Obama Slams Netanyahu’s Gaza Offensive in Rare Rebuke, Urges Urgent Path to Peace
UN update, September 27, 2025
CNN.
In a rare and pointed rebuke, former U.S. President Barack Obama has condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza, warning that the offensive lacks justification and risks deepening Israel’s global isolation.
“There’s not a military rationale for continuing to pummel what is already rubble,” Obama said Friday in Dublin, Ireland. “Children can’t starve. It is unacceptable to ignore the human crisis that is happening inside of Gaza.”
Obama’s remarks come amid mounting international frustration over Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza City, which has displaced over 640,000 Palestinians, according to Israeli military estimates.
The United Nations has warned that nearly one million civilians are at risk of forced displacement.
The former president, who has long had a tense relationship with Netanyahu, did not mince words. “Me and the prime minister of Israel, who’s still there, were not the best of friends,” Obama said. “Leadership often plays a cynical game—maintaining the notion that it’s simply us and them, because that helps keep them in power.”
His comments coincided with Netanyahu’s defiant speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Israeli leader lashed out at Western governments for recognizing Palestinian statehood.
“They are buckling under the pressure of a biased media, radical Islamist constituencies, and anti-semitic mobs,” Netanyahu declared.
But the tide may be turning. President Donald Trump, speaking from the Oval Office Thursday, drew a rare red line: “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. It’s been enough. It’s time to stop now.”
Obama echoed that urgency, calling for a two-state solution. “Both sides have to find a path in which a Palestinian state and autonomy exist side by side with a secure Israel,” he said, while also condemning Hamas’s “vicious approach” that “puts all their people at risk.”
With over 60,000 Palestinians killed since the war began, and humanitarian conditions worsening, pressure is mounting for a ceasefire and a diplomatic breakthrough. A 21-point peace plan proposed by U.S. envoys is now circulating among Arab leaders.
As Netanyahu digs in, Israel faces growing diplomatic isolation. Obama’s intervention—rare, sharp, and morally urgent—adds weight to calls for an end to the bloodshed and a just peace for both peoples.
Source: CNN/Amb. AM 27.09.25.