Preserving American Values

The world is in an uproar over the policies of the current Israeli government—Netanyahu and his ultra-right Orthodox supporters.  Not only did they prosecute the Gaza War out of all proportion to the harm done to Israelis in the October 7 Hamas attack, killing approximately 60,000 innocent people and leveling a large swath Palestinian towns and cities, but now they are inflicting starvation on the people.  And “inflicting” is the appropriate word because this famine is not a function of nature but is the intended consequence of Netanyahu’s restrictions on humanitarian aid to Gaza.

What is the world to do?  Because Israel is Israel and most countries are supportive of Israel and its right to exist, it is a delicate situation; recently several countries have applied sanctions against individual settler leaders and organizations—a “safe” move—but none have been proposed against Israel itself or Netanyahu and other ultra-right politicians..

And so the question remains whether Netanyahu and his nationalist supporters have finally brought Israel to a place where the rest of the world says, “Enough!  Our only option to stop Netanyahu is to apply sanctions to Israel and Israeli politicians as we would to any other country that committed such actions.”

I for one, a Jew and a supporter of the State of Israel, say that Netanyahu has left the world no other option.  He has shown that he will do whatever he thinks he needs to in order to stay in power and abort the criminal prosecution against him.  Not even the bullying of Trump can stop him.

It is a sad day when this has happened to Israel—a country borne out of such horrific pain that between its justified paranoia and the self-evident hostility of the Arab countries surrounding it, it never attempted to fully integrate its Palestinian citizens into the country; they have always been second-class citizens, setting the stage for what has transpired over the years of Israel’s existence.

And so Netanyahu, for his own political survival, embraced the ultra-right (much as the Republican leadership in Congress embraced the Tea Party in the early 2010s with similar disastrous results) and has taken Israel down a path that has not only destroyed Gaza, but in the process has isolated Israel from most of its allies and the rest of the world, 

His government has also supported the vigilante actions of West-Bank settlers against their Palestinian neighbors. The concept of justice for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is non-existent.  The settlers and the army regard the Palestinians not as human beings but as scum who have no rights and deserve no compassion.  

It is a very cruel world that Netanyahu has inflicted on the Palestinian people.  Regardless the enmity of Palestinian leaders like Yasser Arafat for decades, the intifadas, and the hatred of Hamas more recently and its brutality on October 7, none of that justifies what Netanyahu has done to the Palestinian people. The damage he has inflicted is so totally out of proportion to the damage Israel has suffered.

It is time for the U.S. and other countries to impose sanctions on the Israeli government and key politicians.