Noted British journalist and historian Max Hastings has interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu extensively over the decades. In his book "Editor: A Memoir", he recalled his own dismay at the Israeli prime minister's racist contempt for Arabs and non-white Jews and his enthusiastic support for ethnic cleansing:

"At Bibi Netanyahu's dinner table in Jerusalem, I listened with crawling dismay to Bibi talking about the future of his country. 'In the next war, if we do it right we have a chance to get all the Arabs out,' he said. 'We can clear the West Bank and sort out Jerusalem.' He joked about the Golani Brigade, the Israeli infantry force in which so many men were North African or Yemenite Jews. 'They okay as long as they're led by white officers.' He grinned."

"In the next war, if we do it right we have a chance to get all the Arabs out. We can clear the West Bank and sort out Jerusalem."

Just let that particular quote sink in for a moment, and then realize that what Netanyahu is advocating here is really no less immoral and repulsive than what the radicals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad propose with their nonsensical "From the river to the sea" vow.

What we absolutely need right now are adults in the room, not enablers. We should be under no illusions about the murderous intentions of both Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu, and the mutual contempt they both share for the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza who've suffered under Hamas's cruel and criminal misrule following the forcible expulsion of the Palestinian Authority in 2006, which was welcomed by the Netanyahu government at the time.

From Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist and writer:

"I'm an Israeli. I was born in Israel. I even perceive myself as an Israeli patriot. I care about Israel, I belong to Israel, I am attached to Israel. Don't speak about symmetry, because there is no symmetry.

"I would even suggest that there is no conflict. Was there a French-Algerian conflict? There was a brutal French occupation in Algeria, which came to its end. Similarly, there is no Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is a brutal Israeli occupation, which must come to its end, one way or the other.

"In our own backyard, there is a regime which is today by far one of the most cruel, brutal tyrannies on earth, and I know what I say because [as a journalist] I have covered it for forty years. And [the Netanyahu regime] cannot be defined but as an Apartheid.

"Two peoples live on one piece of land, and one people have all the rights in the world - and I'm not just talking about the occupied territories - and the other people have no rights whatsoever. It looks like Apartheid. It talks like Apartheid. It IS Apartheid.

"And nobody can contradict me. Go to the Jordan Valley. See the prosperity in the [Jewish] settlements and then, go and see the Palestinians who live there without electricity, without water, without any rights. And then tell me if it's Apartheid, or you might want to invent another title."

Watching events unfold over the past four weeks, from Hamas' unconscionable surprise assault against and slaughter of unarmed and defenseless Israeli civilians, to the horrific military overreaction and reprisal by the Netanyahu regime against an equally defenseless Palestinian populace whose only crime is getting caught in the crossfire, I am convinced that Benjamin Netanyahu is absolutely the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time for Israel.

Netanyahu doesn't really care about the fate of those 240 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. They are likely expendable commodities in his eyes. If he had really cared about Israeli security, then he would have had troops stationed along the Gaza border, one of the most hostile and volatile regions in the world, thanks in no small part to the shortsighted policies of his own government.

Instead, there were none, and the kibbutzes along that frontier were laid bare before Hamas's homicidal rampage. Those IDF troops were all deployed in the West Bank to protect illegal Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley and facilitate further theft and misappropriation of Palestinian property and territory, and advance Netanyahu's desire to eventually annex the entire territory to Israel proper.

Benjamin Netanyahu cares about one thing and one thing only: his own power, and the attendant prestige and personal well-being that comes with it. This present and tragic conflict isn't about Israel's existence. Hell, thanks to the United States, that country has enough firepower to blow up half the Middle East from Tunisia to the Persian Gulf and further, its Arab neighbors all know that.

No, the corrupt and indicted Netanyahu sees this so-called war as his own personal Godsend, his "Get Out of Jail Free" card from his current criminal trial and perhaps worst of all, a prime and last-chance opportunity to settle all his old scores with others for their perceived transgressions and slights against him. And mark my words, there are plenty of those "others" on his list and in his crosshairs right now.

And I fear that if the Biden administration doesn't do something fairly quickly to rein in this unhinged and monomaniacal yahoo and clip his wings, Netanyahu will probably lead his country and region - and by extension us, as well - to some truly dreadful grief. At the very least, he will have ensured a perpetuation on the recurring cycle of violence, recrimination and retribution in the Holy Land for the foreseeable future.