Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke lambasted Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, labeling the Israeli prime minister a “racist” who neither represents the “true will of the Israeli people” nor the “best interests” of the relationship between the United States and Israel.

The Democrat was in Iowa over the weekend to drum up support for his run for president when a voter asked him to comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, CNN reported. In his response, O’Rourke criticized Netanyahu as a racist leader who had obstructed peace in the region.

“This is somebody who, in a previous election, warned Arabs were coming to the polls. It’s racism,” O’Rourke said, referring to a warning about “droves of Arabs” that the Israeli leader had issued to his supporters in 2015.

“This is somebody who now no longer subscribes to a two-state solution and has vowed to annex the West Bank which will make peace, in the long term, impossible,” O’Rourke continued. “This is someone who has joined far-right parties who are inherently racist in their speech and the way that they want to treat their fellow human beings in that part of the world.”

Netanyahu, who has been dogged by allegations of corruption and is up for re-election this week, vowed over the weekend to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank if voters return him to power. He has also sought to form a coalition with the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, whose views have been slammed as “reprehensible” by the American Jewish Committee and “hateful and extremist” by the Anti-Defamation League.