In the closing months of the Biden Administration, he’d finally been allowed to address Congress.
Blaming Iran for the 7 October attack, claiming Tehran was behind the demonstrations taking place outside the House of Representatives, Bibi’s speech on Wednesday could have been given a decade ago, if not two.
Just backdate the events, and the event would have been the same.
GOP lawmakers and tech oligarchs, such as Elon Musk, who were in attendance, appeared jubilant at Netanyahu’s laziness.
This is precisely what they hoped he would say, repeating the same old Islamophobic War on Terror rhetoric instead of going on about Russia and Ukraine.
Leave it to the protestors who followed Bibi from Israel to remind Americans he was not speaking for the millions of Israelis seeking the negotiated return of Hamas’ hostages.
There, for the House to see, six of them, wearing “SEAL THE DEAL NOW” emblazoned t-shirts, were physically removed and charged with disrupting Bibi’s sermon.
Israeli political divisions had never been laid so bare to American lawmakers.
Doubtless, Netanyahu was furious, but he soldiered on, pretending that he was the personal embodiment of Israel and that its citizens were united behind him.
For those Americans unaware of the protests against Netanyahu’s judicial coup that began in early 2023 and was reinvigorated by the Hamas hostage crisis, this was revelatory.
After several hours at the Capital Police Zahiro Shahar Mor was released along with the other 5 hostage family members who were arrested for no reasonable reason during the speech given by Netanyahu earlier at a Joint Session of Congress. pic.twitter.com/Zop02CuVGT
— We Are All Hostages (@AllHostages) July 24, 2024
While the outside world has grown familiar with news of the protests, little is known about the government’s campaign against them, such as its escalating attacks on survivors of the Hamas attack, alongside their families and friends, including families of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Politicians, news announcers, commentators, and even private individuals are increasingly targeting them, tagging them as adversaries of Bibi and his ruling coalition (and, by implication, of the state), and subjecting them to verbal abuse and, at times, even physical violence.
This situation should not be viewed as a manifestation of the political chaos that has plagued Israel for nearly two years, nor as a knee-jerk attempt to fend off criticism of the Israeli government and its handling of the ongoing crisis.
Rather, it highlights a growing loss of shame in acknowledging the present realities of Israel’s handling of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Israeli far-right’s vision for the future of these territories.
Ironically, the Israeli victims and survivors of the 7 October attack serve both as a pretext and an obstacle for this extremist agenda.
Whereas Israel is officially waging its war in Gaza to release the remaining hostages and reestablish its military deterrence, key members of Netanyahu’s coalition, including senior ministers, have been advocating for a very different goal.
They see the current conflict as a golden opportunity to realise a radical political vision that would assert Israel’s rule “from the river to the sea” and establish a polity whose fundamental principle is Jewish supremacy.
These extremists do not shy away from endorsing ethnic cleansing and outright genocidal measures when it comes to Palestinians as legitimate means to this end.
Netanyahu has mostly, though not always, distanced himself from such utterances. His actions, however, indicate that he is attuned to the aspirations of his far-right supporters.
There is a growing suspicion in the Israeli political system, military, and media that Bibi is actively endeavouring to prolong the war, even at the expense of an agreement to release the hostages – Israel’s most pressing humanitarian concern.
Such an agreement would entail a ceasefire, and Netanyahu’s political partners have publicly expressed their opposition to any such ceasefire, threatening to topple the government if the war is stopped.
Accordingly, calls for the release of the hostages, not to mention demands for the government to take responsibility for the 7 October debacle, are viewed as undercutting the opportunity to establish a Greater Jewish Israel “from the river to the sea”.
These calls are conflated with protests against the judicial coup—whose aim is to prepare the legal ground for such an entity—and dismissed as such.
Most tragically, the families of the hostages find themselves caught in a political dynamic that seemingly has little to do with their predicament and cannot find a sympathetic listener in Israel’s premier or any member of his coalition.
Little of this complexity crosses the ocean to enter the US debate over the war in Gaza.
In America, much of the internal differences and fissures within Israel are often overlooked, allowing Netanyahu and his supporters to frame the war as one fought on behalf of the victims of Hamas’ attacks and for the release of hostages.
Thus, while in Israel, the victims and survivors of the war in Gaza are seen as a challenge to the far-right’s agenda for the state and the region, in the US, they are utilised to bolster it.
Rallies and vigils have been the centre of public debate over the war. Americans expressing pain, mourning, and concern have quickly shifted into blind endorsements of Israel, glossing over the political struggles that haunt contemporary Israelis.
Frequently, organisers and participants of these events become – some willingly, others unintentionally – proponents of the narrative advanced by the Israeli government, thereby obscuring the governing coalition’s cynical exploitation of victims and survivors for its ultimate objectives.
In fact, Netanyahu and his supporters regard the Gaza war’s victims and survivors as pawns in a long-term political strategy.
Victims and survivors are noted not out of genuine concern for their anguish but to divert attention from the pressing need to discuss a sustainable future for the Middle East – a future where the horrific violence we currently witness would be less likely.
The hostages’ stories are used to suppress criticism of Israeli government policies. They act as a ‘smokescreen’ that allows Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition to further their vision of a Jewish state “from the river to the sea,” not only in Israel but in the US as well.
It’s time the American government stopped facilitating this dynamic and feting Israeli leaders so diametrically opposed to both Israeli and Palestinian interests.
Given the disdain Bibi shows for Jewish Israelis, we are all Palestinians in the eyes of his government.
If that’s the only thing Americans learn from his grotesque display in Congress, it will have been worthwhile.
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Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
