COMMENT | Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned in 2002 that Israel was losing its global standing as Israeli-Palestinian violence escalated during the second Intifada or uprising against Israeli occupation.

At the time, Brzezinski, the former adviser to US presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, seemed to overstate Israel's reputational problem. Today, his warning rings prophetic.

"I think Israel's international position is very badly damaged. A country that started… as a symbol of recovery of a people who were greatly persecuted now looks like a country that is persecuting people. And that's very bad," Brzezinski said 22 years ago.

"The Israelis are becoming increasingly like the white supremacist South Africans, viewing the Palestinians as a lower form of life, not hesitating to kill a great many of them and justifying this on the grounds that they are being the objects of terrorism.''

Israel's iron-fisted response to Palestinian suicide and other attacks on civilian Israelis during the second Intifada pales compared to its conduct in Gaza in response to Hamas' Oct 7, 2023 assault on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

So does the cost to Israel's reputation...