This war has one name: Netanyahu’s War
The war on our doorstep is on Netanyahu’s head. It could be spotted arriving from miles away. Sharp and unequivocal professional warnings have been issued. ■ This war has one name: Netanyahu’s War. A prime minister who systematically destroys his country would in the end, inevitably, have blood on his hands.
By Rogel Alpher • Haaretz *
The war that has appeared at our doorsteps is, to paraphrase Ariel Sharon’s well-known quip about a different war in Lebanon, among the more predictable of Israel’s wars. Appointing Itamar Ben-Gvir as Minister of National Security makes the job of propaganda about changing the status quo on the Temple Mount [Haram Al Sharif] even easier than usual. And it is easy because while the status quo on the Mount is changing slowly, the status quo regarding the status of the Temple Mount among the [Jewish] Israeli public is changing rapidly. The Messianic fascists’ rants in the media, on social networks, in the Knesset and in the government are increasing.
The Temple Mount [Haram Al Sharif] is gradually occupying an increasingly dominant place in the Israeli discourse in general and in Bibist ideology in particular (incendiary aggressive articles calling for a change in the status quo are published daily in the right-wing press). And the police brutality on the mountain and in the Western Wall plaza is becoming more extreme. The appointment of Ben-Gvir only gave the Israeli provocation an official stamp of approval. In the news studios you’d hear it often said that Hezbollah is showing a new readiness for war these days. Hezbollah? And what about Israel?
For three months, a government led by a pair of messianic fascist racists, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, has been raging here. The Prime Minister assaults the state wildly like an autoimmune disease. His targets included security, the economy, democracy and the strategic alliance with the USA. The nation is on the brink of a violent civil war. Refusal to serve is spreading in the most elite units of the army. When Israel is in such a situation, it invites war. Partly justified (the Palestinian war for liberation from Occupation and Apartheid), and partly a Middle Eastern classic, between a fundamentalist and tyrannical regime in Tehran and a fundamentalist and tyrannical regime in Israel.
Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Deri and Rothman are much closer in their worldview to the Ayatollahs in Iran than to European-American liberalism. The prime minister is unfit for office, Gallant’s dismissal really highlights this. He is destroying Israel for his personal interests: an uncontrollable appetite for unlimited rule and the annulment of his trial. The war on our doorstep is on his head. It could be spotted arriving from miles away. Sharp and unequivocal professional warnings have been issued. For weeks we have been warned about Ramadan, the Temple Mount, the way Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas interpret the Israeli chaos, the desperation and rage of the Palestinians. This war has one name: Netanyahu’s War. A prime minister who systematically destroys his country would in the end, inevitably, have blood on his hands.
