Press TV has conducted an interview with Gordon Duff, senior editor of VT from Ohio, about a survey finding that support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fallen by 20 percent.
What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Now first of all, before I get into the numbers and statistics here, in your opinion was deterrence ever the goal of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza?
Duff: I really do not think there was any idea about deterrence. The Israelis have been bombing Gaza for months. The bombing had been escalated long before any of this had come up. The bombing in Israel is early June. The bombing had been fairly severe.
The issues here have simply been internal politics within Israel. Victimization games attempt to defray the failures that Israel has had with Syria, Israel’s very strange alliance with the neo-fascist in Kiev which is now not so much of a secret anymore, the embarrassment inside Egypt that it is an Israeli puppet regime in Cairo today.

And this attack was supposed to be something to mollify the people of Israel. It was supposed to be something to solidify backing within the United States. It was supposed to be a more of the same victimization game that Israel plays, none of this has turned out the way they wanted it to be. 

Israel has lost big. The idea that people do not approve of Netanyahu because he failed as a war criminal, the people of Israel whatever protest they have been involved in – this is my opinion now – that they are displeased because Netanyahu has not been successful as a war criminal and war crimes are what the people of Israel have been asking for and they are after him because he has not been successful enough.
Press TV: So Mr. Duff, now that Israel is grappling with its internal politics specifically with the blowback from Gaza, do you think that all the leadership in Israel is on par with Netanyahu’s vision of what to do when it comes to Hamas and Gaza?
Duff: Well Hamas is taking much of the status that Hezbollah has had. Hezbollah became a major military force from its experience fighting in Syria.
Hamas is gaining that same kind of capability. It has had help from the outside. It has got battlefield experience it hasn’t had. It has proven itself to be unified, it has proven itself to be a legitimate force and the more rhetoric that comes out of President Obama trying to refer the Hamas as a terrorist organization, the more he suffers incredibility as well within the US, within the news community even entertainers now.
Israel has become fair game. You can criticize Israel when you were not able two years before. Certainly what has become an open issue in the United States is cutting aid to Israel. It is spoken of all the time and it is only American aid that holds Israel together. There is no nation without American money.