So, Naftali Bennett finally rose to power as foreseen, even feared by many people and groups who view it as the tell-tale signs of the triumph of an orthodox Zionist ideology in Israel. What can qualify this fear more vividly than Bennet’s own confession that he made during a cabinet meeting as stating, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that”. He also reacted to Israel’s policy of freeing the Palestinian prisoners by demanding a rather ‘speedier’ and ‘more convenient’ solution by killing them outright without any judicial trial.
Ironic it is to see that such opinions have been repeatedly expressed by Bennett and his racist constituency without stirring any unrest in and outside Israel. Another instance of this so-called ‘Zionist right’ regime is Naftali Bennett’s close ally Ayelet Shaked with her unabashed declaration of the genocide of Palestinians “including its elderly and its women” primarily the Palestinian mothers giving birth to “little snakes”.
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People with such criminal psycho-affective outlook do not reside in some cave but are part of the mainstream political landscape of a country and are invited as guest spokespersons in mainstream channels on western media.
“A peace agreement with the Palestinians will not happen.”
An online document and a YouTube video from 2012 give a glimpse of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s plan and what the new Israeli government might mean for Palestinians pic.twitter.com/brvrTkQTx4
— TRT World (@trtworld) June 23, 2021
Naftali Bennet’s vision for Israel
At the core of such criminal declarations, one sees the baseless and bizarre myth of Israeli exceptionalism, rooted in Jewish myth and history that sanctions the undivided ownership of holy lands by Jews.
Needless to say, this political regime of ‘All for Israel’ is aspired and promised by people like Naftali Bennett and Ayelet whose coming into power means that the majority of people living in Israel identify and align themselves with this nightmarish historical and political vision.
Imagine that an organized religious right group in Israel is heading towards political power and triumph by invoking the myth that since the land, according to some Biblical tradition, was once theirs, is and will remain theirs till the end of times.
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Not merely this, but it also sanctions them to kill and maim, abduct and abuse unarmed people, and if needed, wage a violent war against a whole community of unarmed men, women, and children. And the most tragic of all this is to see such violent view enjoying full immunity from public censure, and if someone tries to do so, it is very convenient to dub it as Anti-Semitic.
The double standards
One wonders what would be the reaction of the so-called custodians of peace, tolerance, and human rights if such pronouncement came elsewhere from the world – say North Korea or Iran, Syria or Afghanistan, for then, they would be deemed as threatening to the world’s peace and humanity of the civilized world.
In that case, it would have invited much of the world’s attention (with force and ferocity) with a host of political and media pundits telling us the dire disaster of such genocidal thinking. Most likely, it would have been deliberated and condemned at different international forums – like the UN, the Pentagon, the G-5, and the European Union for being guilty of racism, hate speech, and a war crime.
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However, one is surprised to see the double standards – in fact, no standards of the top western democracies and their leaders who unmask the reality of their ‘deep’ concern for the violation of human rights and civil liberties – in a lone Island in Africa or Asia – but exhibit criminal silence and evasion at the face of such blatant expression of violence and vandalism by Israeli top officials.
Nowhere one finds a parallel to this suicidal thinking, making its space in mainstream politics, creating its constituency nationally and internationally, and then winning popular approval and vote to step into power.
The present regime of Naftali Bennett has shown the foreboding image of the Middle East rife with the deeper political and humanitarian crisis and a more unscrupulous silence of the world – especially the west.
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Remember the daring voice of Algerian intellectual Frantz Fanon who exposes the reality of Europe and its ill-begotten child America behind this veneer of civilization and humanity and says “leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them… when I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders” and in America in which “the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.”
The author is an Assistant Professor of the Department of English at Government College University, Faisalabad. She can be reached at asmaaftabkhan@gmail.com