A political consultant once related how he lunched with Benjamin
Netanyahu, who ordered a hamburger with fries. He was not supposed to be
eating such foods – doctor’s orders. As they were finishing up, Bibi’s
wife, Sarah, came in, saw the evidence and began to see red. Netanyahu,
all righteous indignation, looked her straight in the eye and said he
had eaten no such hamburger. The storyteller said he was convinced at
that moment that Netanyahu himself believed it.
If apocryphal, it is definitely in character. Netanyahu regularly embraces bad ideas or even lies so totally that he convinces himself of their rightness. Others start to believe them too. His outlandish idea, uttered in a speech, was that Hitler would have been happy with just expelling Jews if a Palestinian, the then grand mufti of Jerusalem, had not suggested annihilation instead. And they all have a purpose. In each phase of his career, Netanyahu has had a trope that he pushes so aggressively it can drive a citizen crazy. But they are fabulously popular with the public and they keep the headlines on him alone, while making him king of the issue.
Taking office for the second time in 2009, he began saying “delegitimisation” against every conceivable form of criticism. Israelis can hardly mouth the awkward English word, but it was a powerful and intuitive statement: we’re not doing anything wrong, they just hate us. It’s us against the world. He won a third term. In the third term, Netanyahu turned up the volume on his decades-old obsession with Iran to a fever pitch.
Each of these Bibi tunes responded to a particular political need. Delegitimisation was his answer and very soon all of Israel’s answer to a torrent of global anger following the first of three wars Israel fought in Gaza – Operation Cast Lead – and the Mavi Marmara incident in which Israel attacked a flotilla that had tried to break the Gaza siege, killing nine Turkish citizens. Iran, meanwhile, was the issue that Netanyahu used to sideline any discussion of the Palestinians and the occupation.
It is no coincidence that these tropes are rooted in existential threat. Bibi knows it resonates with the (Jewish) Israeli public.
But now he has really done it, say the critics. He has defiled the Holocaust, which is sacrosanct for the Jewish people, with absurd historical inaccuracies. Even his supporters will wither in the face of this blatant distortion of history, right? Probably not. Netanyahu knows what he is saying and the Jewish Israeli public knows. This isn’t about Hitler or Haj Amin. It’s about incitement – the fourth-term Bibi tune.
In this tune, Palestinian incitement, which indeed exists, is the sole reason for the recent escalation in violence. That and nothing else. Not the relative deprivation thrown in the face of East Jerusalemites daily. Not the relative justice – Palestinian knifemen killed on the spot while Jewish terrorists who burned the Dawabshe family while they slept are not charged. Not the nearly five-decade occupation. Only incitement.
There are three ways the “Palestinian incitement” accusation works for Netanyahu. First, as mentioned, it explains the recent violence to the satisfaction of the bulk of the Israeli public and justifies Israel’s response: everything is self-defence. Second, it contains the existential threat that is the core of all of his themes. Palestinian incitement is now linked to the greatest physical destruction Jews ever faced. Jews in Israel and everywhere must always fear existential destruction; it justifies Israel’s policies and it helps get Bibi elected.
Third, and most disturbing: somewhere in the late-2000s, it became acceptable to be openly racist in political discourse. In 2009, Avigdor Lieberman ran a campaign targeting Israel’s Arab population. One of the sarcastic slogans was: “Only Lieberman speaks Arabic!” Latent racism in Israel became fair game for political sloganeering.
Likud was quick to compete, its representatives sponsoring and co-sponsoring legislation in Israel’s parliament targeting Arabs, such as the loyalty oath bill. Likud then voted in a new list in 2012 full of extremists who latched on to the xenophobia theme.
Into the fray jumped Naftali Bennett. His Jewish Home party eats away at Netanyahu’s Likud from the right, partly by escalating rhetoric against Arabs. One of his party members, Orit Strock, told Arab parliamentarians they (Arabs in general) were “savages”.
The words had hardly left his mouth before Israeli historians trounced them; a Holocaust survivor wrote against his comments and the chancellor of Germany insisted on Germany’s guilt for the mass murder and a US State Department spokesperson hinted that it was “inflammatory rhetoric”. Maybe this time, Netanyahu has been truly chastened. He quickly provided a clarification that was billed as a partial rowing back of the statement.
Based on the recent past, however, he probably will get away with it. On the international level, Netanyahu recently took America-Israel relations to a new low and he is still standing. He threatened Jewish Israelis that his own citizens, Arabs, were coming to vote “in droves” on election day, causing outrage abroad – yet here he is.
At home, on the day after the H-(Hitler/Husseini) bomb, the top-read Israeli news portal Ynet didn’t run any opinion piece about the issue. The main rightwing news website Arutz 7 had a story about Israel’s deputy foreign minister telling Fox News about Palestinian incitement. And another popular mainstream website, Nrg (Maariv), posted two op-eds supporting the point about Husseini and Palestinians encouraging genocide. Why not? Netanyahu’s own putative rollback said just that: “I didn’t mean to absolve Hitler of responsibility, but to show that the father of the Palestinian nation wanted to destroy Jews even without occupation.”
Netanyahu knew what he was saying and who he was talking to. He knows how to weather the gasps while winking at a large segment of the Jewish Israeli public that needs to hear his trope. Only Netanyahu, it seems, speaks Israeli.
If apocryphal, it is definitely in character. Netanyahu regularly embraces bad ideas or even lies so totally that he convinces himself of their rightness. Others start to believe them too. His outlandish idea, uttered in a speech, was that Hitler would have been happy with just expelling Jews if a Palestinian, the then grand mufti of Jerusalem, had not suggested annihilation instead. And they all have a purpose. In each phase of his career, Netanyahu has had a trope that he pushes so aggressively it can drive a citizen crazy. But they are fabulously popular with the public and they keep the headlines on him alone, while making him king of the issue.
Taking office for the second time in 2009, he began saying “delegitimisation” against every conceivable form of criticism. Israelis can hardly mouth the awkward English word, but it was a powerful and intuitive statement: we’re not doing anything wrong, they just hate us. It’s us against the world. He won a third term. In the third term, Netanyahu turned up the volume on his decades-old obsession with Iran to a fever pitch.
Each of these Bibi tunes responded to a particular political need. Delegitimisation was his answer and very soon all of Israel’s answer to a torrent of global anger following the first of three wars Israel fought in Gaza – Operation Cast Lead – and the Mavi Marmara incident in which Israel attacked a flotilla that had tried to break the Gaza siege, killing nine Turkish citizens. Iran, meanwhile, was the issue that Netanyahu used to sideline any discussion of the Palestinians and the occupation.
It is no coincidence that these tropes are rooted in existential threat. Bibi knows it resonates with the (Jewish) Israeli public.
But now he has really done it, say the critics. He has defiled the Holocaust, which is sacrosanct for the Jewish people, with absurd historical inaccuracies. Even his supporters will wither in the face of this blatant distortion of history, right? Probably not. Netanyahu knows what he is saying and the Jewish Israeli public knows. This isn’t about Hitler or Haj Amin. It’s about incitement – the fourth-term Bibi tune.
In this tune, Palestinian incitement, which indeed exists, is the sole reason for the recent escalation in violence. That and nothing else. Not the relative deprivation thrown in the face of East Jerusalemites daily. Not the relative justice – Palestinian knifemen killed on the spot while Jewish terrorists who burned the Dawabshe family while they slept are not charged. Not the nearly five-decade occupation. Only incitement.
There are three ways the “Palestinian incitement” accusation works for Netanyahu. First, as mentioned, it explains the recent violence to the satisfaction of the bulk of the Israeli public and justifies Israel’s response: everything is self-defence. Second, it contains the existential threat that is the core of all of his themes. Palestinian incitement is now linked to the greatest physical destruction Jews ever faced. Jews in Israel and everywhere must always fear existential destruction; it justifies Israel’s policies and it helps get Bibi elected.
Third, and most disturbing: somewhere in the late-2000s, it became acceptable to be openly racist in political discourse. In 2009, Avigdor Lieberman ran a campaign targeting Israel’s Arab population. One of the sarcastic slogans was: “Only Lieberman speaks Arabic!” Latent racism in Israel became fair game for political sloganeering.
Likud was quick to compete, its representatives sponsoring and co-sponsoring legislation in Israel’s parliament targeting Arabs, such as the loyalty oath bill. Likud then voted in a new list in 2012 full of extremists who latched on to the xenophobia theme.
Into the fray jumped Naftali Bennett. His Jewish Home party eats away at Netanyahu’s Likud from the right, partly by escalating rhetoric against Arabs. One of his party members, Orit Strock, told Arab parliamentarians they (Arabs in general) were “savages”.
The words had hardly left his mouth before Israeli historians trounced them; a Holocaust survivor wrote against his comments and the chancellor of Germany insisted on Germany’s guilt for the mass murder and a US State Department spokesperson hinted that it was “inflammatory rhetoric”. Maybe this time, Netanyahu has been truly chastened. He quickly provided a clarification that was billed as a partial rowing back of the statement.
Based on the recent past, however, he probably will get away with it. On the international level, Netanyahu recently took America-Israel relations to a new low and he is still standing. He threatened Jewish Israelis that his own citizens, Arabs, were coming to vote “in droves” on election day, causing outrage abroad – yet here he is.
At home, on the day after the H-(Hitler/Husseini) bomb, the top-read Israeli news portal Ynet didn’t run any opinion piece about the issue. The main rightwing news website Arutz 7 had a story about Israel’s deputy foreign minister telling Fox News about Palestinian incitement. And another popular mainstream website, Nrg (Maariv), posted two op-eds supporting the point about Husseini and Palestinians encouraging genocide. Why not? Netanyahu’s own putative rollback said just that: “I didn’t mean to absolve Hitler of responsibility, but to show that the father of the Palestinian nation wanted to destroy Jews even without occupation.”
Netanyahu knew what he was saying and who he was talking to. He knows how to weather the gasps while winking at a large segment of the Jewish Israeli public that needs to hear his trope. Only Netanyahu, it seems, speaks Israeli.
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