Netanyahu is Bad for Israel and Bad for ‘The Jews’
For over 2000 years, the plight of the Jewish people has been replete with persecution and violence. Long before the Holocaust when Six Million Jews were slaughtered, throughout most of the world Jews were murdered and/or treated as second class citizens.
I grew up as a Reform Jew and though I am not observant now, I still consider myself a Jew. It’s more a cultural thing and the knowledge that I am Jewish by blood would have been enough to send me to the camps in Hitler’s Germany.
I grew up in suburban New Jersey and did not find myself the victim of antisemitism in any significant way, though there was always the knowledge that we were different. We didn’t believe in the predominant religion and at school there was a Christmas concert with songs extolling Christ with a song or two about Hanukkah. There was a local country club that did not allow Jews, so the Jews found one that was more open. We were accepted but we were the distinct minority. Yet, my senior year of high school, I was vice-president of the senior class, and my Jewish friend was the president.
So, despite the historical antipathy towards Jews, I was blessed. But because of that history, that ugliness towards Jews, I have always felt a little queasy, a little unsafe. Most Jews I know feel this way.
Jews have often thrived and prospered until they didn’t, until a deep-seated antisemitism burst open like a dam that ruptured. This was true in Germany before the Nazis. Walther Rathenau, a Jew, was the Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic until he was assassinated. Eleven years later Hitler was in charge.
Bibi Netanyahu is both a financial criminal and a war criminal. He is doing everything he can to hold office so that he will not be held legally responsible for the charges brought against him in Israel. His response to the horrific October 7 Hamas led massacre of Jewish civilians was so overboard as to be immoral and grotesque. He managed to take a moment when most of the world condemned Hamas, when they were the bad guys, to now where Israel is becoming a pariah even to its allies. Yes, Netanyahu needed to attack the Hamas leadership in Gaza, but essentially leveling the entire region in the name of self-defense and killing thousands of civilians was not only borderline genocide, but incredibly stupid politically. This is evident by the pronounced erosion of support for Israel has seen in the United States.
Israel has traditionally relied on Bi-Partisan support in Congress. But Netanyahu has clearly decided to take sides. He has thrown his lot in with Trump and the Republican party, alienating a lot of Israel’s supporters. By clearly taking sides in our politics, Netanyahu has undermined greatly American support.
Worse yet, the actions by Netanyahu’s government in Gaza has increased the level of antisemitism dramatically. This was seen soon after Oct. 7 on college campuses around the country where Jewish students were harassed.
There are many, including a good number on the progressive left, who claim that they are anti-Zionist, not antisemitic. I think a lot of people are using the term, anti-Zionist, as a way to say they don’t like what Israeli government is doing. But that is not what the term means.
A Zionist is someone who supports the idea of a Jewish Homeland, i.e. Israel, formerly known as Palestine, which is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. The desire for a homeland, this homeland, was not born of some cultural xenophobia, but came in reaction to countless examples of Jewish persecution throughout the world, culminating with the Holocaust.
If you claim to be anti-Zionist, then by definition you are saying that there should be no Israel, no Jewish state.
if you don’t think the Jewish people should have this tiny sliver of land to live on – but instead should be subject to the whims of the societies they live in – you are woefully naïve about history.
I wish history was not as it is, that Jews would have been allowed to live and prosper without persecution. Then the state of Israel would never have been created because it would have been unnecessary. Israel exists precisely because of historical antisemitism and if you believe this one haven should not exist, you should not be surprised if people think you don’t like Jews.
HOWEVER, if you were to say that Israel should continue to exist but there needs to be a TWO-STATE SOLUTION; that the PALESTINIANS need to be treated much better; that ISRAEL NEEDS TO CHANGE ITS POLICIES; that would be fine. I BELIEVE THESE THINGS. Then you would be a Zionist but are unhappy and even disgusted by the actions of the Israeli government.
(A little history note, the Palestinians in Gaza were under the control Egypt, from 1948 until the Six-Day War of 1967, but not treated as Citizens. The Palestinians in the West Bank were under the control of Jordan until 1988 who relinquished their rule from pressure of the PLO. Simply put, there is a very complex and difficult history to this region with no one group, including the Palestinians, ever having title to the land. Too many people argue about the Middle East in terms of black and white without a bit of nuance or understanding of what happened before.)
Back to Netanyahu: it is imperative that he be defeated in the upcoming Israeli elections. He is hurting Israel in both the short and long runs. He is creating the environment to allow antisemitism to flourish. Israel will never have even a chance at peace with its neighbors with Netanyahu as its Prime Minister.
He is bad for Israel. He is bad for ‘The Jews’.
He must go.