section_path: Relations with foreign leaders
section_name: Relations with foreign leaders
paragraph_text: Relations with foreign leaders
  
  As the longest serving prime minister of Israel for over 17 years, he developed close relationships with foreign leaders. Netanyahu has a close relationship with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, their having known each other for decades due to the privileged relationship between the Likud Party and the EPP, the European People's Party. Orban particularly admired Netanyahu while he was working as finance minister, and received advice from him while Netanyahu was Finance Minister of Israel.
  
  Netanyahu has been noted for his close and friendly relationship with former-late Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Netanyahu has said of Berlusconi: "We are lucky that there is a leader such as yourself." Netanyahu has described Berlusconi as "one of the greatest friends".
  
  Netanyahu and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi developed a close relationship and ties between India and Israel increased during their rule.
  
  Netanyahu had a warm relationship and "personal friendship" with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his 2022 book, Netanyahu wrote positively about Putin and describes him as "smart, sophisticated and focused on one goal – returning Russia to its historical greatness". Their relationship has been strained since the start of the Gaza war.
  
  In early 2018, the Polish parliament adopted a new Polish law criminalizing suggestions that Poles were collectively complicit in Holocaust -related or other war crimes that had been committed during World War II by the Axis powers. Later that year at the Munich Security Conference, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said "it is not going to be seen as criminal to say that there were Polish perpetrators, as there were Jewish perpetrators... not only German perpetrators" implicated in the Jewish Holocaust. Netanyahu called his Polish counterpart's comment "outrageous" for saying that Jews had been among the Holocaust's perpetrators. The resulting crisis in Israel–Poland relations was resolved in late June that year when the two prime ministers issued a joint communiqué endorsing research into the Jewish Holocaust and condemning the misnomer " Polish concentration camps ".
  
  According to Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, during the visit of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Jerusalem, Netanyahu failed to publicly address Ukraine's official policy of rehabilitating local Nazi collaborators like UPA leader Roman Shukhevych, who had participated in the murder of Jews.
  
  Netanyahu has developed a close relationship with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro following Bolsonaro's election in 2018.
  
  Netanyahu has a good relationship with Argentinian president Javier Milei, having called him a "great friend of the Jewish State", shortly after Milei started his tenure as president.
  
  Since 2023, Netanyahu and Chinese President Xi Jinping have been engaged in diplomacy, arising due to strained ties between the US and Israel. The diplomatic situation has been made complicated due to the Gaza war, where China has remained neutral.
  
  Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have tense relations. In March 2019, after being denounced by Turkey as a racist for saying that Israel was the nation-state of the Jewish people only, Netanyahu called Erdoğan a dictator and mocked him for imprisoning journalists in a tweet. In response, Erdoğan called Netanyahu as "the thief who heads Israel", referencing the ongoing corruption scandals against Netanyahu. In the same speech, Erdoğan further escalated the spat by addressing to Netanyahu directly, saying, "you are a tyrant. You are a tyrant who slaughters 7-year-old Palestinian kids", and further in April 2018, calling Israel "terror state" and Netanyahu "terrorist". Netanyahu tweeted that "Erdoğan is among Hamas's biggest supporters and there is no doubt that he well understands terrorism and slaughter." Netanyahu condemned the 2019 Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria and warned against ethnic cleansing of Kurds by Turkey and its proxies.