In defence of Benjamin Netanyahu

This campaign continues a trend that began two decades ago by American, European and Israeli liberal critics of Israeli policies towards Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, and the region more broadly, which has unfairly placed blame on Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition government, whose more recent members are unjustly deemed responsible for veering Israel off its alleged pre-Netanyahu path of peace. Israel's main American apologist, Thomas Friedman, does not tire of unfairly pointing the finger at Netanyahu as a spoiler of Israel's peaceful record. He is often joined by leftist Senator Bernie Sanders, whose fulminations against Netanyahu are coupled with ongoing efforts to absolve both him and Israel of their crimes. Israel's expansionist ambitions, its unceasing aggression against its neighbours, the deliberate targeting of civilians, the daily pogroms carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, its genocide in Gaza, and the racist pronouncements of its leaders against the Palestinians - described during the genocide as human animals - are all depicted as some new direction in Israeli policy and rhetoric, based on Netanyahu's alleged right-wing commitments and those of his ultra-right secular and religious allies. These are hardly new arguments, but rather libellous reiterations of the blame Israel's domestic and western critics had placed on Menachem Begin's government, which came to power in 1977. It is incumbent upon Palestinians to vigorously defend both Begin and Netanyahu against such dissimulation and defamatory judgments, especially as all their crimes are no more than exaggerated repetitions of the crimes of all Israeli governments preceding them - a point Begin himself made in 1981 after being criticised for a massive Israeli bombing in Beirut that killed hundreds. Blaming Begin Begin, Israel's then-prime minister, was blamed for Israel's multiple invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and, more devastatingly, in 1982; its 1981 attack on Iraq's small nuclear reactor; and its annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in 1980-81. He was also blamed for intensified repression against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including the creation of a Vichy-style Village Leagues leadership to speak for them, and the creeping annexation of the West Bank through the creation of the so-called Civil Administration to mask its military rule. Moshe Dayan had described Palestinians as 'dogs' and 'wasps' Add to that Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon through the mercenary Sa'd Haddad's Southern Lebanon Army to help it maintain its illegal occupation, the massive construction of Israeli settler colonies across occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, and the racist pronouncements against the Palestinians, whom Begin described as two-legged beasts. At the time, liberal American and Israeli critics spoke of how Begin, and his right-wing Likud party, had defiled the beautiful Israel - as Noam Chomsky described this view - which, we were told, had only sought peace and compromise before Begin. That before Begin and Netanyahu, Moshe Dayan had described Palestinians as dogs and wasps, and Israeli Labor diplomat David Hacohen described them as not human beings, they are not people, they are Arabs, escapes the critics' judgment. What is at stake for Netanyahu's critics in these slanderous depictions is the presentation of all Israeli colonial policies inside and outside Israel under Begin and Netanyahu, as incongruent with the very raison d'etre of the Israeli settler colony, which had allegedly only sought peaceful coexistence with its neighbours before it was defiled by Netanyahu. None of this is true, of course. To begin with, the Israeli military doctrine of deliberately targeting civilians begins with David Ben Gurion, who, in January 1948, more than a month after the Zionist conquest of Palestine began on 30 November 1947, stated: Blowing up a house is not enough. What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions. We need precision in time, place and casualties. If we know the family - [we must] strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise, the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action, there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent. Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of Israel's genocide in Gaza In his letter to the Israeli press, intended to expose the hypocrisy of his liberal critics, Begin provided a partial list of at least 30 attacks targeting civilians by the Israeli military on the orders of the previous Labor governments: There were regular retaliatory actions against civilian Arab populations; the air force operated against them. One of Begin's major critics, Israel's former foreign minister, Abba Eban, was horrified at Begin's advertising Israel's criminal history. Eban retorted by defending these attacks and, without questioning any of the facts Begin provided, stated that Begin's partial list, which helps Arab propaganda, shows Israel wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr Begin nor I would dare to mention by name. Earlier pogroms The current pogroms committed daily by illegal Israeli colonists in the West Bank are also hardly a new Netanyahu-era occurrence. They began in the 1970s, soon after the settlers' theft of Palestinian land, and later included the 1980 blowing up of Palestinian mayors in their cars, the beating of Palestinian children, and attacks on the homes and orchards of Palestinians. American-Israeli settlers and followers of Meir Kahane formed the terrorist group Terror Against Terror in 1975, during the tenure of a Labor government, and began to attack Palestinian civilians, including burning down newspapers, shooting at buses of Palestinian workers, attacking Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and much more. Israel's violent expansion is never done, yet it still cannot 'finish the job' Read More » Netanyahu's recent invasions and occupation of Syrian and Lebanese territories are also hardly incongruent with established Israeli policies. Israel's plans to expand its territory were neither a Begin nor a Netanyahu innovation, no matter how much liberal critics insist on historical amnesia. They were already in progress soon after the establishment of the settler colony, as was clear before and after the 1956 invasion and occupation of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. After the 1956 conquest, the secular Ben-Gurion waxed biblical, telling the Knesset that the invasion and occupation restored King Solomon's patrimony from the island of Yotvat in the south to the foothills of Lebanon in the north. Yotvat, as the Israelis renamed Tiran, will once more become part of the Third Kingdom of Israel! When the Eisenhower administration insisted the Israelis withdraw, Ben-Gurion expressed outrage: Up to the middle of the sixth century, Jewish independence was maintained on the island of Yotvat south of the Gulf of Eilat, which was liberated yesterday by the Israeli armyIsrael terms the Gaza Strip an integral part of the nation. No force, whatever it is called, was going to make Israel evacuate Sinai. And the words of Isaiah the Prophet were fulfilled. During the 1950s, these ambitions were constantly expressed. In 1953, Ben-Gurion suggested the conquest of the Hebron area. In 1954, he added that Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon proposed entering the demilitarized zones [on the Israeli Syrian frontier], seizing the high ground across the Syrian border [that is part or all of the Golan Heights], and entering the Gaza Strip or seizing an Egyptian position near Eilat. Moshe Dayan also suggested Israel conquer Egyptian territory at Ra's al-Naqab in the south, or cut through Sinai, south of Rafah, to the Mediterranean. In May 1955, he went further, proposing that Israel annex Lebanese territory south of the Litani River. In fact, the Israelis had proceeded with plans to steal all the land in the demilitarised zone on the border with Syria's Golan Heights, and between 1949 and 1967, they took over the entire DMZ. Israel's territorial ambitions continued to expand throughout the period from 1948 to 1967, awaiting the right opportunity to invade. Expulsion strategy Netanyahu's attempt to efface Gaza from the map since 7 October 2023, while a more radical measure than those pursued by Labor governments policies in the West Bank before him, is also in keeping with Israeli strategy. After the 1967 conquest, the Israelis, under a Labor government, proceeded, as they had done in 1948, to wipe Palestinian villages in the West Bank off the map, including Bayt Nuba, 'Imwas and Yalu, expelling their 10,000 inhabitants. They then decimated the villages of Bayt Marsam, Bayt Awa, Hablah, and Jiftlik, among others. In East Jerusalem, the Israelis descended on the Magharibah Quarter, named for Maghrebi volunteers from North Africa who joined Saladin's war against the crusading Franks seven centuries earlier. The neighbourhood has been owned by an Islamic endowment for centuries. The thousands of inhabitants were given minutes to vacate their homes, which were immediately bulldozed to make way for the conquering Jewish masses to enter the Old City and celebrate their victory, facing the Buraq Wall - the so-called Western Wall. After the 1967 conquest, the Israelis, under a Labor government, proceeded, as they had done in 1948, to wipe Palestinian villages in the West Bank off the map The first Israeli military governor of the occupied territories, the Irish-born Chaim Herzog, who would later become Israel's sixth president, took credit for the destruction of the densely populated neighbourhood, which he described as a toilet that they decided to remove. He added: We knew that the following Saturday, June 14, would be Shavuot Holiday and that many will want to come to pray it had to be completed by then. Israel's plans, announced immediately after 7 October 2023, to expel Palestinians from Gaza who have so far survived the genocide, are also hardly a Netanyahu original. Israeli Labor officials began a vigorous debate immediately after the 1967 conquest over what to do with the 1948 Palestinian refugees who remained in the camps in occupied Gaza. They proposed expelling them to the Sinai or other Arab countries, or even resettling them in the West Bank. Israel's Labor prime minister, Levi Eshkol, showed no remorse about their fate, nor for those expelled during the 1967 war. The Greek example of population expulsion and exchange in 1923 with Turkey remained most inspirational to the Israelis. Begin, who was a right-wing member of parliament at the time, intervened in the debate: In Greece they took out Turks who were born there, and that was as part of an agreement. Eshkol retorted: That's exactly what I wanted to say, and I saw the way they were settled. While the Greek-instigated expulsions took place four decades earlier, a young Eshkol had traveled to Greece to learn about the resettlement of 600,000 Greek refugees from Asia Minor. It was 'an enormous and interesting project', he wrote at the time, assuming it could be instructive in the context of Jewish settlement in Palestine. Expansionist plans The recent moves by Netanyahu's government to annex the West Bank, which the European Union condemned, are also in line with the policies of Israel's Labor governments since 1967. The Israeli colonisation project of the occupied territories, known as the Allon Plan, was developed in 1967 by Yigal Allon, head of the Labor government's ministerial committee on settlements. The plan sought to annex one-third of the West Bank and most of Gaza, not unlike Netanyahu's current plans. While no Israeli government formally adopted the plan, opting for an anti-planning ethos of colonisation, various annexation proposals were developed, including the Ra'anan Plan, the Dayan Plan, the Sharon-Wachman Plan and the Drobles Plan, conceived in 1978. Indeed, already by 1977, 10 years after Israel's conquest, successive Israeli Labor governments had annexed East Jerusalem de facto and built 30 settler-colonies in the West Bank alone, and four in the Gaza Strip, with 15 more planned and under construction. Upwards of 50,000 Israeli colonists had already moved to colonies established in East Jerusalem, which came to be misnamed neighbourhoods. The Labor government also established most of the 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula before Likud was elected. It was also Israeli Laborites who, in 1972, expelled 10,000 Egyptians after confiscating their lands in 1969. They went on to bulldoze and destroy their homes, crops, mosques and schools in order to establish six kibbutzim, nine rural Israeli settlements and the city-colony of Yamit in occupied Sinai. A total of 18 colonies would ultimately be built in the Sinai. In the Golan Heights, the first one was Kibbutz Golan, which was established in July 1967. Colonising Jerusalem As for the accelerated and ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem over the last five years, this is also not a Netanyahu novelty, but a faithful continuation of Israeli policy since 1967. The Israelis had then evicted all 4,000-5,000 Palestinian refugees who lived in the Jewish Quarter of East Jerusalem, which before 1948, was less than 20 percent Jewish-owned - Jewish property included no more than three synagogues and their enclosures. In 1948, the quarter's 2,000 Jewish inhabitants fled to the Zionist side when the Jordanian army occupied East Jerusalem. The quarter, less than five acres in area, was never exclusively Jewish, as Muslims and Christians were the majority of the inhabitants, and most of the Jews who lived there rented their property from them or from Christian and Muslim endowments, which owned the properties. After the Israeli conquest, the quarter was substantially expanded to cover more than 40 acres, 10 times its original size. The Jordanian Custodian of Absentees' Property kept all Jewish holdings in the name of their original owners and did not expropriate them. Worship in Jerusalem has been overshadowed by oppression and fear Read More » Jewish property in East Jerusalem was returned to the Israeli Jewish owners after 1967, while the Israeli government confiscated all Palestinian property in the quarter. Palestinian property in West Jerusalem, which Israel confiscated in 1948, was not returned to Palestinians in East Jerusalem who now claimed it. East Jerusalem was placed by the Labor government under the expanded municipality of West Jerusalem on 29 June 1967, effectively annexing it de facto, and dismissing its Palestinian-Jordanian mayor, who was later deported, and dissolved its municipal council, after which the entire city administration was Judaized. Immediately following the conquest, the city was declared a site of antiquity, meaning no construction would be allowed. The Israelis began archaeological excavations underground in a desperate search for the Jewish temple, which led to the destruction of 14th-century Palestinian buildings, including the Fakhriyyah Hospice, al-Tankiziyyah school, and a dozen more. The Likud government continued the process when it annexed the city de jure in 1980, a move declared null and void by United Nations Security Council Resolution 478. Excavations and drilling under and next to Muslim holy sites proceeded apace in search of the ever- elusive ancient first Jewish temple, assuming it ever existed. Eviction of Palestinian Jerusalemites would also commence, especially through the confiscation of residency IDs of scores of the Palestinian inhabitants of the city, a practice that continues to the present. The closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque in recent weeks and the banning of Palestinian Muslims from praying there during Eid are just the latest of these measures, as is the subsequent prevention of the Latin Patriarch from holding Palm Sunday mass in the Holy Sepulchre on Sunday. This is why any attempt to exonerate Israel and its monstrous crimes since 1948, and to undeservedly blame Netanyahu as an errant leader who stands apart from otherwise ethical Israeli policies and values, should be exposed for the propaganda and lies that they are. Such lies seek to legitimise the Israeli settler-colony and cleanse it of its crimes. Palestinians should be at the forefront of countering these libellous attacks on Netanyahu and defending him as no more or less a war criminal than all Israeli prime ministers who preceded him since 1948. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. War on Iran Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0