News

The benedictions of Benzion Netanyahu’s racism

Israel’s most powerful person, IMHO, Benzion Netanyahu, is dead. Predictably, the NYT obituary elides the true nature of his philosophy. Here’s the misleading money quote:

Throughout, his views were relentlessly hawkish: he argued that Jews inevitably faced discrimination that was racial and not religious, and that efforts to compromise with Arabs were futile.

What distortion! The NYT makes it sound like Netanyahu wanted Zionist Jews to coexist as equals with the Arabs, but saw no way to do so because of the Arabs’ uncompromising racism. Where did he ever write such a thing? The NYT should have written this, a more accurate characterization:

Throughout, his views were relentlessly hawkish and racist: he, like his mentor Jabotinsky, argued that Zionist immigrants must use overwhelming military force to conquer Palestine and subdue the local Arab population until they lost all hope of resisting the expropriation of their lands. According to Netanyahu, who saw conflict as the “essence of the Arab,” all efforts to compromise with Arabs would be futile until they were powerless and subjugated.

See Larry Derfner’s +972 article for more on Benzion’s imperialist, racist views…

We should conquer any disputed territory in the Land of Israel. Conquer and hold it, even if it brings us years of war…

The Bible finds no worse image than that of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The tendency toward conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement.

What does it say about the U.S. government when our president makes a condolence call for the death of a man who held such inhumane views?

Why do I argue Benzion was the most powerful person in Israel? He said this about his son the prime minister:

Bibi might aim for the same goals as mine, but he keeps to himself the ways to achieve them, because if he gave expression to them, he would expose his goals.

On the origins of Benzion’s thinking, see his mentor Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s The Iron Wall:

Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel”…

Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs….

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.

32 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Condolence call was not “about” Benzion, but “to” his son Bibi. World leaders do that stuff in regard to each other, going to inaugurations and investments and funerals and the like. The way it is.

According to Wiki:
>> Netanyahu became active in Revisionist Zionists circles …
>> He traveled to New York and became the secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the father of the Revisionist Zionism movement.
>> He was executive director New Zionist Organization of America in New York 1940–1948, the political rival of the mainstream Zionist Organization of America.
>> During World War II, he was one of the Revisionist movement’s leaders in the U.S.
>> Netanyahu believed in Greater Israel

Bibi’s dad was a religion-supremacist, who worked to build and maintain an oppressive, expansionist, colonialist and religion-supremacist state. His academic and “intellectual” contributions do not erase the fact that he was a hateful and immoral Zio-supremacist.

You should expand the quote a little.

“Two brief remarks: In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.

All this does not mean that any kind of agreement is impossible, only a voluntary agreement is impossible. As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. And only then will moderates offer suggestions for compromise on practical questions like a guarantee against expulsion, or equality and national autonomy.”

That man would have hated the current PC rules, he was anything but.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.

With that logic, you could justify what the Nazis did. And in fact that just happens to be the logic with which the Nazis did justify what they did.

And, with respect to American’s comment above, Hitler and the Nazis did worship the German Volk. I can hear in my mind’s ear Hitler appealing to der Gott, der unser Volk geschaffen hat [the God who created our people].

The biggest upset in my mind is how gentle Obama treated him – although I bet he knows the man was a straight fascist.

Do read Mr. Derfner’s rundown:

http://972mag.com/the-late-benzion-netanyahus-appalling-views-on-arabs/44215/

It’s more than awful to read this and see the man being lionized – why? – because Zionism is the Golden Calf of our times.

But the even bigger surprise is the praise that Jeff Goldberg – who insists on calling himself a ‘liberal’ – has showered on the man.

I remember he did a post a few years ago where he admitted that Benzion had ‘a large impact’ on me via his books on anti-Semitism.

And in Goldberg’s final words, he kept the praise up. And I think this is a key detail. If your cues about anti-Semitism is taken from a man who believes that ‘Arabs are inherently barbaric by nature’ and other outright racist statements, then what does that say about you? Yet I bet Goldberg won’t have to explain how he can be inspired by the writings of a genocidal racist – let alone still insist on calling himself a liberal.

Why? Beacause of Zionism. It bends all the rules.