We need to talk about Bibi

For decades, Binyamin Netanyahu has portrayed himself as the last line of defence: against terror, against Iran, against antisemitism. In reality, he is the poison at the root of Israeli politics. A warmonger, a fraud, and a man who has dragged his country into an abyss of permanent occupation and creeping fascism. The liberal veneer of Israel has long since peeled away, and Netanyahu is the one who lit the match and watched it burn.  

While his defenders paint him as a centrist pragmatist, the truth is he has spent his career feeding, grooming, and empowering the most unhinged elements of the Israeli far right. He didn’t just make peace with extremism: he put it in the cabinet, handed it the keys to the state, and promised it the land from the river to the sea, so long as it kept him out of prison.

Let’s start with Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu’s National Security Minister: a convicted racist and disciple of the late Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was so violent it was banned as a terrorist organisation in both Israel and the United States.  Ben-Gvir was once arrested over incitement to racism and support for Jewish terrorism.  He kept a portrait of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein in his home, the same Goldstein who gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994.  This is the man now in charge of Israeli policing and internal security. 

Let that sink in.

Then there’s Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister and self-described 'proud homophobe' who wants to annex the West Bank and 'erase' entire Palestinian villages. Smotrich leads the Religious Zionist Party, a grouping so extreme that even past Likud governments once shunned it.  Not anymore.  Under Netanyahu, they’re not just in government, they’re central to it.  Smotrich was also handed power over civil administration in the West Bank, effectively giving him colonial governorship over millions of Palestinians with no rights or recourse.  He’s called for segregated maternity wards and claimed his own wife wouldn’t want to give birth next to an Arab.

These aren’t fringe lunatics muttering on Telegram. These are the men running the state - empowered and legitimised by Netanyahu, who sees their bigotry not as a bug, but a political asset.  He has emboldened the settler movement, overseen the expansion of illegal outposts, and done everything in his power to destroy even the illusion of a Palestinian state.  Why? Because the more unhinged his coalition partners are, the more they depend on him.  And the more they depend on him, the safer he is from the corruption trials that still hang over his head like the stench of tear gas over Jenin.

Netanyahu has taken a page from the authoritarian playbook: build a coalition of fundamentalists, racists, and right-wing strongmen; scapegoat minorities, dismantle judicial oversight, and turn dissent into treason.  His attacks on Israel’s Supreme Court have been nothing short of a constitutional coup, cheered on by his religious allies, who dream of a state where Jewish law trumps civil rights and where secularism is outlawed entirely.

And make no mistake: this far-right takeover doesn’t stop at the Green Line.  Inside Israel proper, Palestinian citizens face increasing surveillance, harassment, and police violence.  Anti-occupation activists are smeared as traitors.  Human rights groups have been criminalised.  Even Jewish Israelis who dare to protest find themselves kettled, beaten, and smeared as anarchists.  The state, under Netanyahu and his far-right allies, is turning on its own.

All the while, Netanyahu clings to his grotesque brand of victimhood, insisting he’s the target of a 'deep state' conspiracy, a martyr of the left-wing elite, all while leading the most reactionary government in Israeli history.  It’s pure Trumpian projection, imported straight from Mar-a-Lago, delivered in Hebrew and backed by American Evangelical dollars.  But here’s the kicker: Netanyahu doesn’t even believe in their theology.  He’s a secular millionaire from a family of ultranationalist ideologues, not a religious extremist himself.  He doesn’t care about messianism or biblical destiny.  What he cares about is staying in power, avoiding prison, and securing his legacy, even if it means burning the country to the ground.

He has mainstreamed Jewish supremacism, corrupted every institution he touches, and turned the idea of a democratic Israel into a bad joke.  If you oppose apartheid, you oppose Netanyahu.  If you oppose theocratic fascism, you oppose Netanyahu. If you care one iota about peace, justice, or basic human dignity, for Jews and Palestinians alike, you must call him what he is: an unrepentant war criminal, the godfather of a settler-colonial project built on blood and lies.

Netanyahu will one day fall: whether through trial, scandal, or political collapse. But the monsters he unleashed will remain.  He fed them, nurtured them, gave them uniforms and ministries and guns.  He brought Kahanism back from the political grave and made it the new normal.

When history writes its judgement, it won’t be about Netanyahu the statesman.  It will be about Netanyahu the butcher, the grifter, and the man who sold his country’s soul to stay one step ahead of justice.

And may that justice come: in The Hague, in the ballot box, or in the streets.

Footnote:¹ One wonders what Yonatan Netanyahu, the elder brother who died at Entebbe and is still venerated in Israel as a symbol of sacrifice and courage, would make of Binyamin’s cynical legacy. Yoni believed in honour, discipline, and service. Binyamin believes in spin, division, and survival at any cost. One died rescuing hostages. The other has made an entire people prisoners in their own land.

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