As Gaza starves, Netanyahu jokes about McDonald’s with ‘manosphere’ podcasters Nelk Boys

The Israeli PM went on Full Send Podcast ‘to reach young people’. After his appearance, its YouTube channel lost more than 10,000 subscribers in less than a day

By Arwa Mahdawi
Thu 24 Jul 2025 09.00 EDT

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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 was 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.

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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 more than 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 10,000 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.”)

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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 on to the Nelk Boys’ highly influential podcast to jokes about whether he prefers McDonald’s or Burger King.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/24/netanyahu-nelk-boys-podcast