Netanyahu's Deceptive Discourse Forces Israelis To Ask: What Do We Want?

[Purveyor]

The choice of a messianic, racist, Jewish society is not yet accepted by most Israelis - so Netanyahu has made the tactical decision to conceal present his actions as a prolonged reprisal action.

By Sefi Rachlevsky | Sep. 30, 2014

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ address at the United Nations is an important part of his movement toward an upheaval in Israel. It’s a continuation of the identity putsch in his “Jewish state” campaign.”

At its core, Zionism was an attempt to wrest Jewish identity from the hands of hostile non-Jews and take possession of it. Netanyahu’s move does just the opposite. His use of fear tactics is not “solely,” or even mainly, aimed at returning the Jews to the ghetto defined by non-Jewish racism. Through his all-consuming focus on “exposing” the intentions of others, Netanyahu is dismantling independent Israeli identity and Israeli choice. The question of “What do we want?” was disposed of, almost the same way that Yitzhak Rabin, one of the symbols of the world of this question, was disposed of, together with the decision to adopt his order of priorities.

There is a symbolic aspect to Netanyahu’s focus on the UN and the fact that he does so in English. Gone is the talk of universal Jewish ideas about the family of nations, the Hebrew Ben-Gurionism of “oom shmoom” to dismiss the UN or “It doesn’t matter what the goyim say, but what the Jews do.” Instead, we have the exact opposite: an identity that is dictated by others and presented as an endless reprisal action to the primary move of exposing gentile racism.

Behind all of this is a great deceit. There is no greater success for Netanyahu than the repeated asking of the question, “What does he want?” and answering that all he wants is to remain in power. The truth is very different. After all, the settlement enterprise, that Kookian enterprise of Rabbi Dov Lior and Naftali Bennett, is entirely an Israeli choice — and from their perspective, a Jewish choice. It is an arrogant, messianic, racist choice by the “chosen people.” But since this choice of a messianic, racist, Jewish society, a society of extreme inequality, a society without borders, a society of settlements, is not yet accepted by most Israelis, Netanyahu has made the tactical decision to conceal this fact for now and to instead present his actions as a prolonged reprisal action, the response of the eternal Jewish victim to ongoing anti-Jewish hostility.

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http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.618339

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1. This isn't very clear -- and the rest of the article is behind a paywall.

I couldn't make any sense of the paragraph about the UN and why it's symbolic for Bibi to speak to them in English. It seems to be saying that instead of Israelis defining themselves, they let themselves be defined by anti-Semitic canards that they can strike back against. Or maybe that they're letting other people define them as having no purpose in life except to expose the fact that many gentiles are still racists. (Anti-Israeli racists? Anti-Palestinian racists? It's all kind of a muddle and I can't get it to add up.)

The one thing that does come through clearly is a conspiracy theory in which Bibi's real objective is to establish a fundamentalist Jewish state -- and that he's going about this by making ordinary Israelis paranoid and convincing them they have to keep striking out at everyone around them in the name of self-defense.

But although that may isolate Israel from the rest of the work and lead them into increasingly brutal repression of the Palestinians, I don't see how it makes them ultra-Orthodox. So am I missing the explanations that are behind that paywall? Or is there something in the text that's just getting by me?