By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK — Much of what Israel and the Palestinians are experiencing today has befallen them under Netanyahu’s leadership. He believes that the Palestinians will always pose an existential threat to Israel, which led him to pursue domestic policies that dangerously undermined the country’s founding principles of freedom and equality. Concurrently, he has taken extreme measures to suppress the Palestinians and maintain the occupation to keep them at bay. This has resulted in the disintegration of the social fabric of both societies, and prevented the rise of new political leadership to change course.
Notwithstanding Israel’s remarkable military, economic, and technological achievements and the dramatic expansion of its trade and diplomatic relations since its creation in 1948, Israel failed to live up to its promise. Under Netanyahu’s watch, Israel’s democracy is tearing apart at the seams, the unity of purpose between Israeli and diaspora Jewry is crumbling, the social and political divide among Israelis is dangerously widening, and the prospect of living in peace and security is becoming increasingly untenable.
During the same period, the Palestinians’ situation has become ominously worse. They remain dependent on handouts, millions of refugees still languish in camps, and they are socially and politically disintegrating, insecure, and despairing. The hopelessness of young Palestinians and the self-resignation of old, with diminishing prospects of escaping the harsh reality of the occupation, further intensified their hatred and resentment toward Israel. And the Palestinians’ distant dream of establishing their own state is rapidly fading away.
Netanyahu seems to forget that the historic survival of the Jews and the secret behind it did not rest on military prowess or financial dexterity or the most advanced technology, but on an unwavering moral commitment to human and civil rights and the brotherhood of man. They stood steadfastly behind the poor and the despairing, and championed the causes of freedom, liberalism, and equality. These attributes were ingrained in the minds and souls of the Jews, due, in the main, to their horrifying experiences throughout the millennia of dispersal, persecution, expulsion, discrimination, and death.
One might think that these terrifying historical experiences would influence Netanyahu and his followers to fully adhere to human rights, and exhaust every conceivable way not to betray these principles in dealing with the Palestinians. But sadly, Netanyahu has capitalized on a certain segment of Palestinians that still resist Israel’s existence to legitimize Israel’s actions against the Palestinians.
Netanyahu pushed for the passing of the Nation State Law, which degrades non-Jews to second-class citizens. The law affirms that “The state of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historic right to self-determination.” The law discriminates against Israeli Arab citizens, intensifies their resentment toward and hatred of the state, and widens the gap between the two sides, which dangerously increases Israel’s vulnerability from within.
Netanyahu supported Trump’s cuts of US funding to organizations that promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, and barred scores of other Israeli organizations dedicated to peace from raising money in foreign countries. Netanyahu is denying the necessary process of reconciliation between the two sides, which is central to peaceful coexistence and the only way to resolve the conflict. To be sure, Netanyahu is tearing down instead of building bridges to promote peace.
Additionally, Netanyahu is destroying Israel’s democracy brick by brick, starting with the judiciary, which is the most revered and independent institution in Israel. He is supporting an amendment that transfers jurisdiction of certain cases regarding the West Bank away from the Supreme Court, which will complicate its decrees to remove illegal outposts and settlements, and another law that would allow Members of the Knesset to reinstate laws struck down by the Supreme Court.
In the words of the Court’s President Esther Hayut, the proposed legislation “would bypass the human rights of every individual in Israeli society” adding that “[i]t [the amendment] voids the Basic Law. The cynical use made of the problem of infiltrators as an excuse to legislate such a bill cannot hide its destructive significance.”
Under Netanyahu, the growing power of the Orthodox religious institution and the steady shift of the country to the extreme right are effectively blurring the lines of separation of power between ‘church and state.’ He supported the Religious Services Ministry’s threats to bar the “Women of the Wall” from praying at the Western Wall, warning that if they do not obey, they will not be allowed to worship at all. Sadly and tellingly, the police did nothing to stop verbal and physical attacks against women praying at the Kotel in July.
He further alienated diaspora Jewry, especially in the US, by caving in to the rabbinical institutions. He reneged on his decision to allow men and women to pray together at the Western Wall, what would have been a historic agreement with liberal Jewish denominations. This was not only a slap in their face, but defiance of one of the most critical aspects of Jewish survival, which is maintaining their powerful and uncompromising affinity despite being dispersed in over 100 countries.
Finally, Netanyahu is gradually chipping away at one of the central pillars of democracy—freedom of the press. He has become increasingly critical of the free press and has meddled with no less than 13 media outlets. As being investigated in corruption Cases 2000 and 4000, he constantly attempts to manipulate the media to receive favorable coverage, increases political interference, and actively uses the courts to propagate libel and defamation lawsuits, while further extending the military censure into social media.
Every measure Netanyahu has taken is acutely undermining Israel’s very existence. But the biggest threat as we know it is its leaders, especially Netanyahu’s unwillingness to realistically face the conflict with the Palestinians while acting to destroy the Palestinians’ aspiration for statehood. Instead of remaining relentless in the search for a solution dictated by the unimpeachable reality of coexistence, he chose to suppress the Palestinian national movement by whatever means necessary, including force.
Every punitive measure that has been taken against the Palestinians, be that administrative detentions, demolishing Palestinian villages such as Khan al Ahmer in favor of new Israeli settlements, expropriating private land to build Israeli outposts, night raids, limiting mobility, denying building permits, uprooting olive trees, and arbitrary incarcerations, have led to the gradual destruction of the Palestinians’ social fabric and cohesiveness, prolonging the occupation and displacement for decades. The humiliation of the Palestinians for three generations has rendered their present leadership helpless, with little or nothing to offer to change their plight.
To be sure, Netanyahu betrayed the very reason behind Israel’s creation—to live in peace, provide a safe refuge for the Jews, and foster strong and unwavering ties with diaspora Jewry, while feeding into one another to maintain their strength, harmony, and purpose.
Netanyahu could have been the prime minister to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians, but did not because he was and still is determined not to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state as long as he is in power.
He will leave behind a garrison pariah state and shattered Palestinian community, while setting back the prospect of peace for another generation.
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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies. alon@alonben-meir.com
Alon Ben Meir is a puzzling man. Sometimes he comes up with very astute analyses of different aspects of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and sometimes, as he does here, he allows his leftist core to run completely unchecked. The result is this bizarre if eloquent demonstration of the fact that he suffers from a severe case of Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome, an affliction that leads straight to equally severe cognitive dissonance, which in turn translates into selective memory and massive misrepresentation of facts. In other words, a long drivel. Almost each one of his accusations against Netanyahu are either false or incomplete.
In particular, like all lefties, he completely exhonerates the Palestinians from any responsibility for the sad state of affairs they cornered themselves into. That alone is enough to consider anything written by him as lacking credibility or relevance. I’m sorry I wasted my time reading him (again). I will henceforth focus on more credible writers such as Khaled Abu Thoameh. Maybe the SDJW could publish some of his enlightening pieces instead of this in the future?
Let us not forget some basic facts, which are blurred in this article:
1. Israel and a “Palestinian” State is a zero sum game.
And the reference is to a “Palestinian” State set up in the tiny piece of land West of the River Jordan – some 23% of the area of the Mandate that had been destined by the League-of-Nations for a Jewish Homeland, in 1922. I.e., if an independent “Palestinian” entity is set up therein, Israel is under an existential threat, and would probably not be sustainable.
2. The attempt to throw the pathological hatred of “Palestians” and Islamists on the Jews, on Israel or on Netanyahu, is preposterous. It ignores the sheer truth, the very nature of that hatred and the widely recognized history.
– Had the Arab Mufti incited the Nazi’s, from 1938 on, to liquidate the Jews rather than expel them away from Europe because of Netanyahu?
– Did the Hebron massacre of 1929 come because of Netanyahu’s intransigence?
– Had 5 Arab states invaded the just newborn Israel in 1948 in order to crush it down because of Netanyahu?
Had the Arabs initiated the boycot on Israel ofter they lost the War of Independence, in 1948, because of the “settlements”?
3. “Palestinian” “refugees” and the Jewish State of Israel is a zero sum game. Any talk about a “return” of “Palestinian” “refugees” to tiny Israel, is knowingly but willfully a means of inflaming the insolubility of the conflict, and of inciting terror.
The very status of “”Palestinian” “refugees””, is merely a means to perpetuate the conflict and intensify the hatred towards Israel and the Jews. The mind boggling fact is, that some 70 years ago there were initially some 600,000 Arabs who fled their homes in Western Eretz-Yissra’el, in what they thought would have been a temporary stay-away until the Jews would be slaughtered (that is what they has been told by their leaders…), but they had been keeping their misery up for ever, and only blow up in numbers. Today UNRWA sustains some 5,000,000 “refugees”, in some 8 Arab states, whereas the approximate number of Israeli Jews is about 7,000,000! These “refugees” are brought up on a lethal hatred towards Israel and the Jews, and have nothing else care for and aspire in their lives!
4. Israel is a solid tower of prosperity, morality, democracy, happiness, growth, creativity, innovation, art, faith, social unity, development and good values. Not only for its Jewish people and its immediate allies, but for the world over, at large!
This fact is corroborated time and again by ongoing statistcs conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.
As to the rift with the Diaspora: Indeed, there is a problem. It stems from the fact that the radical left, that loathes strong and vital Israel, is much stronger in America than in Israel. Hoever, this animosity should be taken in historic perspective, and evebtually be cured by the very body that it grew up in – American Jewry. Not by suicidal appeasement on Israel’s part.
5. Of course, Israel’s people should be credited with its acheivements – first and foremost, but the leader who has brought this prosperity in his watch should not be denied that altogether, and should not be smeared for not fulfilling the aspirations of Israel’s worst enemies!