Originally published via Armageddon Prose:
Bibi Netanyahu and his ideological ilk represent more of an existential threat to the continued existence of the Israeli state – and possibly the world if it gets dragged into its geopolitical melodrama — than any foreign adversary ever could hope to.
What many casual news consumers might not know, even ones who consider themselves “informed” – in large part because MSNBC/CIA-funded Washington Post would never tell them – is that Hamas is in no small measure a creation of the Israeli state.
This is not to mean “creation of the Israeli state” in the figurative, obscure sense of “Israel forced the birth of Hamas-style militancy through its Apartheid policies in the Gaza Strip,” although that is certainly true.
I literally mean to say the Israeli government actively and directly participated in creating and propping up Hamas in the service of its own political machinations.
Straight from the horse’s mouth, here’s how Netanyahu schemed behind the scenes for years to promote the terrorist group he now publicly decries and postures as the savior from.
Via Haaretz:
“Effectively, Netanyahu’s entire worldview collapsed over the course of a single day. He was convinced that he could make deals with corrupt Arab tyrants while ignoring the cornerstone of the Arab-Jewish conflict, the Palestinians. His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.
‘Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,’ he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
On learning that Netanyahu told his comrades this, one might ask obvious questions: Why would Netanyahu be interested in keeping Palestine balkanized politically? Especially when all the government publicly proclaims to desire is peace with its Arab neighbors? Wouldn’t a stable Palestinian state not obsessed with annihilating the Jews serve those purported Israeli interests?
Well, a non-militant Palestinian state might serve the interests of an average Israeli living in a village on the border of Gaza, but not Netanyahu’s interests nor those of the base of fanatical religious warmongers he caters to.
Keeping Hamas alive and well-funded, as Netanyahu explicitly called for, creates permanent instability. Instability, in turn, lends itself to either active war or the constant threat of war, not peace. And war is the health of the Israeli state.
If peace broke out in the Middle East, creatures like Netanyahu would be liable to suddenly find themselves out of a job. They might have to make an honest day’s living for once in their miserable lives.
Netanyahu feeds politically off of endless conflict with Israel’s regional rivals. War breathes life into his otherwise listless and deflated political ideology. What other ideas for governance has this warmonger ever had except more war?
In the immediate term, war furthermore keeps him out of jail for the time being, as he was under serious, career-threatening legal scrutiny for corruption allegations at the time of the Hamas attack. Now, as the Israeli citizenry “rallies around the flag,” the nation temporarily forgoes internal political conflict.
Related: No, the Hamas Invasion Was Not an Israeli ‘Intelligence Failure’
Netanyahu and the self-styled Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, are two peas in a pod in this regard. War is the health of their respective states, and they and their parties are the primary beneficiaries. Without it, they would be nothing but your average middle-aged, flabby slobs schlubbing their way through life.
In fact, in much the same way that there is no way Israeli intelligence was unaware of impending Hamas attacks, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that Netanyahu and Khamenei are coordinating behind the scenes to see if they can’t finagle a potentially apocalyptic regional, if not global, war out of the current mess – and, again, if possible, drag the United States, Russia, and God knows what other states into it in the process.
Related: How Neocons Could Sleep-Walk Us Into World War III
Of course, neither the Supreme Leader (what a stupid title) nor Netanyahu will be doing any fighting themselves. They’re much too cowardly and physically flimsy for any of that. Those personal traits are largely why they’re politicians in the first place.
They’ll simply puppeteer the apocalypse from behind the scenes. It’ll be poor kids conscripted from dusty villages sent to the meat grinder.
How history has a way of rhyming! Back in the 1980s, in an entirely different conflict in the same region of the world, it was the United States that propped up a band of religious fanatics fighting, at the time, the Soviet Union that had invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1979.
Ronald Reagan’s Deep State handlers went so far as to invite them to the White House.
As unstable religious fanatics who feed off of perpetual war are wont to do, they eventually switched allegiances and set their sights on the United States, of course. After all, with the Soviet Union vanquished, the Taliban needed a new war to start.
Many people living quiet lives in New York City died as a result, but the American neocons got a whole fresh set of wars out of the deal, with fresh license to kill more poor people overseas. Raytheon and Boeing stocks went through the roof. The Middle East was further destabilized, giving rise to ISIS, a failed state in Libya, and guaranteeing future war.
And around and around we go, pretending as if the vaunted statesmen who start wars for a living are anything other than bloodthirsty warmongers playing geopolitical chess with other people’s children.
But they’re brave and serious leaders of resolve, and I and anyone else who challenges them are the “domestic terrorists,” per the ADL, of course.
Related: Anti-Defamation League Seizes on Hamas Attack to Push DEI Agenda
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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