Netanyahu should step down
The best thing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could do, now that his reputation has taken a beating at home and abroad, is to resign from his position. His arrogance has lately been unlimited.
Speaking before the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, he reportedly told the members on Monday, according to Haaretz, the liberal Israeli daily, that although he doesn’t want a bi-national state with the Palestinians, “at this time, we need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future”.
The statement was immediately condemned by the Washington-based delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), stressing that it “proves an extremely dangerous policy-making mindset and the true intentions of the Israeli government, which is to never grant the Palestinians a state”. It also said the “international community, including the United States, must speak out against Israel’s outrageous actions and policies”, adding that the United Nations should provide “protection to all the Palestinian population under Israeli military rule including [occupied] East Jerusalem”.
Among his several other misjudgements lately, Netanyahu caused an uproar last week when he reportedly claimed before the World Zionist Congress, according to Vice News, that the former grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Al Ameen Al Hussaini, planted the idea to wipe out European Jews when he met Hitler in 1941 in Berlin.
Netanyahu’s speech put Palestinians, according to Vice News, at the centre of the Holocaust — a version of events that’s completely unfamiliar to the world’s leading historians of Nazi Germany.
In response, Philip Mattar, a Palestinian-American historian and the author of The Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Al Ameen Al Hussaini and the Palestinian National Movement, explained that while the Mufti tried but apparently failed to “stop Jewish emigration to Palestine, which he saw as leading to displacement or eviction of his people”, the thousands of captured German documents used by many writers on the subject since the Second World War have “produced no evidence of the Mufti’s participation in the Holocaust”.
What has been unprecedented in the American media was an editorial last Friday in the New York Times that blasted Netanyahu’s “Holocaust blunder”, saying the fact that Al Hussaini “persuaded Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews of Europe is outrageous”.
“It is outrageous because the Holocaust is far too terrible a crime to be exploited for political ends, especially in the state linked so closely to the tragedy of the Jewish people. It is outrageous because the only apparent purpose is to demonise the Palestinians and current leader of the Palestinian [National] Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.”
Adding to Netanyahu’s diminished status has been the reported sense of insecurity within Israel, revealed in a survey by Midgam for Israel’s Chanel 2 television. Some 79 per cent of Israelis polled said they felt less safe, while 21 per cent said their sense of safety had not changed. In light of this, 73 per cent said they were unsatisfied with Netanyahu’s performance.
A surprise standing of two Jewish professors — Steven Levitsky of Harvard University and Glen Weyl of the University of Chicago — who acknowledged they were “lifelong Zionists” in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post — appealed for the boycotting of Israel. They wrote: “In making the [Israeli] occupation permanent, Israel’s leaders are undermining their state’s viability. Unfortunately, domestic movements to avert that fate have withered. Thanks to an economic boom and the temporary security provided by the West Bank barrier and the Iron Dome missile defence system, much of Israel’s secular Zionist majority feels no need to take the difficult steps required for a durable peace, such as evicting their countrymen from West Bank colonies and acknowledging the moral strain of the suffering Israel has caused to so many Palestinians.”
In short, the sooner Netanyahu steps down the better for all concerned, provided, of course, a more practical and decent leader will emerge.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He is a former editor-in-chief of the Daily Star.
Source: gulfnews.com