Days after Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, claimed to be speaking for “the entire Jewish people” in his speech before Congress, tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets, rejecting such a ridiculous notion by calling for his ouster.
The explicitly anti-Netanyahu rally, which organizers say drew 80,000 people, comes just 10 days before Israel’s elections, with most polls showing Netanyahu’s Likud vulnerable to being defeated by a center-left coalition.
At the rally, former Mossad Chief, Meir Dagan, blasted Netanyahu as more dangerous than any perceived enemy and the greatest obstacle to peace:
“Israel is a country surrounded by enemies, but the enemies are not scaring us. I am afraid of our leadership.”
[…]
“Benjamin Netanyahu has served as prime minister for six years straight, six years in which he has not led a single genuine process of change to the face of the region or the creation of a better future. On his watch, Israel conducted the longest [military] campaign since the War of Independence.”
Dagan’s voice is representative of those in Israel’s security establishment who both rejected Netanyahu’s speech before Congress and his attempts to derail President Obama’s Iran diplomacy. Indeed, Netanyahu organized the speech behind the back of his own National Security Advisor, knowing it would be rejected as dangerous and damaging to U.S.-Israel relations.
This week, Netanyahu defended himself from attacks on the right by claiming to be the greatest supporter of Israel’s settlement enterprise in Israel’s history, the only claim he’s made recently which rings true. In response to this and Israel’s continued occupation, multiple speakers at the Tel Aviv rally charged Netanyahu with pushing Israel toward full apartheid, including Dagan.
It remains difficult to determine whether Netanyahu’s foreign policy push and speech before Congress, one of the most elaborate election stunts in recent history, will end up helping or hurting his election chances.
However, one thing remains clear: not only does Netanyahu not represent “the entire Jewish people,” he doesn’t represent the majority of Israeli Jews, thousands of whom made that clear on the streets of Tel Aviv.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, published recently by Oneworld Publications.
Follow him on Twitter @David_EHG.
Hey David,
It’s really great that you oppose Bibi, but at some point you need to stop sounding like a broken record of negativity and support something positive. Do you support Herzog and the Zionist camp, or would you umercifully bash them too? And why haven’t you voted for the Hatikvah slate for the World Zionist Congress? Don’t you want to help them with their efforts to decrease funds going to the settlements? Are you just simply afraid to associate yourself with any cause that doesn’t condemn Zionism?
Well, finally, some GOOD NEWS! It’s a start.
Did Mossad’s Chief, Dagan, really say that? Wow, that has to be a first from that quarter.
It is true — painfully true — that Israel’s citizens will continue to suffer if Netanyahu is re-elected.
The Jewish people have suffered so many setbacks. They need peace with their neighbors — and with the rest of the world.
David,
We know you loath Netanyahu but I am pretty sure you know his rivals Livni and Herzog from the “Zionist” ticket would not actually bring fundamental change to Israel aside from some cosmetic and largely symbolic measures, Iran issue aside.
Both Livni and Herzog are reluctant to publicly come out and declare that settlements are illegal and a major obstacle to a Palestinian state. They are only willing to say that they will freeze construction outside of approved “settlement blocs” in the OPT and any uprooting of settlements will come only after “talking to the settlers themselves”, ( whatever that means given the fanatic religious nationalism many of the settlers are known for). They are perfectly willing to keep the blockade that is killing Gaza in place and and extend the farcical “peace process” indefinitely, in effect keeping the issue “in formaldehyde” as one notorious Israeli minister once put it.
They would be able to do this because they are regarded by the US and the rest of Europe as the “moderates” in the Israeli political spectrum. Nevertheless, it has become evident for many years now that both Likud and Labor, in their various incarnations, are essentially committed to what is, in the words of Rabbi Michael Lerner, a “Strategy of Domination” over the Palestinian people. Even the great “peacemaker” Yitzhak Rabin never conceived of a truly viable, independent future Palestinian state. His vision of a “state minus” as described by former Israeli FM Shlomo Ben Ami, would never amount to a truly fair response to Palestinian national aspirations.
Less superficiality and more honesty in your analysis with regard to this issue would be much more helpful than just pointing out how unpopular Netanyahu has become for reasons which have very little to do with his brutality towards the Palestinians and his commitment to unending occupation. Livni and Herzog as well as the rest of the “liberal Zionists” are just less overt in their contempt for outside pressure to end the occupation, are better at making the occupation a “manageable” affair and shielding Israel’s leadership from any meaningful accountability for its criminal practices.