Why I don't hate Netanyahu
Performatively hating Netanyahu is a deflection from the real problem
In a recent interaction with The Bulwark,
said he “hated”1 Netanyahu2:Up until 15 March, 2024, Tim’s “hatred” of Netanyahu would be considered inherently anti-semitic3. He would have been fired from The Bulwark, and never have worked in US politics again.
Except that on 15 March, 2024, all that changed. Senator Schumer took the floor to criticize Netanyahu4, and in fact, to call for elections in Israel to oust Netanyahu:
This was a turning point in the genocide debate. Now, instead of addressing the 75 years of apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, instead of discussing the settlers stealing land and killing Palestinians in the West Bank with impunity, instead of addressing the atrocities of Israeli military in Gaza, there was a new argument to deflect it all. A new scapegoat. An unusual & unexpected scapegoat.
Netanyahu himself.
But Schumer is fundamentally wrong about this: Netanyahu is NOT the problem. Zionism itself is the problem. Netanyahu is a product of Zionism, not it’s cause. If Schumer had his rhetorical way, and new elections were held, and a new “Liberal Zionist” leader was elected, the apartheid would continue. The ethnic cleansing would continue. And the genocide in Gaza would continue.
This vague criticism of Netanyahu, but not Zionism is an example of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion. It is a cognitive bias where something you've recently learned or noticed suddenly seems to appear much more frequently in your environment.
Now, all the time, whenever I hear someone criticize Israel or the genocide, the response is often “well, I disagree with how Netanyahu is running the war”, or “Netanyahu is much like Trump”. This interjection of Netanyahu is the distraction. It is deflect the material criticism of the actual problem: Zionism.
But unlike Tim Miller, I don’t hate Netanyahu5. I hate the crimes Netanyahu has committed. I hate the lies he has told. I hate the damage he has done to US society and to the international rule of law, laws that were mostly developed by Jews after the Holocaust.
It wasn’t Netanyahu who built the “security wall” between Israel and the West Bank, it was Ariel Sharon. It wasn’t Netanyahu who committed the Sabra and Shatila massacres6, it was Menachem Begin. It wasn’t Netanyahu who committed the Nakba in order to form a “Jewish majority” state, it was Ben Gurion. And I could go on and on, atrocity after consistent atrocity.
In short: I hate the sin, not the sinner.
Let me show an example of how Netanyahu isn’t the problem, with data. Here is a graph of illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank:
What do you notice about it? It’s consistency. Amazingly consistent. During the more than 40 years of that graph, there have been 8 unique Israeli Prime Ministers, some who served for multiple disconnected times. But that graph is smoothly up and to the right. That policy of illegally settling Israelis on stolen land doesn’t vary, independent of who was in power, liberal, conservative, or far-right wing.
The core policy of Zionism - to displace an unfavored group from Palestine and take their land, because of their religion, ethnicity and race - has been constant. It has been from the first days of European colonization in Palestine. Back then, before World War 1, 130 years ago, wealthy American Zionists supplied funds to buy Palestinian land from absentee landlords, kick the indigenous Palestinian tenant farmers off the land, and only allow in European Zionist settlers. Zionism was racist then, and it’s racist now. The only difference today is American Zionists don’t buy Palestinians land, they kick them off with force.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/maga-maoism-w-drew-pavlou/comment/116275944?utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=116275944&utm_source=substack
Technically, Miller said he “hated bibi”, but because Netanyahu is an international wanted war criminal, currently on the run, we should call him by his full government name (the name he changed so as to sound less Ashkenazi and more indigenous).
Netanyahu said the ICC prosecutor “takes his place among the great antisemites in modern times”, and that was just for laying out evidence of mass war crimes, war crimes Israel has now admitted to.
I think it’s important to be eyes-wide-open here. Schumer said words, words with absolutely zero consequence. He didn’t condition military aid to Israel on their having new elections. He didn’t refuse to support Israel’s genocide fully until Netanyahu ejected “the far right” members of his coalition of his government. In the wise words of Game of Thrones, Schumer’s words were wind.
For the record, I don’t hate Trump either, for exactly the same reasons.
Do you condemn Israel for September 16? If not, why not?
It wasn’t Netanyahu who committed the Sabra and Shatila massacreshttps://substack.com/home/post/p-163746238#footnote-6-163746238, it was Menachem Begin.
I kid you not when I say this but recently a Zionist with a straight bald face said to me here on Substack that “yes, Begin committed terrorism“. They didn’t say “Begin was a terrorist“. They said, “Begin committed terrorism“. The exceptionalism is mind-blowing. They simply can’t hold themselves to the same standards they vehemently apply to others. They just can’t.