Netanyahu embraces terrorism

Israel pretends that its violence is justified by seeking to ensure security, but the facts suggest it is a self-preservation strategy by a corrupt head of state and international criminal

Any number of voices have decried Israel’s continuing attacks on civilians over the past year, which have recently extended well beyond Gaza to include Syria, Iran, Yemen, and Lebanon. As Israel’s targets have expanded, the country’s leadership has remained committed to state terrorism violating international human rights. Over the course of three days last weekend, Israel bombed civilian targets including a mosque, a school and a hospital.

The first post in this series addressed the historical roots of the continuing Israeli genocide targeting Palestinians in Gaza, and the disturbing inversion of America’s role with respect to international human rights over the past 75 years. This post will examine the Netanyahu regime that continues to lead Israel—and the rest of the world—into an expanding world war.

As it happens, I’ll be guest hosting the “Redneck Gone Green” podcast this afternoon and again next Tuesday. I had the pleasure of joining host David Cobb a few weeks ago, and am helping out over the next week while he handles some personal affairs. Today’s discussion will feature Stephen Semler, Co-Founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, a grassroots-funded, U.S. foreign policy think tank, and writer of the Polygraph newsletter on Substack.

Attacks on civilians populations are war crimes

International law unambiguously prohibits attacks by states targeting civilian populations. They are international crimes, rising to the level of terrorism when they aim to strike fear into those populations, for instance, in order to drive them off of land they have historically inhabited.

This summer, at the request of the United Nations General Assembly backed by the majority of countries around the world, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has violated international law in several ways. The ICJ held that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories amounted to “de facto annexation,” while also holding illegal Israeli exploitation of Palestinian natural resources, as well as Israel’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians.

Israel has used mass starvation as a weapon of war, while relentlessly bombing civilian targets including hospitals and schools and assassinating random Palestinians, seemingly for sport. Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israeli soldiers have murdered journalists and students, including Americans and other international observers. Israel has raided and shut down entire bureaus of news organizations in order to hide its crimes from the prying eyes of the world, even while claiming to respect international human rights that it continues to degrade and abuse with impunity.

Netanyahu was nearly removed from office for corruption before politically weaponizing the genocide

Many observers have forgotten the recent history that preceded the escalation of Israel’s genocide last October. But the protests that rocked Israel for months in early 2023 have played a key role in motivating Netanyahu’s escalating state violence since then.

The crisis began with Netanyahu proposing judicial reforms to consolidate his political control over the country, marginalizing courts as independent checks and balances and shifting Israel even further from the democracy it claims to be into the apartheid state that its actions increasingly reveal to the rest of the world.

Israeli civil society responded courageously, mobilizing mass protests unprecedented in the country’s history. For American observers, it would be fair to draw a comparison between Netanyahu’s domestic constitutional belligerence and that of Donald Trump, to whom we will return shortly.

A month before the Hamas attacks on October 10 that shocked the Israeli security establishment, the New York Times reported that:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, landed in the United States on Monday an embattled man, dogged by months of mass protests against his efforts to reduce the power of Israel’s Supreme Court.

He leaves on Saturday revitalized and potentially emboldened. Through six days of high-level meetings with world leaders and tech entrepreneurs, analysts said Mr. Netanyahu improved his strained relationship with President Biden and polished his reputation as a heavyweight player on the global state.

And he nudged criticism of his judicial overhaul into the background as a landmark diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia appeared to gain momentum.

Washington’s role in enabling Netanyahu’s continuing corruption and international belligerence cannot possibly be overstated. But that is only half the story. While Washington may be the global power and Israel its regional proxy, the relationship between the two today resembles a tail wagging the dog.

Netanyahu is thumbing his nose at Washington, banking on a Trump victory

Throughout the past year, Biden has articulated various supposed “red lines” that Netanyahu has repeatedly disregarded. Calls to allow humanitarian aid to reach civilian populations were ignored, as were multiple ceasefire agreements facilitated by American diplomats.

Israel’s willingness to ignore agreements supported by Washington represents a critical historical change from the previous baseline. Conservatives often lionize Ronald Raegan, who was ironically proud of asserting limits on Israel’s influence over U.S. foreign policy. For instance, Raegan allowed nearly two dozen U.S. resolutions to pass despite being critical of Israel, suspended the delivery of some advanced jets to Israel in response to Israel’s surprise bombing of targets in Iraq, and also began selling advanced reconnaissance & surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia over Israeli objections.

In the time since then, every U.S. president has lost independence to Israel, growing more and more beholden to its leadership and less and less responsive to public opinion among voters. By the time Obama left the White House, he had thoroughly solidified the co-option of Democrats by the military industrial complex, going so far as to emulate the random assassinations that have made the Netanyahu regime internationally infamous.

At the moment, one aspect of the crisis that many observers overlook is Netanyahu’s calculus about the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Netanyahu has repeatedly ignored Biden, embarrassing him time and again by violating supposed red lines and scuttling multiple potential ceasefire agreements that Biden’s advisors helped negotiate.

Why? Because Netanyahu is banking on a Trump victory, either at the polls in November, or when the White House changes hands in January.

Trump has told Jewish voters that those backing Harris “need to have their heads examined,” because he intends to release whatever vestigial restraints Washington might still have over Israel’s foreign policy and turn Netanyahu loose.

Trump made similar promises at the CIA headquarters soon after becoming president. Coups resulted in several Latin American countries that professional journalists have lacked the independence to investigate.

Recall that Trump has already pledged not to respect the outcome of the 2024 vote, and is likely poised to insist on his victory even if the votes reveal a Democratic victory, like in 2020. Netanyahu’s reliance on Trump, then, might appear to represent an attack on democracy in America.

But don’t expect any politicians or journalists in Washington to recognize that.

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