The case for Bibi

Nothing is better than something

Everyone knows that Bibi is kind of a knob, and everyone knows that Bibi has done everything possible to stymie anything that might lead to the construction of a Palestinian state. What is less well-appreciated abroad is that he is also distinguished among Israeli politicians in being a massive pussy. This is, nevertheless, actually a pretty well-established fact, that every well-informed person will repeat without demure. Anshel Pfeffer describes his ‘his risk aversion and preference for covert operations or air strikes’. Ofer Kenig calls him ‘risk averse’ too, as does Daniel Seidemann, Alon Pinkas, Mark Landler and a whole bunch of other people I just found on Google. His nickname in the Obama administration was ‘chickenshit’, so this is definitely not something I just made up. If your social media is telling you that Bibi is a warmonger, your social media might just be retarded.

Another common misconception is that whereas Bibi is a habitual liar, there are certain classes of people he would never lie to, and hence we can divine his true motivations from what he says to them. So, if Bibi meets some settlers and promises to build 6 gorillian settlements that’s what he truly wants. If, in reality, the construction of new settlements ground to a halt under his rule, then that’s apparently just one of those inscrutable mysteries. The simpler theory, though, is that Bibi consistently lies to everyone all the time, gullible right wingers juiced up on mumbo jumbo, no less than anyone else.

This particular misunderstanding of Bibi is behind one of the most frequent clichés of Israel discourse, which is that Bibi cynically propped up Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority (which would otherwise be just incredibly virile and competent). The evidence for this is this is some unrecorded comments he made at an internal Likud conference where, assuming the reports are accurate, he outlined why his Gaza policy was part of a 66-D chess strategy to avert Palestinian statehood. The objective fact, however, is that his Gaza policy was what the West demanded (except in as much as it did not go far enough in appeasing Hamas), the oldest record of which I know of is from George Soros in 2007. Netanyahu can hardly be expected to have not tried to launder his capitulation to the policy of accepting Hamas as the rulers of Gaza and slowly incentivising them to moderation, without laundering it as super-based and Zionist-pilled to his own party. Bibi’s critics can, perhaps, with honesty say that they would have been more indulgent of the Palestinian Authority, but they cannot explain how that would have stopped October 7th, and they cannot say one concrete thing they would have done differently regarding Hamas, unless it would have been to indulge them more.

The wisdom to know the difference

There is, though, something more to Netanyahu than a commitment to lie to everyone all the time. Everyone knows that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a problem. The natural tendency of the human mind when presented with a problem is to solve it, and since the Palestinian problem has been around a long time, there are a lot of solutions. The One State Solution, the Two State Solution, the Three State Solution, everyone has a solution, but one man stands athwart history and says, nah. ‘Managing the conflict’ has become settled Israeli policy, but it became so principally through Netanyahu’s strength of will.

Solutions come in two main flavours, from the Right and from the Left. As to those from the Right perhaps it’s better to pass over them in silence, but I don’t want to be accused of not giving everyone their due. Lisa Liel is not perfectly representative of Right-Wing solutionism - she is more lucid than usual, for a start - but she’s a pretty good representative. I’ll sum up: conquer territory, build settlements and expel people. We’ve tried all these things before, and for every problem it solves, it created more problems, but if we do it more, it will solve all the problem because, well, because. I am being slightly unfair, though, because Rightoids do have a theory of sorts about why it might be different next time, we just need to stop being weak and kill much more people! For years, they have told us that over and over again that if Israel would only take the ‘gloves off’ and stop worrying about civilian casualties we would win. Are you winning son?

Moving on to solutions from the Left. Of course, the most easily mocked version of this is that we give Palestinian criminal gangs territory and, in return, they will not attack us, as opposed to just using the territory we gave them to attack us which is really obviously what they would do and keep telling us they would do. However, this is not genuinely what most Israeli leftists believe outside of caricatures. What they believe is actually quite a lot darker:

It’s possible that there will be a war with the Palestinians. It’s not necessary, it’s not impossible. But if there is a war, it will be a very short one. Maybe a war of six days. Because after we remove the settlements and after we stop being an occupation army, all the rules of war will be different. We will exercise our full force. We will not have to run around looking for this terrorist or that instigator—we will make use of force against an entire population. We will use total force. Because from the minute we withdraw I don’t even want to know their names. I don’t want any personal relations with them. I am no longer in a situation of occupation and policing and B’Tselem. Instead, I will be standing opposite them in a position of nation versus nation. State versus state. I am not going to perpetrate war crimes for their own sake, but I will use all my force against them. If there is shooting at Ashkelon, there is no electricity in Gaza. We shall use force against an entire population. We shall use total force. It will be a totally different war. It will be much harder on the Palestinians. If they shoot Qassam missiles at Ashkelon, we will cut electricity to Gaza. We shall cut communications in Gaza. We shall prevent fuel from entering Gaza. We will use our full force as we did on the Egyptian Canal in 1969. And then, when the Palestinian suffering will be totally different, much more serious, they will, by themselves, eliminate the terror. The Palestinian nation will overcome terrorism itself. It won’t have any other choice. Let them stop the shooting. No matter if it is the PA or the Hamas. Whoever takes responsibility for the fuel, electricity and hospitals, and sees that they do not function, will operate within a few days to stop the shooting of the Qassams. This new situation will totally change the rules of the game. Not a desired war, but definitely a purifying one. A war that will make it clear to the Palestinians that they are sovereign. The suffering they will go through in the post-occupation situation will make clear to them that they must stop the violence, because now they are sovereign.

That’s A.B. Yehoshua who was supposed to be a bigshot intellectual or something. How is this working out? Are the Palestinians purified through war yet? And, wait a second, wasn’t total war supposed to the Right Wing solution?

Absolute tool

Against this one-two punch of stupidity stood our hero Bibi: against leaving Gaza, against conquering Gaza; against Oslo, against reversing Oslo; against establishing settlements, against uprooting settlements, committed to preserving the status quo, whatever the status quo might be, today, tomorrow, forever; the one man in the room with the courage to say, ‘let’s not punch ourselves in the face’.

Après moi, les attardés

This hasn’t been an especially original article, and I’ll add another point here that others have made many times, namely that the unravelling of Bibi’s legacy came because he didn’t know when to let go. Faced with a coalition of forces united by nothing except their determination to be rid of him, he dug in his heels, knowing that the steps he would have to take would be desperate and terrible, but he felt he had no choice because, for him, the future of Bibi Netanyahu and the future of the State of Israel were one. So goes the modern remake of an old parable, but what if he was right?

The unique quality of Netanyahu is that he is simultaneously a committed Zionist and has accepted that Zionism was a mistake. Every other Israeli politician would read my article and point and splutter, perhaps call me an anti-Semite or whatever; Bibi, I truly believe, would nod and move along, because he has already figured it out long ago.

To combine these two thoughts in one mind is no easy task. It requires a queer psychological profile, and that psychological profile is, frankly, not great. Bibi is genuinely a weird guy. Every single politician he has ever worked with of even moderate talent hates his guts with a passion; the whole Knesset is littered with ex-Likud politicians who are ex-Likud only because of him. The Likud itself has been left an infomercial for eugenics. Then there’s his chaotic personal life. He married his genuinely nutcase wife, who gets him in trouble all the time, because he knocked her up. She was an airline stewardess, and so you might think the reason he did this incredibly dumb thing was because she was extremely hot, but:

Oink!

And that’s after her hours-long daily beauty treatment. Sometimes ‘crazy’ is as close as you can get to an explanation for someone’s behaviour.

To be Prime Minister, you have to want it, and there’s no doubt Bibi wants it, more than you want anything, probably. But if you want it, and you’re even a little bit normal, you must tell yourself it’s for something. What would being Prime Minister of Israel be for if not so get rid of this massive anvil round our necks? So, everyone remotely normal did try to solve it, and failed, because you can’t. Not Bibi.

I have a good friend who won’t be reading this because he refused to subscribe. He told me that I’m doing a bad thing. Say, for the sake of argument, that I’m right about everything, what good does it do to demoralise everyone? Isn’t it better that people believe there is some light at the end of tunnel, even if only to put enough juice into this thing to keep it going? I’m not oblivious to the possibility that this is correct, but there is an opposite consideration. To be a Zionist is, fundamentally, to believe this thing is solvable, because, if it isn’t, Zionism was a mistake, and if Zionism was a mistake, you can’t very well be a Zionist. Squaring this awful circle for the last two decades took the full powers of a once-in-a-century messed up dude. Whether we want another one or not, we won’t get it. What option, then, do we have left, except to say goodbye to our dreams, or to plunge with them into the abyss?