If you’re unsure why some progressives never liked or trusted Benjamin Netanyahu and are thrilled that he’s been ousted from power, this ought to clarify things:

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday blasted President Biden’s policy approach to Iran in a “scorched earth” final address to the parliament — comparing the US return to the Iran nuclear deal to President Franklin Roosevelt declining to bomb the train tracks to Auschwitz when he had the opportunity.

In his last Knesset address as prime minister, a defiant Netanyahu spoke for more than half an hour, declaring that he would no longer keep his foreign policy disagreements with the Biden administration “behind closed doors.”

“The new US administration requested that I save our disagreements on the Iran nuclear deal for behind closed doors, and not share them publicly,” Netanyahu said Sunday, according to the Times of Israel. “I told them I won’t act that way.”

“In 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to bomb the railway leading to the extermination camps, and refused to bomb the gas chambers, which could have saved millions of our people. We hoped for others to save us, and they didn’t come. In the face of the threat of extermination, we were helpless,” he went on.

There is no evidence that a request to bomb Auschwitz ever reached Roosevelt’s desk, and it’s well-established that he was under no domestic Jewish pressure to do so. It’s also untrue that bombing the death camp or its supporting rail lines would have saved millions of lives. The first allied overflight of Auschwitz occurred in April 1944 and was merely for reconnaissance of military targets. The first bombing overflight didn’t occur until June. By November, the camp was essentially shut down, at least as an extermination factory. In the entire history of Auschwitz, a staggering and devastating total of 960,000 Jews lost their lives, but only a fraction of them died between June and November 1944.

There’s a legitimate debate over whether the allies should have made it a priority to disrupt the operations of the camp rather than focusing on ending the war is as soon as possible. But Netanyahu made a highly inaccurate argument during his departing remarks in the Knesset. He could have made largely the same point by pointing to America’s reluctance to take in Jewish refugees, or he could have gotten his numbers right and not placed improper blame at FDR’s feet. But that is not how he rolls.

I don’t like how he characterizes the Iran Nuclear Deal either. He makes it sound like America is indifferent to Israel’s security when the entire point of the international agreement is to keep a lid on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. I respect that Israel has to make its own decisions about how to protect itself and can never assume that its allies will be there when needed, but that doesn’t mean he should turn a difference of opinion about how to contain Iran into an attack on America’s reliability as an ally.

He grew up in the Philly suburbs and knows better than to makes these kinds of arguments. In Israel, the reaction to his remarks is that he’s trying to scorch the earth so his successors will have more difficulty improving relations with the Biden administration. In other words, it’s a bitter, thoughtless, selfish act.

I agree.