Who and what is the real Bibi Netanyahu?
Is he a smooth-talking, disingenuous, cunning salesman who knows that everything he asserts about Israel being in danger of annihilation and not having a Palestinian partner for peace is propaganda nonsense, or, does he really believe what he says?
Before I offer my own thoughts here’s a quote from London-based Jamie Stern-Weiner who co-founded the New Left Project. In a recent article published by Mondoweiss he wrote this:
“If Benjamin Netanyahu hadn’t gone into politics he’d be on Broadway, hamming it up as a pantomime villain. Israel’s hawkish prime minister is theatrically obnoxious to the point where even Israel’s staunchest allies in the American Jewish community are urging him to tone it down. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t just show up to your house uninvited but brings along his dirty laundry, empties your fridge, urinates in the sink and then abruptly storms out, complaining about poor service”.
If President Obama had read that I imagine he would have said to himself something like: “Spot on, Jamie. Couldn’t put it better myself.”
If Netanyahu knows that his assertions are “bs” (a Carterism for bullshit), I think it could be said that he is following in the footsteps of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief. Underpinning his approach to propaganda was the belief that the bigger the lie and the more frequently it was told, the more likely it was that it, the lie, would be believed. (In my view that was the key to Zionism’s success throughout the second half of the 20th century. The good news is that as the 21st century advances the number of Europeans and Americans who are buying Zionism’s propaganda lies is decreasing).
Goebbels put into writing 18 principles for the guidance of all who were waging Nazi Germany’s propaganda war. Here are two of them.
14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses.
b. They must be capable of being easily learned.
c. They must be utilized again and again.
16. Propaganda to the homefront must create an optimum anxiety level.
The evidence of Netanyahu’s success in creating an optimum level of anxiety on his home front is in the fact that the vast majority of Israel’s Jews believe that they are and always will be in danger of annihilation. But now comes what seems to me to be a contradiction. In recent weeks Netanyahu has taken advantage of events to play his fear card in Europe with calls to its Jews to move to Israel.
A question arising is this.
If Netanyahu really believes that Israel is in danger of annihilation, is he not being irresponsible in the extreme with his calls for Europe’s Jews to make new lives there?
The only answer I can think of is that he knows Israel is not in danger of annihilation and takes comfort from a statement made by Yitzhak Shamir, the Zionist terrorist leader who became prime minister. According to a recent article by Israeli writer Akiva Eldar, Shamir once said, “For the land of Israel lying is allowed.”
Any assessment of who and what the real Bibi Netanyahu is must consider what he may have inherited from his Polish-born father Benzion who changed the family name from Mileikowsky to Netanyahu.
Benzion Mileikowsky/Netanyahu was an historian and writer who always believed in a Greater Israel. He opposed the UN Partition Plan because it didn’t give the Israel-to-be enough land; and at the time he was in favour of “transferring” the Arabs out of Palestine.
In fact his analysis of what had to happen in Palestine for Zionism to get everything it wanted was exactly the same as that put into words by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Israel’s army and what was called “Revisionist” Zionism but was actually honest Zionism. (The only difference between it and what was regarded as mainstream Zionism founded by Herzl and led by Weizmann was that the mainstreamers lied about Zionism’s true purpose and the implications of it. As I describe in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the mainstreamers went through the motions of pretending there could be an accommodation with the Arabs. They lied for two main reasons. One was the need to avoid provoking too much Arab hostility too soon. The other was the need to mislead and deceive Jews, in Western Europe and North America especially, about Zionism’s real intentions).
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