That Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t plan on evacuating any of his country’s illegal settlements isn’t shocking. We all sort of knew that was his stance, even if he wouldn’t have given us none-too-subtle hints from time to time. What defies logic is Bibi’s occasional habit of announcing from the roof-tops that he has no intention of uprooting any of the settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
For what purpose?
Obviously, it’s good business when speaking at an event celebrating 50 years of northern settlement activity, as “Israel’s” prime minister did last week.
However, pandering to settlers is only a fraction of the actual story. As his tenure as the Zionist prime minister has dragged inexorably on, Netanyahu has steadily increased this type of rhetoric. While in Davos, Switzerland in 2014 to meet with then Secretary of State John Kerry, he told a group of Israeli journalists that,
“I have no intention of evacuating any settlement or uprooting any Israeli.”
Again, it’s doubtful that John Kerry was overly hopeful of entente with Benjamin Netanyahu. Few would be. And these are just two of many such examples. The constant reiteration of their intent to not yield one meter of land. This policy’s consistent airing in the Israeli and international arenas is what makes it noteworthy. The song’s been on the top 40 since Netanyahu came to power and its position there seems secure. What’s behind the broken record?
Benjamin Netanyahu, today’s most prominent heir to the Revisionist Zionist school, firmly believes in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “iron wall” concept mind and soul. This ideology envisions an impenetrable military presence surrounding Eretz Yisroel, buffering the Zionist enterprise against hostile winds. Jabotinsky believed that only martial force could enable Jews to live in the Holy Land, G-d forbid. This approach, by design, called for almost incessant war. Otherwise, the wall itself became gratuitous. Menachem Begin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud and “Israel’s” right in general all owe their ideological underpinnings to this approach.
Today’s world has shrunken, information traveling in seconds and access to said information being (almost) universally available. Justifying the iron wall now involves much more than spreading rumors of bloodthirsty hordes waiting at the nation’s gates. Now we have to show pictures and videos of said hordes being sufficiently bloodthirsty. It’s all rather exhausting.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a master provocateur. A well-placed statement stridently declaring the land a Zionist crown jewel can stir up enough outrage to justify thickening the wall of Fortress “Israel”.
“Look! I say one little thing and the entire world breaks into a conniption fit! Citizens, we are besieged! To arms!”
Fear-mongering has become policy embedded in the very bedrock of one Zionist administration after the other. Without it, there is no justification for the state. Only if you can jab at the outside world enough, let fly enough stray arrows from the ramparts of the fortress walls to goad out a response, can you mobilize the people.
Stoking the fires of conflict is one of the central pillars of Zionism. Conflict is the fuel which keeps the Zionist State afloat amidst of sea of their own irrelevance. Bibi’s stunts of shooting verbal barbs to incite public opinion is a classic Zionist strategy. For the Israeli government, a Jew endanger is a useful Jew. It’s only through an endangered Jewry that Bibi and others can breathe new life into the Zionist zombie. And where no danger lurks, well, produce some with a little “light-hearted” political banter.
The Zionist ideology is bankrupt, it always was. However, Benjamin Netanyahu has taught us all a valuable lesson. You can always resurrect a dead specimen of a political movement with enough outside enemies. And if they don’t actually exist anymore, resurrect them as well.