The recent right-wing campaign in the US - joined by many leftists - to accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of dragging Washington into a war against Iran is just another campaign to absolve the US of its imperialist crimes and to absolve Israel of Netanyahu's alleged machinations. This is reported for "Middle East Eye" Joseph Massad, professor of politics and history of contemporary Arab thought at Columbia University.
"This campaign continues a trend begun two decades ago by American, European, and Israeli liberal critics of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, and the region at large, which unfairly blames Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition government, whose more recent members have been unjustly held responsible for diverting Israel from its supposed pre-Netanyahu path of peace.
The chief American apologist for Israel, Thomas Friedman, never tires of unfairly pointing the finger at Netanyahu as the destroyer of Israel's "peace" experiment. He is often joined by left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders, whose angry statements against Netanyahu are coupled with ongoing efforts to exonerate both him and Israel for their crimes.
Israel's expansionist ambitions, its relentless aggression against its neighbors, its deliberate targeting of civilians, the daily massacres committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, its genocide in Gaza, and the racist statements of its leaders against the Palestinians - described during the genocide as "human animals" - all of which are portrayed as some new direction in Israeli policy and rhetoric based on the supposed right-wing commitments of Netanyahu and his far-right secular and religious allies.
These are hardly new arguments, but rather slanderous repetitions of the blame that Israel's critics at home and in the West had placed on the government of Menachem Begin, who came to power in 1977.
The Palestinians have a duty to vigorously defend both Begin and Netanyahu against such cover-ups and slanderous assessments, especially since all their crimes are simply exaggerated repetitions of the crimes of all previous Israeli governments - a point Begin himself made in 1981, after being criticized for the massive Israeli bombing of Beirut, which killed hundreds.
Blaming Begin
Begin, then Prime Minister of Israel, was blamed for Israel's repeated invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and - more devastatingly - in 1982; its attack on Iraq's small nuclear reactor in 1981; and the annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in 1980-81.
He was also blamed for the increased repression of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including the creation of a Vichy-style "Peasant League" leadership to speak on their behalf, and the creeping annexation of the West Bank through the creation of the so-called "Civil Administration" to cover up the military rule.
Add to this the occupation of southern Lebanon by Israel through the South Lebanon Army of the mercenary Saad Haddad to help it maintain its illegal occupation, the massive construction of Israeli settlement colonies in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, and the racist statements against the Palestinians, whom Begin described as "two-legged beasts".
At the time, liberal critics of the US and Israel spoke of how Begin and his right-wing Likud party had "desecrated" "the beautiful Israel" - as Noam Chomsky describes this view - which, it was claimed, had sought only peace and compromise before Begin.
The fact that before Begin and Netanyahu, Moshe Dayan had described the Palestinians as "dogs" and "wasps", and the Israeli Labor Party diplomat David Hakoen has described them as "inhuman beings, they are not people, they are Arabs", escapes the judgment of critics.
What is at stake for Netanyahu's critics in these defamatory descriptions is the presentation of all Israeli colonial policies inside and outside Israel under Begin and Netanyahu as incompatible with the very raison d'etre (reason for existence - ed.) of the Israeli settler colony, which supposedly sought only peaceful coexistence with its neighbors before being "desecrated" by Netanyahu.
None of this is true, of course.
To begin with, the Israeli military doctrine of deliberately targeting civilians began with David Ben-Gurion, who in January 1948, more than a month after the beginning of the Zionist conquest of Palestine on November 30, 1947, declared: "Blowing up a house is not enough. A brutal and strong response is needed. We need precision in time, place and casualties. If we know the family, we must strike mercilessly, including women and children. Otherwise the response is ineffective. At the scene of the action, there is no need to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent".
In his letter to the Israeli press, intended to expose the hypocrisy of his liberal critics, Begin provided a "partial list" with at least 30 attacks on civilians by the Israeli military on the orders of previous Labour governments: "There were regular reprisals against the Arab civilian population; the air force was operating against them".
One of Begin's main critics, former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, was appalled by Begin's publicizing of Israel's criminal history. Eban responded by defending these attacks and, without questioning any of the facts provided by Begin, stating that the "partial list" Begin's report, which helps "Arab propaganda," shows that "Israel is recklessly inflicting every conceivable degree of death and misery on the civilian population in a mood reminiscent of regimes that neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare mention by name."
Earlier pogroms
The current pogroms, carried out daily by illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, are also hardly a new phenomenon in the Netanyahu era.
They began in the 1970s, soon after the settlers seized Palestinian land, and later included the blowing up of Palestinian mayors in their cars in 1980, the beating of Palestinian children, and attacks on Palestinian homes and orchards.
American-Israeli settlers and followers of Meir Kahane formed the terrorist group "Terror Against Terror" in 1975, during the term of the Labor government, and began attacking Palestinian civilians, with attacks including burning newspapers, shooting at buses carrying Palestinian workers, attacking Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, and many others.
Netanyahu's recent invasions and occupation of Syrian and Lebanese territories are also hardly incompatible with established Israeli policy.
Israel's plans for territorial expansion are not an innovation of either Begin or Netanyahu, no matter how much liberal critics insist on historical amnesia. They were already underway soon after the establishment of the settlement colony, as was clear before and after the invasion and occupation of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula in 1956.
After the 1956 conquest, Ben-Gurion spoke biblically, declaring to the Knesset that the invasion and occupation had restored "the inheritance of King Solomon from the island of Yotvat in the south to the foothills of Lebanon in the north". "Yotvat", as the Israelis renamed "Tiran", "will once again become part of the Third Kingdom of Israel!"
When the Eisenhower administration insisted that the Israelis withdraw, Ben-Gurion expressed indignation: "Until the middle of the sixth century, Jewish independence was maintained on the island of Yotvat south of the Gulf of Eilat, which was liberated yesterday by the Israeli army... Israel calls the Gaza Strip an integral part of the nation. No force, no matter what it is called, could force Israel to leave Sinai. And the words of the prophet Isaiah have been fulfilled".
In the 1950s, these ambitions were constantly expressed. In 1953, Ben-Gurion proposed "the conquest of the Hebron area". In 1954 he added that Defense Minister Pinchas "Lavon proposes entering the demilitarized zones on the Israeli-Syrian border, seizing the high ground beyond the Syrian border [that is, part or all of the Golan Heights], and entering the Gaza Strip or seizing an Egyptian position near Eilat".
In addition, Moshe Dayan proposed that Israel seize Egyptian territory at Ras an-Naqab in the south or cross the Sinai, south of Rafah, to the Mediterranean Sea. In May 1955 he went further, proposing that Israel annex Lebanese territory south of the Litani River.
In fact, the Israelis continued with plans to seize all the land in the demilitarized zone on the border with the Syrian Golan Heights, and between 1949 and 1967 they captured the entire demilitarized zone. Israel's territorial ambitions continued to expand during the period from 1948 to 1967, awaiting a suitable opportunity for invasion.
Strategy of Expulsion
Netanyahu’s attempt to wipe Gaza off the map after October 7, 2023, while a more radical measure than those pursued by the policies of previous Labor governments in the West Bank, is also in line with Israeli strategy.
Since the 1967 occupation, the Israelis, under a Labor government, have continued, as they did in 1948, to wipe Palestinian villages in the West Bank, including Beit Nuba, Imwas, and Yalu, expelling their 10,000 residents. They then destroyed the villages of Beit Marsam, Beit Awa, Hablah, and Jiftlik, among others.
In East Jerusalem, the Israelis invaded the Maghariba neighborhood, named after the Maghreb volunteers from North Africa who joined Saladin's war against the Frankish crusaders seven centuries earlier. The neighborhood had been owned by an Islamic trust for centuries.
Thousands of residents were given minutes to leave their homes, which were promptly bulldozed to make way for the invading Jewish masses to enter the Old City and celebrate their victory, facing the Buraq Wall - the so-called "Wailing Wall".
The first Israeli military governor of the occupied territories, the Irish-born Chaim Herzog, who would later become Israel's sixth president, took responsibility for the destruction of the densely populated neighborhood, which he described as a "toilet" that "they decided to remove". He added: "We knew that next Saturday, June 14, would be the holiday of Shavuot and that many would want to come and pray, it had to be finished by then".
Israel's plans, announced immediately after October 7, 2023, to expel Palestinians from Gaza who survived the genocide, are also unlikely to have been Netanyahu's idea. Israeli Labor Party officials began a lively debate immediately after the 1967 conquest of Gaza about what to do with the 1948 Palestinian refugees who remained in camps in occupied Gaza.
They proposed expelling them to Sinai or other Arab countries, or even resettling them in the West Bank. Israeli Labor Prime Minister Levi Eshkol showed no remorse for their fate, nor for the fate of those expelled during the 1967 war.
The Greek example of the deportation and population "exchange" with Turkey in 1923 remains the most inspiring for Israelis. Begin, who was a right-wing member of parliament at the time, intervened in the debate: "Turks who were born there were resettled in Greece, and that was part of an agreement".
Eshkol replied: "That's exactly what I meant, and I saw the way they were resettled".
Although the Greek-instigated evictions had occurred four decades earlier, a young Eshkol "traveled to Greece to learn about the resettlement of 600,000 Greek refugees from Asia Minor. It was a "huge and interesting project", he wrote at the time, and suggested that it could be instructive in the context of Jewish settlement in Palestine.
Expansionist plans
The recent moves by the Netanyahu government to annex the West Bank, which the European Union has condemned, are also in line with the policies of Israeli Labor governments since 1967.
The Israeli project for the colonization of the occupied territories, known as the "Allon Plan", was developed in 1967 by Yigal Allon, head of the Labor government's ministerial committee on settlements. The plan aims to annex 1/3 of the West Bank and most of Gaza, similar to Netanyahu's current plans.
Although no Israeli government has officially adopted the plan, choosing "anti-plan" ethos of colonization, various annexation proposals were developed, including the Ra'anan Plan, the Dayan Plan, the Sharon-Wachman Plan, and the Drobles Plan, conceived in 1978.
In fact, by 1977 - 10 years after Israel's conquest - successive Israeli Labor governments had de facto annexed East Jerusalem and built 30 settlement colonies in the West Bank alone and four in the Gaza Strip, with another 15 planned and under construction.
Over 50,000 Israeli settlers had already moved into colonies established in East Jerusalem, which were erroneously called "neighborhoods". In addition, the Labor government established most of the 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula, before the "Likud" to be elected.
It was the Israeli Labor Party that expelled 10,000 Egyptians in 1972 after confiscating their land in 1969. They continued with bulldozers and demolished their homes, crops, mosques and schools to create six kibbutzim, nine rural Israeli settlements and the urban colony of Yamit in occupied Sinai.
A total of 18 colonies would eventually be built in Sinai. In the Golan Heights, the first was Kibbutz Golan, founded in July 1967.
Colonization of Jerusalem
As for the accelerated and ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem over the past five years, this is also not new to Netanyahu, but a continuation of Israeli policy since 1967.
The Israelis are expelling all 4,000-5,000 Palestinian refugees living in the "Jewish Quarter" of East Jerusalem, which before 1948 was less than 20% Jewish property - Jewish property included no more than three synagogues and their enclosures.
In 1948, 2,000 Jewish residents of the quarter fled to the Zionist side when the Jordanian army occupied East Jerusalem. The neighborhood, less than five acres in area, was never exclusively Jewish, as Muslims and Christians were the majority of the residents, and most Jews who lived there rented their properties from them or from Christian and Muslim foundations that owned the properties.
After the Israeli conquest, the neighborhood was significantly expanded to encompass more than 40 acres - 10 times its original size. The Jordanian Custodian of Absentee Property has retained all Jewish properties in the names of their original owners and has not expropriated them.
Jewish properties in East Jerusalem were returned to Israeli Jewish owners after 1967, and the Israeli government confiscated all Palestinian properties in the neighborhood. Palestinian property in West Jerusalem that Israel confiscated in 1948 has not been returned to the Palestinians in East Jerusalem who now claim it.
East Jerusalem was placed by the Labour government under the authority of the expanded West Jerusalem municipality on 29 June 1967, thus de facto annexing it, and the Palestinian-Jordanian mayor, who was later deported, was dismissed, the municipal council was dissolved, and the entire city administration was "Judaized".
Immediately after the conquest, the city was declared a "site of antiquity", meaning that no construction would be permitted. The Israelis began an underground archaeological dig in a desperate search for the Jewish Temple, leading to the demolition of 14th-century Palestinian buildings, including the Fakhriya Hospice, the Al-Tanqiziyya School, and a dozen others.
The Likud government continued the process when it annexed the city de jure in 1980—a move declared “null and void” by UN Security Council Resolution 478. Excavations and drilling under and near Muslim holy sites continued apace in the search for the ever-elusive ancient First Jewish Temple, assuming it ever existed.
The expulsion of Palestinian Jerusalemites also began, notably through the confiscation of residency documents for dozens of Palestinian residents of the city—a practice that continues to this day. The closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in recent weeks and the ban on Palestinian Muslims from praying there during the Eid holiday are just the latest of these measures, as is the subsequent blocking of the Latin Patriarch from holding a Mass at the Holy Sepulchre on Sunday.
That is why any attempt to absolve Israel and its monstrous crimes since 1948, and to undeservedly accuse Netanyahu as a wrong leader who stands apart from otherwise ethical Israeli policies and values, must be exposed for the propaganda and lies they represent.
Such lies seek to legitimize the Israeli settlement colony and cleanse it of its crimes.
Palestinians must be at the forefront of countering these slanderous attacks on Netanyahu and defending him as no more or less a war criminal than all Israeli prime ministers who have preceded him since 1948.