Netanyahu’s Academy-award performance of dehumanization is why the conflict persists

What is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s message about the Palestinian people to the world? It is that the Palestinian people are not human beings like the rest of us. If they were, an agreement would have already been reached long ago.

Last week Netanyahu released a video with new evidence to buttress his claim and show “in just a few seconds” why the “conflict persists.”

On closer inspection, however, it is more accurate to say, that the Netanyahu video itself is a much better explanation of why the “conflict  persists.”

PM: "This video shook me to the core of my being"
Retweet if you agree Palestinian & Israeli children deserve peace.https://t.co/1e0aVqxISK

— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) August 2, 2016

There is nothing like watching Netanyahu’s academy award performance, but you can read the words of his three-minute speech here. The Prime Minister begins: 

“I’ve just watched a video that shook me to the core of my being. In just a few seconds, it shows why our conflict persists. So here’s a short snippet:

Netanyahu then shows us a few seconds of video from an encounter at a demonstration in occupied Nil’in, followed by his explanation.

A Palestinian father holds up his 4-year-old son. He pleads with Israeli border police to kill his own child. He shouts, ‘Shoot this little boy!’ His boy.  He pushes his young son forward toward the soldiers and screams, ‘Kill him! Shoot him!’

The boy pauses. He is scared. Any child would be.

He turns back, looking at his father for guidance.

With his shirt tightly tucked into his bright red shorts, the boy ambles forward towards the soldiers. One of them extends his hand in friendship. The boy gives him a high-five. [Another snippet of video]

It’s hard to make a four-year-old hate.

Notice that in the first sentence Netanyahu says not one but two things that are are as far removed from reality as you can get.

1. Netanyahu states the video shook him “to the core of his being.” You have to be an idiot not to realize that Netanyahu was thrilled when seeing this video. In fact I predict it will not be the last time we see this image of the IDF soldier “extending his hand in friendship” and the Palestinian 4 year old boy responding with a “high five.”

Remember: Netanyahu didn’t just see the “snippet” of video he is showing everyone else. Netanyahu saw the whole video and others too. He knows the truth of the demonstration from which he took a snippet. He saw the journalists and lots of cameras behind the Palestinian father. And Netanyahu was well aware that Ayoub Sroor knew his son’s life was not in jeopardy, even from the trigger happy Israeli Defence Forces, with all the media around.

But Netanyahu just can’t help himself. He had to say the most preposterous lie about his reaction to the video, that it “shook him to his core.”

2. Netanyahu says that “In just a few seconds, it shows why our conflict persists.”

Really, is that what it does? Again think about what Netanyahu is saying. Netanyahu knows the truth that the 4 year old boy was quite safe from anyone shooting him when his father taunted the border police with “shoot him.” Netanyahu also knows that whatever was motivating Ayoub Sroor to shout  “shoot him” at the border police, the last thing he actually wanted to happen was anyone shooting his son. But still Netanyahu must push all bounds of chutzpah and human decency, and claim this man, who has been grievously injured by Israeli government policies, was trying to somehow get his son killed by calling out “shoot him,” (how exactly would that work?)  and that is why the Israeli Palestinian conflict persists.

Ayoub Sroor is the reason for the intractability of the hostilities between the two sides!

Even on its own terms what Netanyahu is attempting to do in this video is scandalous. He is taking the action of one man and saying Look at them. Look at the Palestinians.  THEY “encourage” people to murder their own children.  

And now look at us, Netanyahu says. 

Imagine your own child at that age. Think of his smile. Imagine her laugh. Picture the unrestrained joy and innocence that only a child possesses.

Encouraging someone to murder a child – let alone your own child – is probably the most inhumane thing a person can do.

This is not the first time Netanyahu is doing, his Look at YOUR own children routine, in English.

This type of dehumanization, in the English language, is done by only one man.

Pay attention to the way Netanyahu he holds our hands, as he talks us and walks us through, that 4-year-old’s “amble,” away from his disappointed father whose “pleading” for his son’s death went unanswered, into the extended arms of friendship of the occupation soldier.

This is Kafkaesque and macabre. How would any decent person take the side of Benjamin Netanyahu against  Ayoub Sroor?

For even if you believe God gave the land of Israel to the Jews, Ayoub Sroor was only minding his own business in the belief that his land, the land that had been his family’s forever, was indeed actually his and his family’s. And he still thought that– even after he was brought the news that the land he thought was his would be needed by Israel. Even the biggest supporter of Israel MUST recognize that that is Ayoub Sroor’s reality as he knows it.

Watch this video of Sroor and his children. This man was not bothering anybody when got a knock on the door with the bad news, that his land wasn’t his anymore.  Watch another  video: further interactions with people like the men who first knocked on his door. Look at the body language of these soldiers, look how they carry themselves. They have walked over many men tied up beneath them before. They look more like a drug cartel militia than a army. (They do not seem to think that Ayoub Sroor is a human being just like them.)

Netanyahu knows the whole miserable story of what the State of Israel has done to this poor man. Because when it comes to Netanyahu selling his alternative reality to the world, you can rest assured that while we get a “snippet” of a video explaining why the “conflict still persists,” Netanyahu knows a whole lot more than a “snippet” about the situation.

Again, that snippet:

He pushes his young son forward toward the soldiers and screams, ‘Kill him! Shoot him!’

The boy pauses. He is scared. Any child would be.

He turns back, looking at his father for guidance.

With his shirt tightly tucked into his bright red shorts, the boy ambles forward towards the soldiers. One of them extends his hand in friendship. The boy gives him a high-five.

It’s hard to make a four-year-old hate.

Every word of course chosen carefully by Netanyahu, and probably practiced, in front of a mirror more than a few times. This is his bread and butter. This can’t be left to an underling, or to Jeffrey Goldberg, to explain the Palestinian man trying to have his child killed, right down to the money shot, a “high five” of the child and the IDF soldier.

This is the poison Netanyahu needs to keep  spouting. It is what has kept him getting reelected: The dehumanization of the enemies of the Jewish people.

It is brilliant and effective. What Israeli  wants to think about what goes on “over there?” And Netanyahu tells them they don’t have to. He absolves his people of the responsibility that every parent knows to teach their child: the need to empathize with the other, with the person on the other side, with the person you’re fighting with.

But Netanyahu says that does not apply to Jews. Because our enemies are child killers, ISIS, Nazis. He tells the Israeli electorate, “Hate away.” 

I would give Mr Netanyahu a few questions to ponder if he could: What would a society look like if they believed the things you’re telling them about their enemies? How long will “the world”, who unlike you believes the Palestinians are human beings like the rest of us, continue to just look on as you talk the talk and walk the walk of the most dangerous demagogues in history?

While you view all the extrajudicial killings that goes on in your society as a healthy Zionist response to the Nazis of the Levant, the rest of the world is beginning to see a very different picture. They see a country in denial and willing to believe anything  to stay in denial. And they see the  products of your ideology all over the place. People who understand what they’re seeing in Israel must be  wondering what will happen in the (unlikely) event the Murdering medic of Hebron gets a harsh sentence for killing a Palestinian suspect lying incapacitated on the street. The Jewish Israeli response to that verdict might finally force some issues out into the open. If riots break out all over the country, Jeffrey Goldberg will be hardpressed to keep on repeating, “I refuse to write anything that make neo-Nazis happy.”

 Mr Netanyahu, do you have any idea how idealistic people around the world look at this video? They find it revolting. You don’t seem to realize, they see right through you. They see your “performance” here and elsewhere, and they know: whatever side that man is on, the other side must be the just one.