What prompted Netanyahu to make that video?

By Rabbi Dow Marmur

Rabbi Dow Marmur
Rabbi Dow Marmur

JERUSALEM — The latest video that the office of Prime Minister Netanyahu has produced with him as the star is now all over the social media and has compelled the U.S. Administration to react strongly against it. The Americans assume that Netanyahu`s accusation that those who want to remove the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are guilty of ethnic cleansing is directed against them.

Of course, it`s also directed against many others in Israel and abroad, including members of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, who believe that the settlements are an obstacle to peace.

Netanyahu argues in the video that like the almost two million Arabs who live in the State of Israel so the half-million Israelis should have the right to live on the other side of the Green Line. Israeli Arabs have protested on the grounds that Arabs have lived in what`s now Israel many centuries before the Jewish state came into being on land that has been recognized as their own. By contrast, the settlers have taken over land that by all accounts belonged to Arabs.

And if you talk about ethnic cleansing, what about the many Arab villages that were taken over or obliterated by Jews in the 1948 War of Independence, and perhaps their residents expelled? According to Netanyahu’s criteria he’s implicating his own people in his charge.

So why does he do it? Probably to compete with Naftali Bennett whose Habayit Hayehudi party is the greatest threat to Netanyahu’s Likud. (Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid may have an edge according to the latest poll, but it’s most unlikely that he could ever form a government because the Orthodox won’t sit with him in a coalition. They would be very happy to sit with Bennett.)

This in turn may be connected to a more sinister reason. We’re told that Netanyahu is due to meet soon with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. There’s the suspicion that if Israel’s prime minister wants that meeting it’s only to show that he’s trying. But we may surmise he’d really like Abbas to say no. The video may encourage the latter to do precisely that.

There may be other reasons, too. Here’s a third suggestion: Netanyahu has lost his bearings. He wouldn’t be the first politician in history who has stayed in office too long and now wants to be there forever. His determination has made him lose some or much of his common sense. As a result, he’s hiring more and more extremist and adoring aides who give him bad advice.

Paranoia may have also set in. Netanyahu sees himself more and more as a victim of media misrepresentation. He invited the editorial boards of at least two dailies – Ha’aretz and The Jerusalem Post – to tell them that they’re victimizing him and his family. And the real culprit in his eyes is the tabloid Yediot Achronot, the rival of the freebee Yisrael Hayom that his (and Trump’s?) friend the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is bankrolling.

Yisrael Hayom is Netanyahu’s advocate. The only paper, as far as I can ascertain, that doesn’t report on the many potential bribery scandals around the prime minister and his family.

It seems that Netanyahu is moving from one embarrassment to the next, many of them but by no means all calculated to irritate the Obama administration. The video may be the latest but it’s probably not the last. Is this the beginning of the end or just more of the same?

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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto.  Now residing in Israel, he may be contacted via dow.marmur@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)