Many Israelis are holding Netanyahu responsible for the intelligence and security failures which allowed the invasion from Gaza by Hamas on 6th/7th October 2023.

In fact, that is the least of his sins. In his 16-year tenure as Prime Minister, he has consistently pursued policies of racism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the one-fifth of the population who are Palestinian. His so-called Israeli Defence Force  is the fourth strongest military in the world behind the US, China and Russia. How does such a small country manage this? Since its foundation in 1948, the US has given  Israel military aid averaging $3 billion a year, including all the help it needed to become nuclear-armed.

Netanyahu has allied himself with the nastiest bigoted fundamentalist parties in the country and has been the cheer-leader of the armed settler gangsters, who, with impunity, intimidate and dispossess Palestinians, breaking international law by settling on occupied land. It is plain that Netabyahu and his allies aim to force all Palestinians out of the country, so that its population will be entirely Jewish. For decades they have relentlessly pursued policies that have established an apartheid state.

Netanyahu was desperate  at the last general election to retain power, regardless of the nature of the allies he had to embrace, because he wanted to protect himself from  indictments for breach of trust, bribery and fraud.  Isaac Hertzog, the President of Israel, is no less criminal than his prime Minister.

Seeking even more protection from the law, Netanyahu  has attracted enormous public approbrium by trying to force through a law removing the independence of the Supreme Court.

Is it really valid to describe Israel as an apartheid state?

Well, there is no Israeli nationality shared by all citizens. On the contrary, citizens are divided into Jews, who enjoy rights and privileges above all other categories, and Arabs who have comparatively restricted rights and are subject to a separate and inferior legal code. This situation is codified in the Israeli Nation State Law of 2018.

The Israeli government allows and even encourages the forcible transfer of Palestinians to make way for illegal settlement by Jews.  The settlers are surely aware that they are usurping the property of Palestinians and that there may be repercussions, but they cooperate in this  crime and then become angry when occasionally the worm turns and the Palestinians, particularly their youth, retaliate . That is when the Israeli army lets loose with indiscriminate fire-power.  The Torah talks of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  The proportionate score for the army is more like ten Palestinian eyes  for an eye.

The two million Palestinians in Gaza are trapped in the world’s biggest open-air prison.

The Palestinians of the West Bank of the River Jordan are strictly confined to enclaves under Israeli military control.

Israel is more clearly an oppressive apartheid state than was South Africa at its worst.

The occasional out-breaks of violent protest in Gaza and the West Bank result in aerial attacks and bulldozer demolitions, all constituting collective punishment.

Netanyahu’s policy towards the Palestinians are consistently cruel, provoking angry and desperate violence.

Hamas was wrong to launch its attack on 6th October, but Netanyahu’s retaliation has been characteristically inhuman and contemptuous of international law.

Over one thousand Israelis were killed, including women and children. Israel’s retaliatory punishment between 7th and 15th October has resulted in five thousand Palestinian dead, including one thousand children

Netanyahu is clearly of the view that the holocaust excuses everything  he does.

 

Sunack and Starmer effectively take the same view. They consider Israel to be beyond criticism and pusillanimously label such criticism as antisemitic.

Sunack and Starmer should reapportion blame for the current crisis and demand an immediate ceasefire and aid to the Palestinians so that they suffer no more killing as a consequence of bombardment and the current starvation siege.