Netanyahu = Bush

When they claim that Israel is fighting for its survival in an existential war, Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet members are obviously exaggerating and are weaponizing the emotional impact of the horror of Oct. 7. Or, to put it another way, Israel is committing the same mistakes as the United States after Sept. 11, and there are clearly echoes of George W. Bush’s response in Netanyahu’s approach. Netanyahu’s unwavering position is strengthened by the fact that he is allied with two radical factions in his coalition government, both of which — just like Hamas — refuse to accept the 1967 agreements. Their desire is for a Greater Israel, and this hard-line view helps explain why 70% of Israelis are opposed to Netanyahu.

The most important issue since Oct. 7 has been the return of antisemitism, in the streets and even on university campuses, in Europe as well as the United States. At the moment, European Jews are once again living in fear. In fact, they have been living in fear for many years, and this is why many thousands of European Jews emigrated to Israel in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the Bataclan attacks in France. The flight of European Jews, harassed by Muslim gangs, is one of the taboo subjects for a news media that has cozied up to the laziness of “woke” attitudes. Similarly, it has also become taboo to discuss homophobic attacks by these same Muslim gangs.

How is it that progressive Europeans, self-proclaimed defenders of women’s rights and gay rights, remain silent in the face of the homophobia and machismo of Muslim men — even the moderates — and, worse still, align themselves with the even more fascist jihadi movements? How is this possible? Still, this is not to say that harsh criticism of the Israeli kind of democracy and government isn’t warranted, since Israel is, after all, the biggest protagonist on the scene.

It is important to remember, at this point, the old maxim, which holds that terrorism is a demonstration of weakness by those who practice it and that its emotional impact is inversely proportional to its actual strength. Oct. 7 clearly had a brutal emotional impact on Israeli society, but it reveals the despair of Israel’s enemies, not their strength. This is not 1967 or 1973, since the other side does not have armies capable of invading and destroying Israel.

When they claim that Israel is fighting for its survival in an existential war, Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet members are obviously exaggerating and are weaponizing the emotional impact of the horror of Oct. 7. Or, to put it another way, Israel is making the same mistakes as the United States after Sept. 11, and there are clearly echoes of George W. Bush’s response in Netanyahu’s approach. Netanyahu’s unwavering position is strengthened by the fact that he is allied with two radical factions in his coalition government, both of which — just like Hamas — refuse to accept the 1967 agreements. Their desire is for a Greater Israel, and this hard-line view helps explain why 70% of Israelis are opposed to Netanyahu.

Up to this point in its history, Israel has always been able to hold its radical factions in check — those groups, that is, that refuse to respect the borders established in the 1967 war. The new, deeper-than-ever division in Israeli society, division that Netanyahu and his allies have instigated, has revealed the unprecedented power held by these radical factions. This neoconservative and messianic radicalism can be a serious problem, just as it has been in the United States. This messianic excess casts aside the classical realism of foreign policy strategy and is the harbinger of a cascade of errors. Furthermore, it is obvious that, in order to remain in power, Netanyahu needs a protracted war on terror.

As Ehud Barak recently told CNN, the perpetuation of this war and equating Palestine and Hamas — a narrative that appears to be embedded in the current Israeli response — are fundamental for Netanyahu and those radical allies who have never accepted the situation that emerged after the 1967 war. And what’s the moral of the story? It is critical, as Barak has said, that a new government emerges in Israel, a need made more evident by the polls that show 70% of the electorate is radically opposed to Netanyahu.