Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed on with his attacks on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in an interview broadcast Thursday, denouncing Canberra’s “appeasement” of terror groups and their supporters in the West. He also vowed to go through with plans to take over all of Gaza militarily even if Hamas agrees to a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

“I’m sure he has a reputable record as a public servant, but I think his record is forever tarnished by the weakness that he showed in the face of these Hamas terrorist monsters,” Netanyahu said of Albanese in an interview with Sky News Australia.

“When the worst terrorist organization on earth, these savages who murdered women, raped them, beheaded men… when these people congratulate the prime minister of Australia, you know something is wrong.”

For decades, Australia has considered itself a close friend of Israel, but the relationship has been unraveling since Canberra announced last week it would recognize a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu drastically escalated the war of words on Tuesday night, taking to his official account on X to unleash a personal attack on Albanese, whom he branded a “weak politician who betrayed Israel.”

Australia lashed back Wednesday, with Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke retorting that strength was more than “how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry.”

In the interview — the latest in dozens he has given to friendly foreign outfits since the war in Gaza began, while avoiding Israeli media outlets that aren’t staunchly supportive of him — Netanyahu also contended that Israel was “on the verge of completing this war.”

The premier has been making this claim for at least a year and a half, using it at least since February 2024 to argue that conquering the southern Gaza city of Rafah would end the intense fighting within weeks, and saying in April of that year that victory in the war was “a step away.” The Israel Defense Forces ended up invading Rafah in May 2024, yet Netanyahu’s prediction was not fulfilled.

After 22 months of resisting widespread calls in Israel to end the war in exchange for the release of the hostages held by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, the government recently approved plans to take over Gaza City in the Strip’s north, where around a million Gazans have been sheltering. The plan has been criticized internationally amid the worsening humanitarian crisis in the territory, as well as by top security officials who warn it could endanger the remaining hostages.

Netanyahu has been framing Gaza City as Hamas’s last stronghold and likening it to the Allied forces needing to conquer Berlin to end World War II, a comparison he also drew in Thursday’s interview. Last year, the premier used the same arguments to drive home the need to take over Rafah.

The interview was apparently conducted earlier this week, as reports swirled that Hamas was on the verge of accepting an American ceasefire proposal accepted in the past by Jerusalem. Hamas has since said it approved the proposal, yet Israel hasn’t responded for at least three days.

Asked by interviewer Sharri Markson about the reports at the time and whether Israel planned to take over all of Gaza and eliminate Hamas even if the terror group agreed to a truce and hostage deal, Netanyahu answered affirmatively.

“We’re going to do that anyway. That there was never a question that we’re not going to leave Hamas there,” he said, adding that the war “could end today” if the terror group “lays down its arms and releases the remaining 50 hostages, at least 20 of which are alive.”

Netanyahu touted growing reports of anti-Hamas sentiment among Gazans, saying his goal, rather than the occupation of Gaza, was “to free Gaza, free them from Hamas tyranny, free Israel and others from Hamas terrorism, give Gaza and Israel a different future.”

Addressing Israel’s fraying ties with Australia, Netanyahu said there has been a “great underlying friendship there for over a century” that has “gone astray because I think leaders did not show the strength and conviction that they should have when we’re actually fighting the war of Western civilization against these barbarians.”

Netanyahu linked a string of anti-Jewish incidents in Australia in recent months to what he called anti-Western extremists using democracies around the world to consume them from within, urging Australians to stand up to this.

“I’ve seen this tsunami of antisemitism, this racism and this deliberate targeting of the innocents, the burning of a synagogue in Melbourne and so on. These are horrible things and if you don’t stop them when they’re small, they get bigger and bigger and bigger and ultimately they consume your society,” he cautioned.

“The Western leaders, including unfortunately in Australia, are… trying to feed the crocodile of militant Islam that has claimed the lives not only of Jews, but Christians and Arabs, many Muslims and so on, and they think they’ll pacify, they’ll appease the crocodile,” he continued.

“The more you pour fuel into this antisemitic, anti-Israel and anti-Western fire, the greater the fire will grow, it will consume you in the end. You have no protection unless you stand up to it.”

Relations between Australia and Israel started fraying late last year amid a growing spate of antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne, including incidents in which synagogues were torched and firebombed.

Many in Australia’s 120,000-strong Jewish community accuse Albanese and his government of failing to take steps to prevent the antisemitic attacks and violent rhetoric throughout the country.