Netanyahu and the government don’t represent them? Really?
What kind of citizens, whom the government does not represent, are willing to serve the Occupation even under the craziest, most fascist and worst governments? ■ All those liberal leftists who claim that this government does not represent them have earned this bad name, and justly so. Because they agreed to a deal with Satan when it comes to the Palestinians. What we see in these past few months is not apathy, nor a reactionary feeling of revenge for October 7. This is the embodiment of the treatment of the Palestinians, which is in the DNA of Zionism.
By Hanin Majadli • Translated by Sol Salbe
In an article published last week in The New York Times, six former Israeli senior government officials and public intellectuals called on US congressional leaders to disinvite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking next month. According to them, he “has obstructed proposed deals with Hamas that would have led to the release of the hostages,” “continues to push forward with the authoritarian remaking of Israel,” and “does not represent the State of Israel and its citizens.”
The last phrasing, regarding representation, is a slogan you’d have heard quite a bit at the Saturday night Israeli demonstrations from all sorts of coteries and various combinations of liberal and leftist Zionists, even before October 7. It reminded me of a recurring theme in conversations I had since the beginning of the war with leftist democratic German officials and ordinary citizens. They have argued more than once to me that the Israeli government does not represent its citizens. I tried to tell a German official that from my acquaintance with Israelis, including those in the media, the Israeli government does actually represent its citizens quite well, at least in regard to the Palestinians and their treatment.
Moreover, if this government did not represent the citizens of Israel, we would certainly see many more people on the streets demanding an end to the war, and not only obliquely. We would also have seen much sharper and clearer messages against the war and the massacre, and not just among one small cluster in the demonstrations.
Moreover, the protest activists and the leaders of the democratic and liberal protest movements would not have invariably picked a fight with the Anti-Occupation Bloc over messages that might sound “too leftist”; ie, normally human. Nor would they fight over messages that express clear opposition to war by virtue of its being a war against anything Palestinian in the Gaza Strip (and not only because war is not the solution that will bring back the abductees, but the one that will cause their deaths).
Had the government not represent its citizens, then, even before October 7 we would have seen all those ostensible leftists refusing to send their children to the army, or refusing to continue serving in the reserves in the Occupied Territory for 57 years. Has there ever been a widespread Israeli refusal movement that opposed serving as soldiers at the behest of the Occupation? What kind of citizens, whom the government does not represent, are willing to serve the Occupation even under the craziest, most fascist and worst governments?
All those liberal leftists who claim that this government does not represent them have earned this bad name, and justly so. Because they agreed to a deal with Satan when it comes to the Palestinians.
What we see in these past few months is not apathy, nor a reactionary feeling of revenge for October 7. This is the embodiment of the treatment of the Palestinians, which is in the DNA of Zionism.
In the end, I summoned up the courage and told the German official that perhaps he was projecting his own historical experience on the Israelis’ contemporary experience. It would be worthwhile, I told him, for him to watch for himself the most “leftist” news program in Israel, Channel 12 News, and watch the calls for carnage and destruction that sound as if the notion of political correctness was buried with tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
