Israel and the killings that followed, according to a new Dialog Centre poll released five days after the attack.

It is a poll that is being analysed widely by the Arab and Asian media, but is being given a wide berth by the mainstream media in the West, which has yet to catch up with the reality of dissenting Israelis on the ground. How shameful that the once great liberal newspaper the Observer has published an out-of-touch article in an unbridled moment of psychosis. Sadly, it is not alone. The mainstream media in Britain, Europe and America is focusing instead on the obscene violence of Israel’s “revenge” bombing and collective punishment — a war crime — of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Having been duped into pushing out fake news from pro-Israel propagandists, instead of apologising to its readers the Daily Telegraph took the extraordinary decision to publish a photograph released by the Israeli government that appears to show the body of a baby murdered by Hamas fighters. The blood-stained infant, still dressed in a Babygro suit and nappy, lies inside a white plastic body bag.

Having seen such sights many times in the killing fields of Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and parts of US-drone-hit Pakistan, I believe the image to be genuine. As human beings, we all bleed and hurt in the same way. Bodies riddled by bullets frequently do not reveal the once living person’s skin colour, nationality or religion. We are all God’s creation. It is almost impossible to distinguish between heroes and villains when looking at the corpses of war in Gaza today.

The baby’s face is blurred out (how sensitive of Tel Aviv) but all anyone looking at this picture will see is an innocent victim of a brutal occupation and war. Had this been a Palestinian baby — and at the time of writing the death toll stands at 637 children in Gaza, and Israeli forces have killed seven Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in the past 24 hours — Netanyahu would not have looked twice before dismissing the child as an animal. That’s what he and his ministers in Israel regard the Palestinians as, men, women and children alike.

World leaders might continue to defend Israel’s unrestrained vengeance against Gaza, but their citizens do not. The streets of London, Glasgow, Paris, Berlin and major US cities saw huge gatherings at the weekend protesting against the inhumanity of the Zionist state.

I will say it again: not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews

This was not a show of anti-Semitism on an industrial scale, as pro-Israel ministers and lobbyists alike would have us believe; how could it be with so many Jews, including rabbis, among the protesters? However, there has been a backlash in Jewish communities, as there is every time that Israel uses disproportionate violence against Palestinians. This betrays a lack of knowledge and understanding by the perpetrators. Nevertheless, I will say it again: not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. Look at the British politicians who declare their Zionism openly, in words and deeds. And look at the millions of rabidly far-right Christian Zionists in America, Donald Trump supporters who support the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history unconditionally. This alone suggests that the majority of Zionists are not Jews, but people with religious or political reasons of their own for supporting the apartheid state of Israel.

There is another backlash coming, but it is being reserved for those world leaders who support Israel unreservedly. This was highlighted by the former chair of Britain’s foreign affairs committee, Crispin Blunt MP, who says that the UK’s “unqualified support” puts Britain in “legal peril”. He is a Conservative MP, by the way. It is almost unprecedented for an MP to criticise his own government in this way.

Blunt is a signatory to a notice of intention to prosecute UK government officials for aiding and abetting war crimes in Gaza. The formal letter has been sent by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and Attorney General Victoria Prentiss. I hope they also include opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer and members of the Labour Party National Executive Committee. All of these politicians, when pressed about war crimes being committed, insist on Israel’s alleged right to defend itself. An occupation state has no such legal or moral right against the people living under its occupation.

As lawyers on all sides of this evil war sharpen their vocabulary they might want to consider the words of the eminent professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, Francis Boyle. “Palestinians have been victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention since the founding of the State of Israel,” said Prof. Boyle in 2018. “I say that because of my practical experience.”

Boyle almost single-handedly won two World Court Orders for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993. This was the first time ever that any lawyer let alone government had won two such orders in one case since the court was founded in 1921.

The author of The Bosnian People Charge Genocide went on to say: “Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction its physical destruction in whole or in part…”

He added: “That is exactly what Israel is doing today to the people of Gaza: Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. The Zionists have been doing this since they imposed their siege on Gaza starting in 2007. I have been all up and down and back and forth over Gaza. Gaza is just like the Dachau concentration camp that I have also visited myself.”

I first met Francis Boyle in Malaysia in November 2011 when US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were found guilty of war crimes at a mock trial after two years of investigation by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC). An authentic tribunal consisting of five judges with judicial and academic backgrounds reached a unanimous verdict that Bush and Blair were guilty of war crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and genocide due to their roles in the 2003 Iraq Invasion and War. I know that once he gets the bit between his teeth, he would reduce the likes of Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, Starmer and Labour MP Lisa Nandy to quivering wrecks at The Hague.

Someone who would agree with Francis is Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, who concludes that Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing even now, and especially against the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza. With the backdrop of Operations Cast Lead and Protective Edge, both euphemisms for Zionist genocide against the Palestinians and the people of Gaza in 2008/9 and 2014 respectively, the evidence of war crimes and atrocities has been available for years.

Boyle marched courageously into the US Embassy in Israel in order to complain vigorously about the Israeli war crimes. “You know what they told me? That this was an ‘internal affair’ of Israel! In other words, the United States government was not going to get involved, was not going to do anything at all about it, and if I didn’t agree with that decision I could take it up with the State Department in Washington DC. Well of course I knew that would be a waste of time and so I did not.”

If you are in any doubt where you should be standing right now I would suggest that it is by the side of the Palestinian people who are the victims of genocide. Zionists have a long history of attacking civilians.

I listened a year ago (and again recently on social media) to Ursula von der Leyen calling for Russia to be charged with war crimes. Listing the crimes committed in Ukraine she said that they include “direct attacks against civilians, torture, ill-treatment, summary executions, not even children are being spared.” In another speech, she cited the cutting off of electricity and water as a war crime.

What has the President of the EU Commission said about Israel cutting off electricity, water and humanitarian aid; ordering the evacuation of 22 hospitals in Gaza; Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians; and the order for 1.1 million Palestinians to “get out” of Gaza City? A big fat nothing.

She is a hypocrite and is enabling war crimes. Some might even call her a racist driven to protect the innocent European children of Ukraine, but lacking in any compassion whatsoever for the innocent Arab children of Gaza.

The siege of Gaza didn’t begin last week with the Hamas attack (and nor did Israel’s ethnic cleansing and occupation; they are the root causes of the issue, not Hamas “terrorism”). Israel imposed its blockade in 2007 and has maintained it ever since. The latest move tightened an already near-watertight siege. It is collective punishment, a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

There is a special place in Hell reserved for hypocrites like von der Leyen, Sunak, Biden et al. The majority of Israelis who blame Netanyahu for failing to protect them should also spare some of that blame for Western politicians who enable him and his settler-colonial state to act with impunity. You cannot deliver peace through the barrel of a gun, and keeping quiet is not being neutral. In the words of the late anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “Silence is to side with the oppressor.” Shame on all who do so.

Yvonne Ridley British journalist and author Yvonne Ridley provides political analysis on affairs related to the Middle East, Asia and the Global War on Terror. Her work has appeared in numerous publications around the world from East to West from titles as diverse as The Washington Post to the Tehran Times and the Tripoli Post earning recognition and awards in the USA and UK. Ten years working for major titles on Fleet Street she expanded her brief into the electronic and broadcast media producing a number of documentary films on Palestinian and other international issues from Guantanamo to Libya and the Arab Spring. https://twitter.com/yvonneridley