Netanyahu is King in a World of Perpetual Fear
By Jonathan Cook
June 08, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "The
National" -
Barack Obama used an Israeli TV interview last week to
gently rebuke Israel’s prime minister. He warned Benjamin Netanyahu that
security obsessions made him able only to “see the worst possibilities”.
Mr Netanyahu’s intransigence had destroyed Israel’s “credibility” in regard to a
two-state solution, Mr Obama added, indicating that he would not seek to revive
peace talks.
Driving home the point, senior White House officials met for the first time with
Breaking the Silence, a group of dissident soldiers vilified by the Netanyahu
government.
The organisation recently published soldiers’ testimonies that they received
orders during Israel’s attack on Gaza last summer to shoot Palestinians, whether
they were armed or not. Such testimony could one day assist war crimes
investigators at the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, Israel went into diplomatic meltdown over an exhibition of
testimonies that Breaking the Silence is staging in Zurich. It lambasted
Switzerland for funding a “slanderous” event. At the same time, Mr Netanyahu
hurriedly held a press conference to defend Israel as one of “the world’s
greatest democracies”, and barred government ministers from referring to the
Obama interview.
The Israeli prime minister has proved himself a master of mining the rich seam
of fear that dominates Israeli political discourse. It is the source of his
power, as he illustrated during the election campaign when he warned voters the
country’s Arab citizens were “coming out in droves”.
A poll of schoolchildren last week showed how deeply entrenched such chauvinist
sentiments have become. It found that only a quarter of Jewish youngsters
believe it is more important for Israel to be democratic than Jewish. Barely
more – 28 per cent – condemn the settlers’ “price-tag” attacks, random violence
aimed at the Palestinian population to exact a price for any action taken
against the settlement enterprise.
One statistic helps explain the findings. Two-thirds of Jewish teenagers report
never having had contact with a member of the country’s Palestinian minority,
one in five of the population.
That is not accidental. Successive governments have carefully structured life in
Israel to avert any danger of Israelis developing relationships across the
ethnic divide in their formative years.
Education is almost completely segregated, as is residency. The few spaces where
the Jewish and Arab populations can meet come later, usually in asymmetrical
roles at work. By then, ideas about Arabs are pretty fixed through schooling,
army service and the wider political climate.
There is no popular demand for binational education apart from a half dozen
private schools, one of which was firebombed last year by right-wingers who term
the mixing of Jews and Arabs “assimilation”.
Even Israel’s most liberal Jewish parents turn their back on mixed education
beyond junior school, teachers tell me. They fear exposing their offspring to
the psychological stress of developing friendships with Arabs just as they ready
themselves to serve in an army that treats Palestinians as less than human.
Most Jewish children learn no Arabic, experience no Arab culture and are exposed
to Arabs chiefly through images of war and violence. Despite living in the
Middle East, they are encouraged to look westward, not east.
A majority of Jewish children are taught in religious schools that consciously
eschew modern education in favour of a Biblical tribalism. Worse, the education
ministry is now firmly in the hands of settler leader Naftali Bennett.
The dehumanisation of Arabs only accelerates for Israelis during the military
draft. The mechanics of prolonged occupation play a part, as do the growing
influence of settlers in the officer corps and the extremist rabbis who
indoctrinate soldiers in “Jewish awareness”.
So dominant have the rabbis become that Gadi Eisenkott, the military chief of
staff, called last week for their role to be curbed.
In Israeli cultural life, Palestinians appear only as an enemy. Two shows
offering a rare insight into life under occupation face closure by the
government. Critics, including Mr Bennett, of one play – about Palestinian
political prisoners – object precisely because it humanises its subjects.
In the political arena, the ever-present bogeyman is the Palestinian, Arab or
Iranian.
The Knesset’s Arab MPs, even moderates, are barely tolerated, while the
occupation is pushed into the political shadows. Last week the parliament
refused a debate to mark the 48th anniversary of the 1967 war.
Regional political disputes centre on how Israel should achieve military
supremacy. Should Israel attack Iran alone or lobby the US to do it instead? How
can Israel best destroy Hizbollah and its tens of thousands of rockets aimed at
Israel’s heartland? All but a tiny left is agreed that a Palestinian state would
be an existential danger.
In this world of perpetual fear, Arabs and Iranians are viewed only as distant
and dangerous objects, not people. And in the world of worst possibilities, Mr
Netanyahu is king.
But Israel’s enemies are changing. Where once it fought Arab states, now its
tanks and attack helicopters struggle against the guerrilla tactics of Hamas and
Hizbollah.
That same heavy artillery will provide even less protection against Israel’s
next opponents: civil disobedience, an anti-apartheid struggle, international
boycotts and war crimes investigations. Then Mr Netanyahu may truly have reason
to be afraid.
Jonathan Cook is an independent journalist in Nazareth.