Netanyahu's Cultivation of Hate in Israel
A massive portion of the Israeli public has fallen victim to conflating their leader for their nation, and their leader's interests for their collective national interests. The results are unnerving.
The Israeli apartheid regime has undeniably cultivated and fostered a significant amount of normalized hate and disdain among too many of its Jewish citizens, showcasing a national will to delegitimize and disregard any person, party, or organization that opposes its long term goal for control and supremacy.
This past weekend, the Israeli Defense Forces shamelessly lied to journalists and falsely announced a ground invasion of Gaza— even making it known on their Twitter account— as a deliberate ploy to prompt Hamas members to put themselves in vulnerable positions in order to have more effective (i.e. more deadly) bombing campaigns on the open-air prison. In addition to the blatant use of deception to secure advantages in an already lopsided struggle, the Israeli regime downed the Associated Press bureau in Gaza that also housed Al Jazeera and other media outlets, in an attempt to tie an even tighter blindfold around global eyes.
This deception and obstruction of accountability highlights this regime's undying motives of achieving its cruel, absolutist objectives, as well as their guiltless ability to brush aside concerns and criticism from around the world regardless of what trickery it takes to do so. This is an example of a national force that has irretrievably tumbled into to its own version of reality where they exploit the shaping of narrative and tighten their own grip around the weaponization of hate.
In doing so, a massive portion of the Israeli public has fallen victim to conflating their leader for their nation, and their leader's interests for their collective national interests. Some of the results are unnerving.
Abby Martin of the Empire Files recently compiled a video of when she spoke to Israeli Zionists on the matter of Palestinians. A vast majority of the responses were clearly vitriolic, hateful, and at times shrouded by genocidal desires. What's most striking about the video is the manner in which these things are said: they were expressed with a sense of normalization regarding these cruel sentiments and said with a firm belief that it is the ultimate truth.
Here's a shorter version, and below it is the full version:
Though it is certainly true that these are not the views of all Israeli Jews, these views are still prominently grounded in Israel, and have gained more support over the last decade or so as the public has shifted further and further to the right under Benjamin Netanyahu.
Further to the right than ever, Israel has sunk deeper into a national obsession with Israeli supremacy. The uptick in Israeli settlements and the implementation of laws that slowly bear out a future of that supremacy have taken place under Bibi Netanyahu. One such legal change that was characteristic of this rightward-moving, supremacy-hungry population came about in 2018 with a "Jewish nation state" bill that hailed Hebrew as the national language while downgrading Arabic from its official languages, designated Israeli settlements a premiere national interest, and uplifted the Jewish people's "right" to self-determination.
In its effort to ethnically cleanse their surroundings of Palestinians by forcing them out through sieges, dispossession, and political pressure, Israel has cultivated, among it's Zionist population and supporters, a climate of normalized hate. In frank terms, it's not only hate, it is racism and dehumanization, which are boxes one and two on the genocide checklist.
Again, this is a brand of hate that has become more and more prominent in recent years, and it's acceleration happens to coincide with a period where undying Israeli support in America began to show some cracks.
In 2009, journalist Max Blumenthal released a video called "Feeling the Hate in Israel" which highlighted this animosity as it exists in too many Jewish Israelis. It was eventually censored, being removed from YouTube, Vimeo, and other platforms, but it can still be found online. It was a series of clips containing Israeli Zionists' opinions following a speech made by then-newly elected U.S. president Barack Obama in Cairo where he said he came "to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition."
Blumenthal's video showed a Jewish Israeli population angry at a U.S. president for showing an ounce of sympathy to Muslim people around the world, and a population clearly out on their own island in terms of world view and philosophy. Many other nations support and fund that lone island, but no one is as secluded as the Zionists themselves.
As noted, since 2009, this prevalence of hate has only strengthened. It's no wonder that 2009— besides being the year where Blumenthal caught a glimpse into the vitriol— was also the year where Netanyahu began his current reign as Prime Minister— a reign that has so far lasted twelve years, swerved through a list of corruption charges, and has further stranded Israel on an island in his selfish attempt to preserve his power. On that island, Zionism and the desire for a single, Jewish state reigns supreme, and everything else is demonized and made out to be a threat merely because it challenges the goal of strict adherence to this cruel standard of governance.
Here, Netanyahu has held hostage a significant portion of Israelis to the idea that there's an inextricable tie between their nation and their leader, confining them to the deception that any threat to Netanyahu is, at its core, a direct threat to an Israeli state.
This island is best illustrated by the fact that the struggle of power within Israeli politics has collapsed along the lines of normal party politics. This is primarily because the base of Netanyahu's party, Likud, along with other far-right parties they've formed coalitions with, has ventured further away from any support for a particular ideology over the past several years, shifting instead to strict support for Netanyahu. Instead of being supporters of a set of political philosophies, many Israelis have been cornered into picking a side regarding a polarizing Netanyahu, where in that crass referendum one is either seen as supportive of Israeli stability and supremacy or seen as supportive of challenging that status.
Thus any challenge to Netanyahu and his regime signals, by default, nothing but dissidence from Israeli rule, and in the eyes of many it becomes a dangerous, threatening stance.
Benjamin Netanyahu has worked very hard to try and maintain a consistent public image as a charismatic, Western-educated leader, undeterred by outside antagonism and determined to destroy anyone who stands in the way of a Zionist state. In this manner, Netanyahu's utilization of tough-guy ultra-nationalism has turned debates regarding his capacity to be an effective Israeli leader among the global community into debates about whether or not Israel should exist— aligning himself with the notion that Israel should be a globally-recognized state, and making the case that he is the vehicle for that end and that opposing him puts this national objective in peril.
This overall strategy is one doubled-down on, even as Netanyahu notably faces corruption charges. The cases in question include substantiated claims that the prime minister was given lavish gifts from high-profile businessmen in exchange for political favors as well as the charge that Netanyahu sacrificed his alliance with powerful gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson by supporting legislation that would hinder Adelson's newspaper, Israel Hayom, while simultaneously working in the favor of a rival outlet, Arnon "Noni" Moses's Yediot Aharonot, in exchange for favorable coverage from the latter newspaper. That second case is backed up by leaked conversations between Netanyahu and Moses discussing a deal to weaken Moses' rival, Israel Hayom, as means to gain a positive portrayal in Moses's newspaper that was, at the time, highly critical of Netanyahu.
This is Netanyahu's game: artificially tilting the narrative in his favor by creating islands where those who resist the drift into secluded ultra-nationalism are deemed outcasts and enemies. Netanyahu has seen that secluding himself and his party in political terms, and his nation by extension, through frantically resorting to consolidating political alliances and straining the frayed relationship between Jews and Palestinians, has served as a way to stay in power. In this manner, corruption charges don't threaten Netanyahu, they embolden him.
Very clearly— considering the corruption charges stalking Netanyahu, and the countless instances where the Israeli regime have initiated aggressive assaults on Palestinians— demonizing any opponent or challenger is the key to staying afloat, especially if done in a rapid way that not only controls but establishes the desired narrative. And the more at risk Netanyahu and his regime are to condemnation, the more volatile the demonization of the other side must be.
From very early on, Netanyahu has made self-victimization of both himself and, moreover, all of Israel the ultimate weapon in a narrative war fought with optics.
When asked about the "conflict" between Israel and Palestine, Netanyahu has remained consistent to his overarching strategy. Every single time, Netanyahu finds a way to point a finger in a manner that presents things as some black and white battle between forces of good and evil, not only denying all the violence and deceit from his own side, but refusing to give it any room in the narrative.
In 1978, as he made his way to Israel and was initiating his political career there, Netanyahu implied in regards to Israel-Palestine, that there's an uphill battle for Israel, saying: "The core of the conflict is the unfortunate Arab refusal to accept the state of Israel."
In 2015, at an American Enterprise Institute conference, he said, in frank terms: "The core of the conflict in the Middle East is the battle between modernity and early primitive medievalism. The core of the specific conflict between Israel and Palestine is the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundary."
Despite the fact that the initiation of an Israeli state was a forceful action taken by western powers foreign to the region, Netanyahu has done everything in his capacity to flip the narrative— at least among his base and a significant portion of Israeli citizens— so that instead of any consideration of Israeli and Western aggression, it all turns towards reasons why Israel and its Western donors need to be aggressive, even if those reasons are entirely made up (like, for instance, saying Israel represents modernity and the Muslims represent some backwards medievalism). Predictably so, the typical, propagandized reasons for the use of Israeli force are "unprovoked" threats of antisemitism and terror.
Though the sweeping victories for Hamas members in the 2006 Palestinian elections was seen as a brewing crisis inside the Israeli government, there was an identifiable silver lining for Israel as a seemingly unforgivable antagonist was written into the script for them, and they were then able to prop up their own victimization that in turn made their vehement aggression, both in the suppression of Palestinians and the expansion of Israeli supremacy, look rational and necessary to unassuming global eyes. Sure enough, after Hamas's election wins, blockades were enforced against the Gaza Strip without anyone batting an eye at the massive humanitarian implications. The narrative at that point, showed an Israeli regime threatened by what is portrayed as malevolent forces, not the other way around.
When in a situation where a world power is being "victimized," that world power is given almost absolute freedom, from their people and their allies, to combat their agitators with force, even as it likely puts more strain on the precarious situation. And with a larger sense of instability comes a larger supposed need for order and control. Who supplies order and control? By the typical standards, established world powers do. As tensions rise, it thrusts the Israeli regime into further isolation from nuance and, with the limited capacity to understand the world, causes the nation to become fearful and hateful of anything that challenges their revised world view.
And when people's world view and sense of a way of life is challenged, it mobilizes a population to become united by that common threat, and more hyper-nationalist as a result.
Think about the misuses of power and force following 9/11 and through the ensuing war on terror: it was, in the eyes of many Americans, permissible to do whatever it took to defeat an elusive enemy when that American public was so visibly affected by a sense of impending threats. Not only does the threat take over the public consciousness, it keeps them blinded from the more covert and scandalous courses of action from the government (in this particular case, torture, the injustices of Guantanamo Bay, and the expansion of the surveillance state are a few notable examples).
Through the strategy of hoarsely highlighting national threats— either legitimate or illegitimate, either provoked or unprovoked— Netanyahu has cultivated an Israeli population that is led to believe that they are threatened without any need for rational reasoning, and it, in turn, reduces the national narrative into a battle between forces of "good" and forces of "evil." Netanyahu has setup a situation where he hides behind Israel, pointing a finger at the absurdist caricatures of enemies he's created, resorting to fear-mongering in regards to antisemitism and terrorism, all so Israeli Jews are given the impression that their way of life is being threatened and attacked and that Netanyahu is the gatekeeper of their safety.
The bigger the threat is in public perception, the more effective it becomes, and the harder for it to be quelled. Weaponizing antisemitism to justify Zionism is a surefire way, as Netanyahu knows, to cultivate even more antisemitism. Weaponizing the threat of terror rationalizes Israel's own terrorist retaliations that only ends up resulting in even more resistance to Israeli force. It becomes a never ending cycle where the only thing that changes with each revolution is an increase in momentum and an intensification of the bitterness.
As seen with the leveling of the AP bureau in Gaza, it's vital that Israel have the curtains drawn so as to control the global narrative the same way they dictate the national narrative. If that cannot be achieved, it would become (as it already has to a certain degree) crystal clear to the world that the Israeli regime is acting in a manner that utterly defies human rights and surrenders any reasonable justification for its bloody sieges. It becomes even more vital to control the narrative as cracks in the very foundation that has upheld the Israeli state for so long become apparent. That foundation: unanimous support for Israel among Americans. With a significant number of U.S. congress members (led primarily by Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar) signaling their solidarity with Palestinians, it's clear that there is a possible end to the unanimous, unconditional support for the Israeli regime.
Breaking it off with Israel is something we will have to see to believe as it will require wide scale divestment from and sanctioning of the regime, but this threat to Israeli impunity has clearly resulted in another elaborate attempt by their regime to frantically gain hold of the narrative. In doing so, Israel has revealed both their reliance on narrative control and that their cultivation of hate is necessary for its continued existence as a power. Besides, even if this is a regime secluded in world view and political philosophy, money exchanges between other powers and their remote location travel long distances in short durations.
Israel's very existence as a state depended on the forceful occupation of another people's land and the subsequent denial of those cruel facts. And in order to sustain that existence, Israel must continue to warp and invert the facts and the overall story. . . Netanyahu knows he needs to continue being the disseminator of illusions with his reactionary and hateful leadership. At this point, it's a vicious cycle that the Zionist occupiers are forced to clutch hold of if they are to follow through with their ethnic cleansing quest. . . Even if that means the weaponization of antisemitism encourages more antisemitism. . . Even if weaponizing the classification of "terror" on any resistance is only creating more "terrorism". . . Even if clinging tighter to a Zionist state makes that reality impossible to manifest without completely dispossessing millions of innocent people. . . Even if it widens the chasm between the world and the Israeli regime as it chooses to remain secluded on its island of brutish hate.
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