Israeli director Ari Folman, best known for his Oscar nominated feature Waltz with Bashir, has pinned the blame for the dramatic escalation in violence and bloodshed in his country on Israel’s prime minister.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible for all of this,” he said of the surprise attack on Saturday by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that reportedly killed more than 1,000 Israelis and has resulted in Israel bombarding Gaza, reportedly killing thousands of Palestinians. “He is not the only one, but he is primarily responsible.”

“We couldn’t believe our eyes. The images we were seeing on television and social media are frightening,” he said. “Hundreds of dead — children, women and the elderly captured and taken as hostages. It is a situation that no human being can, or ever should, tolerate.”

The director, whose last animated feature Where is Anne Frank premiered in Cannes in 2021, claimed there was now deep skepticism about the government and the media.

“We don’t know what happened, and how it happened, and why it took the army 10 to 12 hours to reach the civilians who were captured,” he says. “The authorities were warned several times about this danger, but they always ignored the issue, and this is the result. It is not clear how the intelligence services or anyone had no inkling of this operation, which was clearly orchestrated for months and in great detail. This makes no sense.”

Folman claimed that Netanyahu’s government “overlooked everything other than what they call the justice revolution,” referring to a controversial reform proposal that would shift the balance of power between the executive and judiciary by diminishing the powers of the Supreme Court. It’s a law that has sparked several protests, such as the Sept. 23 demonstration in Tel Aviv, where crowds waved a giant picture of the prime minister that read “Dictator on the Run.”

A strong critic of the government headed by Netanyahu, Folman said that the Likud party leader is “controlled by racists, by people who do not believe in equality between Jews and Arabs, and who do not believe in democracy and were captive to religious fundamentalist ministers.”