Bibi the terminator
Netanyahu going down, taking Israel with him
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking Palestinians, Israelis, and even Iranians hostage to negotiate for a longer time in office and does not care what the cost will be.
The historian Max Hastings revealed in his memoirs that at a dinner table, he heard the young Netanyahu say, “In the next war, if we do it right, we’ll have a chance to get all the Arabs out... We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem.”
Ever an aspiring supremacist, when Netanyahu watched previous Israeli leaders follow different goals or fail to unite Israel and the world to maintain a huge war machine, rolled up his sleeves. He created several boogeymen, silenced the consciences of Israelis and Westerners with cries of anti-Semitism, and a “second holocaust,” bulldozed with his plan of expanding settlements to make the establishment of a Palestinian state more difficult, skyrocketed Israel’s military spending, and strong-armed the West for more and more military aid packages to make sure his dream would come true.
Unlike most other modern evil masterminds, he went through with his evil plans in broad daylight. He realized from a young age — probably around the time of that dinner table with strangers — that no other entity could get away with such a plan, but Israel can.
However, somewhere along the line his bloodlust for Arab lives and his thirst for power clouded his judgment. He got carried away and made two unforgivable mistakes that will eventually be his downfall.
First, in one of the few times that Israelis really questioned what was going on in the Knesset, his 2023 judicial reform bill met with overwhelming popular resistance that simply has not been blown over despite Netanyahu’s efforts at creating distraction. The indefatigable protesters have seen the true dictatorial side of Netanyahu and want him gone before he entrenches himself in his seat and ensures the success of his sinister policies via the reform.
Secondly, not only did he fail to take full advantage of the godsend war with Hamas, he overused Israel’s victim card to the point of losing almost all support for his war effort in the world, except for the US administration. Even Joe Biden has to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, lest he get dragged down with Netanyahu before their respective terms end.
Many analysts suspect that even if Netanyahu didn’t allow or actively facilitate Hamas’s October 7 assault, which is not unlikely, he has at least been giddy about the opportunity to pursue his short-term goal of ending domestic protests and proceeding with the judicial reform and his long-term goal of getting “all the Arabs out”. So, he definitely would not mind the continuation of this war. His goal of normalizing relations with Arab countries may have been irreparably damaged, but he is way past the point of maintaining a rational, peace-making persona. Why not, then, bulldoze his way through since the cat is out of the bag?
But with no significant achievement on the battlefield, over 100 Israeli soldiers killed since the onset of the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, and no progress toward freeing captives except through an exchange of prisoners, Israelis are going back to the streets to topple the warmongering Netanyahu. The ever-present fear they had for their security, which was never assuaged by the one who championed improving Israel’s security, has now grown to an all-time high with the possibilities of suffering another attack from one of the Palestinian, Lebanese, or Yemeni resistance movements, and losing their captured family members under the Israeli bombardments.
To make matters more harrowing for both Netanyahu and Israelis, Hamas, a relatively small ruling body in an extremely small area of land, can only grow after and during the war. Just imagine the hatred that the families of those over 18,000 Gazans who were killed must feel toward the Israeli regime and the US government. There’s a strong likelihood that many of them will take up arms as part of Hamas or any other resistance group that forms in Gaza.
As Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel, wrote, Netanyahu “needs to resign… yesterday”. However, he won’t do that, and it’s destructive to wait for it. Feeling his power slipping away, he’s using his last moments behind the wheel to run over as many Arabs as he can. If he gets to destroy Hamas in the process and stay another day or two, Mazel Tov! If not, he thinks, after him, “the deluge”.