No matter where you stand on the Israeli war against Gazans, undeniable is the fact that many, many innocent lives are being lost. One report estimates that 100 children a day are killed, and that 70% of the casualties are women and children. And the war shows no sign of ending.
According to two respected journalists, there is little doubt that the responsibility for this ongoing carnage rests on the shoulders of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister.
Thie Star's Martin Regg Cohn sees personal self-preservation as the key to understanding Netanyahu's merciless war of retribution for the October Hamas attack on Israel. Speaking of the unseemly coalition of reprobates with which the leader has allied himself, he writes,
That he should consort with so dishonourable a cabal of cabinet ministers — renegades who violated the law, racists who breached human rights, radicals who scorned democratic norms — could only be explained by Netanyahu’s utter desperation. When I interviewed him as prime minister in the late 1990s, he was consumed by fear of losing political power; today, he worries about losing his personal freedom.
Netanyahu stands accused of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three ongoing cases. His best defence was to go on the offence, perpetrating a constitutional coup to perpetuate his grip on power and protect him from the judicial process.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? One only need look to the U.S. and Trump's attempt to subvert justice by getting re-elected. Before that eventuality, he is doing everything he can to get all charges against him dismissed. Netanyahu has followed similar tactics.
Emboldened and empowered, Netanyahu attempted to jury-rig the judicial process by directing his coalition of lawbreakers to undermine the legal system at its core. His government spearheaded the gutting of the Supreme Court’s traditional powers, curbing its authority to review the “reasonableness” of any legislation rammed through by his parliamentary majority while protecting him from being unseated by the attorney general.
Well-respected journalist Gwynne Dyer has a similarly withering assessment of the Israeli leader.
The people around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regularly describe the war in Gaza as "existential," but that’s nonsense. The "existence" of Israel is in no danger whatever. The only thing facing an existential risk is Netanyahu’s government, which would immediately collapse if the shooting stops.
The extreme right-wing and religious nationalist parties who made Netanyahu’s coalition possible are hoping that prolonged fighting will drive the Palestinians (22,000 dead so far) out of part or all of the Gaza Strip and/or the West Bank.
As national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir put it, the war presents an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza.”
They want that land for more Jewish settlements, and if Netanyahu made peace they would instantly abandon him.
Even worse than that, from Netanyahu’s point of view, is the fact that a return to "normal" would allow his trial on corruption charges to resume. That could ultimately send him to jail, and anything is better than that. Even endless war.
Is endless war what Netanyahu is counting on? Given that he has no strategy, Dyer offers this:
Why else would Netanyahu now be preparing for a backup war with Hezbollah in Lebanon? He and his ministers are constantly warning that such a war may be "necessary" — “the situation on the Lebanese front will not be allowed to continue,” one said — even though it is obvious that Hezbollah does not want a war now.
Hezbollah is a formidable organization that fought the Israeli army to a standstill in their last major confrontation in 2006. Deliberately going to war with it when Israel is already fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip makes no sense in terms of the country’s interests — but in terms of Netanyahu’s personal interest, it makes perfectly good sense.
Potentates of old were always willing to sacrifice thousands upon thousands of lives in pursuit of their reprehensible self-interest. In that, it would seem Benjamin Netanyahu has been a very apt student of history.
.. will comment cautiously a bit later Lorne..
ReplyDeleteYour Post was top of list via Progressive Bloggers..
& would like to scan preceding Posts - today & the weekend
Unfortunately, I’m far too informed re ‘the Nature of Urban Warfare’
It’s also my perspective that ‘Nothing Good’ springs from the Fanatical Fantasies when Religious Beliefs & Corrupt Politics share the same bed. Just add Yellow ‘Journalism’ and behold the Parasitic Mutations spawned by that.. Under The Banner Of Heaven.. or God On Their Side.. my ass !🦎
Precisely, Sal. The unholy combination of religion and politics has a long history of death and destruction. That, too, shows no signs of abatement.
DeleteIt was the late 60s. I was in officer school at Esquimalt. A young infantry officer in dress uniform (the army always had the best uniforms) came in to the classroom. He had just returned from a tour on the demilitarized zone along the border of Gaza.
ReplyDeleteThis fellow opened his briefcase and produced copies of Life, Look, and Time magazines. All featured stories about terrorism along the DMZ, pointing the finger of blame at the Palestinians.
The officer said it was part of his duty to investigate ceasefire violations along the border. Contrary to the tone of these American news magazines he said that most of the attacks across that no fire zone originated from Israeli terrorists attacking Gazans.
Until that moment I had been an ardent supporter of Israel but what I learned recalibrated my perception. I realized that there were no "clean hands" in that foresaken land. Our ally was as dirty, perhaps dirtier than the Palestinians.
When former state secretary Hillary Clinton's emails were dumped during the 2016 election campaign, among them was a dispatch about a meeting Clinton had with top Israeli generals. They detailed a new Israeli policy that became known as "Dahiyeh" after a Hezbollah neighbourhood in Beiruit. Israel would henceforth deliberately target civilian neighbourhoods - apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and essential infrastructure - power plants, freshwater and sewage systems - a deliberate and flagrant affront to human rights laws and the laws of war set out in the Geneva Conventions. Israel was deliberately targeting civilian populations and their essential infrastructure in the belief that would pressure their opponents to yield.
Clinton's dispatch confirmed what I had suspected when Israeli jets laid waste to this Beiruit neighbourhood. I had been puzzled with the first day saw air raids taking down the power plants. On successive days they trashed the water and sewage plants. Then they methodically destroyed hospitals, schools and finally residential buildings.
Once or twice a decade Israel has repeated these atrocities. Each time leads to grabbing more land in the West Bank and more pillaging of the Palestinian resources, especially farmland and the shared freshwater aquifers.
Canadian governments, Conservative and Liberal, have stood mute, supporting Israel almost every time the General Assembly votes on Palestinian issues.
We see each of these events as a standalone conflict which blinds us to the fact that what we're seeing is a campaign of ethnic cleansing by instalments. Those who criticize the Israeli government and its Zionist ways are denounced in our own House of Commons as anti-Semitic, conveniently blurring the criticial distinction.
An anti-Semite is one who hates Jews. It has now been turned on its head to mean anyone these fascists dislike. And our governments endorse this twisted logic. That makes our country complicit in this brutal madness.
It is so good to hear from you, Mound. You offer a penetrating assessment here, and your commentary reminds me why I miss reading your thoughts.
DeleteMay I humbly suggest that you come out of 'retirement' and post the above? I think all of your readers would be very much appreciative.
The kind of truth you assert here is one that you will almost never see in the MSM. I long ago realized that American news (not the commentary channels like CNN Or MSNBC), have an agenda that often mimics the government's. NBC is especially flagrant in this. For example, it is never questioned when a missile is directed at U.S. ships that it is ultimately enabled by Iran. Show a story sympathetic to the Gazan plight and then follow up with two stories about Israeli suffering.
I would say that Canadian media, in my view, are not nearly as guilty of this sort of thing as the Americans.
An anti-Semite is one who hates Jews. It has now been turned on its head to mean anyone these fascists dislike. And our governments endorse this twisted logic. That makes our country complicit in this brutal madness.
ReplyDeleteMuch the same is happening in the USA with Rep's vs Dem's.
TB
Agreed, TB. This poison is only spreading.
DeleteThe "existence" of Israel is in no danger whatever.
ReplyDeleteOh? Before the attack on Gaza I would have agreed. Now, I am not so sure. Israel had settled into the neighbour as an unwelcome arrival but one that everyone had learned to live with.
Now the neighbours are not so indifferent; rich Uncle Sam is not so rich any more and most of the rest of the town have woken up to the problem.
Israel seems to have been tolerated if not liked around most of the world. Its action, during and after the Oct 7 attack looks to be rapidly alienating a lot of the world.
The Abraham Accord are gone and Saudi Arabia is going to distance itself from Israel at least if the House of Saud wants to stay in power.
That South Africa has accused Israel of genocide suggests that some non-Western countries are sensing that the US is badly overstretched and its ability to defend Israel is slipping.
Israel has succeeded in enraging the populations of just about every country in the Middle East. Despite the fact that the rulers of those countries tend to be autocrats and would probably like to ignore the problem, they do have to respond, somewhat, to popular demand especially, if, as I suspect, much of the "ruling elite" are just as furious as the man in the street. Jordan is an interesting case. It has a large Palestinian population and the Queen is Palestinian.
I suspect the proposal to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque has likely infuriated most or all of the Muslim world many of whom never gave the plight of the Palestinians much thought. Bombing of Christian churches may not be good publicity either.
I don't expect to see Israel collapse tomorrow but I think it has done itself real and possibly irreparable damage.
In the West it has lost its image as the plucky little democracy surrounded by autocratic or dictatorial regimes. The only bastion of freedom in the region.
On the other hand, I believe a lot of Israelis have more than one citizenship and some may decide moving back to the "auld country" for a while might be a good idea, which is not good for a county with about 9 million real citizens (i.e. ethnically Jewish).
It might not be first choice at the moment but, IIRC, there are probably 1 or 1.5 million Israeli that could move to the Russian Federation today. Who knows how many Americans?
I understand that tourism is a major source of income. If this conflict goes on or worse expands, well there goes the tourist trade except maybe some of the nut-bar, US fundies towing a red heifer..
I do not expect Israel to collapse overnight, at least if it stops picking fights with Hezbollah and trying to start a war with Iran but it has seriously weakened itself.
john
Your comments offer a lot of food for thought, John. There is no doubt that Israel has alienated many with its overkill in Gaza. Whether that ultimately works to its real detriment remains to be seen.
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