{"id":197920,"date":"2021-06-10T03:14:57","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T03:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=117640"},"modified":"2021-06-10T03:14:57","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T03:14:57","slug":"on-the-politics-of-victory-and-defeat-how-gaza-dethroned-the-king-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/10\/on-the-politics-of-victory-and-defeat-how-gaza-dethroned-the-king-of-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Politics of Victory and Defeat: How Gaza Dethroned the King of Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>How did Benjamin Netanyahu manage to serve as Israel\u2019s longest-serving Prime Minister? With a total of 15 years<\/a> in office, Netanyahu surpassed the 12-year mandate<\/a> of Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion. The answer to this question will become particularly critical for future Israeli leaders who hope to emulate Netanyahu\u2019s legacy, now that his historic leadership is likely to end.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s \u2018achievements\u2019 for Israel cannot be judged according to the same criteria as that of Ben Gurion. Both were staunch Zionist ideologues and savvy politicians. Unlike Ben Gurion, though, Netanyahu did not lead a so-called \u2018war of independence\u2019, merging<\/a> militias into an army and carefully constructing a \u2018national narrative\u2019 that helped Israel justify its numerous crimes against the indigenous Palestinians, at least in the eyes of Israel and its supporters.<\/p>\n

The cliched explanation of Netanyahu\u2019s success in politics is that he is a \u2018survivor\u2019,\u00a0a hustler, a fox or, at best, a political genius. However, there is more to Netanyahu than mere soundbites. Unlike other right-wing politicians around the world, Netanyahu did not simply exploit or ride<\/a> the wave of an existing populist movement. Instead, he was the main architect of the current version of Israel\u2019s right-wing politics. If Ben Gurion was the founding father of Israel in 1948, Netanyahu is the founding father of the new Israel in 1996. While Ben Gurion and his disciples used ethnic cleansing<\/a>, colonization and illegal settlement construction for strategic and military reasons, Netanyahu, while carrying on with the same practices, changed the narrative altogether.<\/p>\n

For Netanyahu, the biblical version of Israel was far more convincing than secular Zionist ideology of yesteryears. By changing the narrative, Netanyahu managed to redefine the support for Israel around the world, bringing<\/a> together right-wing religious zealots, chauvinistic, Islamophobic, far-right and ultra-nationalist parties in the US and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s success in rebranding the centrality of the idea of Israel in the minds of its traditional supporters was not a mere political strategy. He also shifted the balance of power in Israel by making Jewish extremists and illegal settlers<\/a> in the occupied Palestinian territories his core constituency. Subsequently, he reinvented Israeli conservative politics altogether.<\/p>\n

He also trained an entire generation of Israeli right-wing, far-right and ultra-nationalist politicians, giving rise to such unruly characters such as former Defense Minister and the leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman<\/a>, former Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked<\/a>, and former Defense Minister, and Netanyahu\u2019s likely replacement, Naftali Bennett<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a whole new generation of Israelis grew up watching Netanyahu take the right-wing camp from one success to another. For them, he is the savior. His hate-filled rallies and anti-peace rhetoric in the mid-1990s galvanized Jewish extremists, one of whom killed<\/a> Yitzhak Rabin, Israel\u2019s former Prime Minister who engaged the Palestinian leadership through the \u2018peace process\u2019 and, ultimately, signed the Oslo Accords.<\/p>\n

On Rabin\u2019s death in November 1995, Israel\u2019s political \u2018left\u2019 was devastated<\/a> by right-wing populism championed by its new charismatic leader, Netanyahu, who, merely a few months later, became Israel\u2019s youngest Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that, historically, Israeli politics is defined by its ever-changing dynamics, Netanyahu has helped the right prolong its dominance, completely eclipsing<\/a> the once-hegemonic Labor Party. This is why the right loves Netanyahu. Under his reign, illegal Jewish colonies expanded unprecedentedly, and any possibility, however meager, of a two-state solution has been forever buried.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Netanyahu changed the relationship between the US and Israel, where the latter was no longer a \u2018client regime\u2019 – not that it ever was in the strict definition of the term – but one that holds much sway<\/a> over the US Congress and the White House.<\/p>\n

Every attempt by Israel\u2019s political elites to dislodge Netanyahu from power has failed. No coalition was powerful enough; no election outcome was decisive enough and no one was successful enough in convincing Israeli society that he could do more for them than Netanyahu has. Even when Gideon Sa\u2019ar from Netanyahu\u2019s own Likud party tried to stage his own coup against Netanyahu, he lost<\/a> the vote and the support of the Likudists, later to be ostracized altogether.<\/p>\n

Sa\u2019ar later founded<\/a> his own party, New Hope, continuing with the desperate attempt to oust the seemingly unconquerable Netanyahu. Four general elections within only two years still failed to push Netanyahu out. Every possible mathematical equation to unify various coalitions, all united by the single aim of defeating Netanyahu, has also failed. Each time, Netanyahu came back, with greater resolve to hang on to his seat, challenging contenders within his own party as well as his enemies from without. Even Israel\u2019s court system, which is currently trying Netanyahu for corruption, was not powerful enough to compel disgraced Netanyahu to resign.<\/p>\n

Until May of this year, Palestinians seemed to be marginal, if at all relevant to this conversation. Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation<\/a> looked as if they were mollified, thanks to Israeli violence and Palestinian Authority acquiescence. Palestinians in Gaza, despite occasional displays of defiance, were battling a 15-year-long Israeli siege<\/a>. Palestinian communities inside Israel seemed alien to any political conversation pertaining to the struggle and aspirations of the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n

All of these illusions were dispelled when Gaza rose in solidarity with a small Palestinian community in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. Their resistance ignited a torrent of events that, within days, unified all Palestinians, everywhere. Consequently, the popular Palestinian revolt has shifted the discourse in favor of Palestinians and against the Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n

Perfectly depicting the significance of that moment, the Financial Times newspaper wrote<\/a>, \u201cThe ferocity of the Palestinian anger caught Israel by surprise.\u201d Netanyahu, whose extremist goons were unleashed against Palestinians everywhere, similar to his army being unleashed against besieged Gaza, found himself at an unprecedented disadvantage. It took only 11 days of war to shatter Israel\u2019s sense of \u2018security\u2019, expose its sham democracy and spoil its image around the world.<\/p>\n

The once untouchable Netanyahu became the mockery of Israeli politics. His conduct in Gaza was described by leading Israeli politicians as \u201cembarrassing<\/a>\u201d, a defeat and a \u201csurrender<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu struggled to redeem his image. It was too late. As strange as this may sound, it was not Bennett or Lieberman who finally dethroned the \u201cKing of Israel\u2019, but the Palestinians themselves.<\/p>The post On the Politics of Victory and Defeat: How Gaza Dethroned the King of Israel<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n


\r\nThis content originally appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a> and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.
<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How did Benjamin Netanyahu manage to serve as Israel\u2019s longest-serving Prime Minister? With a total of 15 years in office, Netanyahu surpassed the 12-year mandate of Israel\u2019s founding father, David Ben Gurion. The answer to this question will become particularly critical for future Israeli leaders who hope to emulate Netanyahu\u2019s legacy, now that his historic [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post On the Politics of Victory and Defeat: How Gaza Dethroned the King of Israel<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,981,27398,50,2906,287,6,579,221,747,289,280,290,3252,292,14,35,27150,36,37,295],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197920"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197924,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197920\/revisions\/197924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}