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Gaza is starving. Nearly 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and a third of Gaza’s population is going days without eating, according to an expert from the UN World Food Programme. Tons of food sits rotting in warehouses just outside Gaza but the government of Israel will not allow it to be freely delivered. Instead, starving Palestinians must contend with a real-life version of The Hunger Games to try and eat. Over 1,000 desperate Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli forces since the end of May trying to reach food distribution points run by the US – and the Israel-backed Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation.
But enough about that, eh! Who wants to hear about starving babies who will either die painful deaths or never fully recover from the long-term consequences of malnutrition in early childhood? I’m sure what you really want to know is what Benjamin Netanyahu’s favourite fast food order is. And, luckily, I’ve got some answers for you.
On Monday Netanyahu, one of the main architects of Gaza’s man-made mass starvation campaign, gave an hour-long interview to Nelk Boy members Kyle Forgeard and Aaron Steinberg on their Full Send Podcast.
If you are not in their target demographic (a young man with right-leaning tendencies), you might not know much about the collection of media personalities known as the Nelk Boys, but they wield a lot of influence. They have more than 8.5m subscribers on YouTube and have interviewed Donald Trump multiple times. While they initially built a name for themselves as pranksters, they’ve now aligned themselves with the likes of self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate and went all-in on Trump’s 2024 campaign. Some political scientists believe that they are partly responsible for Trump’s second term. Indeed, the Nelk Boys, along with other “manosphere”-adjacent podcasters such as Adin Ross, Theo Von and Joe Rogan, even got a shout out from UFC CEO Dana White at Trump’s election night victory party.
How they brokered the Netanyahu interview is unclear, although an entrepreneur named Elkana Bar Eitan, who previously arranged a trip to Israel for the Nelk Boys, is claiming he suggested it in order to help “convey pro-Israel messages to a younger audience”.
You can watch the entire inane 70 minutes for yourself if you want to sacrifice some braincells and get served annoying ads for sports betting and cryptocurrency. But the “too long; didn’t listen” summary of the conversation is that Netanyahu touched on all his preferred talking points and lied continuously without any pushback. He started by sucking up to Trump – something he’s very skilled at – praising the US president’s sense of humour and sharing the fact that his wife, Sara, told him that Trump “is a good person with a good heart”. He claimed that most civilian casualties in Gaza are Hamas’s fault and, engaging in a little pinkwashing, said that it was nonsensical for women and gay people to support Gaza: “It’s like chickens for KFC, right?” He also said that everyone in Gaza wants to be transferred to another country, and falsely claimed that Hamas isn’t letting them leave. He also said Hamas is responsible for the fact Gaza is starving. And then he pivoted to the topic of Zohran Mamdani (he’s not a fan) before spending a lot of time talking about Iran.
But don’t worry, this tour-de-force of hard-hitting journalism was interspersed with lighter moments like when the Nelk Boys asked what Netanyahu’s favourite McDonald’s order is and Netanyahu replied that he preferred Burger King. “That’s your worst take, I think,” Steinberg responded jokingly.
Hilarious, right? It’s just side-splittingly funny that kids are dying of starvation in Gaza thanks to a man who is a big fan of Whoppers.
If Steinberg wants to see some more of Netanyahu’s “bad takes”, I strongly suggest he look up a few things the prime minister has said about Palestinians. In 2001, for example, Netanyahu said his approach to Palestinians is that you should: “Beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable.” Of course, that would require the Nelk Boys doing any research before having Netanyahu on. “I see so much stuff about what’s going on in Israel and Iran and Palestine, and to be honest, I just really don’t know what is going on there,” Forgeard said. I think we all saw that.
Netanyahu made it very clear why he was on the podcast, stating that he was sitting down with the Nelk Boys “to reach young people”. After almost two years of carnage which has left over 17,000 children dead, support for Israel is dropping, particularly among young Americans.
Whether Netanyahu achieved what he wanted from the useful idiots interviewing him is unclear. And while the Nelk Boys received a lot of publicity for the interview, I’m not sure they’re happy with the backlash they’re getting. They’ve lost more than 100,000 subscribers in less than a day and the comment section isn’t exactly flattering. (One of the top YouTube comments says: “Holy shit this is insane. War criminal. You will be remembered for centuries for this interview.”)
The Nelk Boys, meanwhile, are doing their best to defend themselves. They jumped on a stream with leftwing podcaster Hasan Piker after the Netanyahu interview to explain they know the Israeli prime minister was trying to promote his actions, and that’s fine because that’s what everyone does on podcasts. “Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t promoting a book, he’s promoting a genocide,” Piker replied. They’ve also admitted “we’re probably not the best at asking questions.”
Perhaps the Nelk Boys shouldn’t feel so bad. Large swathes of the mainstream media seem to have little interest in hearing the Palestinian point of view or pushing back against Israeli propaganda. One analysis of media coverage found that US cable shows displayed consistent anti-Palestinian bias and went for months without speaking to a single Palestinian. When Ta-Nehisi Coates went on the media circuit to discuss his new book, The Message, one section of which criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, he was smeared as an extremist by CBS Mornings’ Tony Dokoupil. Despite winning an Oscar, no major US distributor would touch No Other Land, the Palestinian-Israeli documentary which looks at how the Israeli government is trying to force Palestinians from their homes in the southern West Bank.
While peacefully waving a Palestinian flag or speaking up for Palestinians can have you threatened with arrest in the UK or deportation from the US, accused war criminals are getting the kid-gloves treatment. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant of arrest for Netanyahu for crimes against humanity and war crimes. In a just world, this would make him a pariah. Instead, the ICC arrest warrant, which is still active, has been swept under the rug. It rarely comes up in news reports that mention the prime minister of Israel, and it hasn’t stopped US politicians cheerfully hobnobbing with him. Even the likes of Cory Booker, who postures as some sort of civil rights activist, posed for photos with Netanyahu earlier this month.
I’m pointing all this out because the normalization of Netanyahu, the constant whitewashing of Israel’s alleged war crimes by “respectable” figures, is why a man who has blood dripping from his hands, a man who is responsible for what many experts say “is the worst humanitarian situation they have ever seen”, can be invited onto the Nelk Boys’ highly influential podcast to natter about whether he prefers McDonalds or Burger King.
While condemnation of Israel’s actions has increased in recent months, the media still often presents what is happening as a response to 7 October 2023, rather than looking at the broader historical context. Israel weaponized food long before 7 October. In 2008, for example, Israeli authorities calculated the minimum caloric intake necessary for Palestinians to avoid malnutrition so they could limit the amount of food into Gaza without causing a famine. For decades Israel has controlled almost every aspect of Palestinian lives and stripped them of every facet of human dignity; today, people in Gaza are not even allowed to dip their feet in the sea.
So while the Nelk Boys interview is unpleasant listening, it’s not some fratty podcasters asking a man who should be in the Hague what his favourite burger is who are the real problem. It’s decades of the mainstream media systematically dehumanizing Palestinians. As an apocalyptic Gaza starves, there are a lot of politicians and journalists in the US who should be asking themselves how they helped pave the way for a genocide to happen.
