Orban Speaks in Defense of Christian Europe

The Invasion of Europe from North Africa:

The Prime Minister of Hungary Speaks Words of Truth in Defense of Christian Europe 

By Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

Our friend of many years, Dolores (“Dee”) Lawless of Long Beach, California, who passed away in 2014 at age 93, would often moan when we would inform her that one of her putative “Christian” heroes had feet of clay. Like most of us, Dee longed for a true leader and would sometimes become momentarily angry at this writer for deflating her belief in this-or-that “conservative” Republican or Catholic (Dee was a pre-Vatican II Catholic), who we would point out, was a faker, or worse. Later she would recover from her disappointment and thank us for assisting her in identifying and frauds and traitors and denying them support and allegiance.

We wish Dee were alive now to see Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in action. I know not his past record, or whether he will surrender in the future under the enormous force of the intimidation and outcry he is facing, but for the golden present how precious indeed are his words of truth, so seldom heard on the world stage from any national leader, least of all the self-extinguishing subversives who lead Germany and the Vatican, from whence Prime Minister Angela Merkel and Pope Francis issue decrees encouraging hundreds of thousands of aliens to settle in their land. 

We will believe that Merkel and Francis are sincere when they invite the hoards from Dar Al Islam who Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States will not harbor under any circumstances, into their private mansions and palaces. Merkel’s family home could probably house several hundred migrants and Vatican City could easily take 25,000 or so. It would be delightful to see a photo of both the migrant-welcoming German head of state and the pope of Rome  in a Bombay-like tableau with hundreds of people clinging to them and sharing, for the next several years, the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom of their palatial abodes. But of these scenes are ones we shall not see. The pattern of the  limousine liberals is always the same: it is we the peasants who will have to share our neighborhoods and pay taxes to fund the invasion and maintain the invaders, while the popes and prime ministers drive past in heavily guarded motorcades and wave, on their way to their specially reserved residences of serene tranquility.

Merkel and the pope are little more than managers of the decline and fall of Christian civilization and the white race; that is their mandate from the Money Power. Both the civilization and the race are slated to gradually disappear as part of the self-hating white-liberal genocide approved by politically correct, fellow white-liberals. 

Another aspect of the facilitation of the mass migration from North Africa is the imposition of ever more features of a police state to protect society from the crime and terrorism which the migrants will inevitably bring when they do not quickly obtain the gold, girlfriends and power to which they feel they are entitled as “oppressed people in a white society.” Gratitude toward that society is no longer present as it was among their far more humble grandparents who emigrated decades ago, when the Europeans and British respected themselves and fought back against the stereotype of their nations as wicked, racist white societies that nevertheless offer economic opportunities that are irresistible to Third World invaders.

Amid all of this insanity and treason has stepped forth Viktor Orban of Hungary, with words of startling and refreshing truth.

On Sept. 3 Mr. Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, wrote in a leading German newspaper that it was important to secure his nation’s borders from mainly Muslim migrants, “to keep Europe Christian. Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims,” Orban wrote in a commentary for Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung.

“This is an important question,” he said, “because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?” Mr. Orban asked. There is no alternative, and we have no option but to defend our borders. Our Christian obligation is not to create illusions. We think all countries have a right to decide whether they want to have a large number of Muslims in their countries. 

“If they want to live together with them, they can. We don’t want to, and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see.”

Dee, we have at last, this day at least, a leader!

Missing from mainstream news reports and editorials related to the controversy is the fact that the western-supported Israeli state is a specifically Judaic nation which Prime Minister Netanyahu recently warned could be overwhelmed by Arab voters. The Israelis deny to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees the right of return to their homeland. Conservative and liberal partisans of “Israel” all say that these Arabs must be denied entry, otherwise they will predominate over the Judaic inhabitants. Why don’t the Christian leaders of Europe have the right to speak in this way about their nations’ preservation? If Christian leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban are wrong, how is it that Judaic leaders in the Israeli state are correct? Or do Israelis alone have right to preservation of religion and heritage denied to the nations of the West? 

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E-mail to the Hungarian Ambassador (ambassador.was@mfa.gov.hu) 

H.E. Réka Szemerkényi  

Ambassador Exraordinary and Plenipotentiary 

Embassy of Hungary, Washington D.C.  

Dear Ambassador Szemerkényi  

Please convey on my behalf and that of my colleagues and friends here in Idaho, USA, our deep appreciation to Prime Minister Orban for his courageous remarks defending Christian Europe and on behalf of its preservation. Our prayer is that the Prime Minister will continue to speak and act as he has, and not be intimidated by the pressure being placed upon him. May Jesus Christ grant Mr. Orban many blessings, and may God preserve the Christian people of Hungary. 

Sincerely, 

Michael Hoffman 

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Netanyahu: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered

Editor’s Note: I received the usual hand-wringing reactions of outrage to Binyamin Netanyahu’s latest claim to the title of Emperor of the USA, as demonstrated by the reception he received on the eve of Purim from the loathsome lackeys and lickspittles in what is laughingly reputed to be the Congress of a free people. In fact, it was a marvelous spectacle because it offered prima facie evidence of the actual identity of the authentic ruler of our national legislature. 

Prof. Petras, in his guest column, mentions that a majority of Americans still believe that the U.S. is a free country. If that is an accurate reflection of the view of the multitude, then it would appear that a plurality of Americans are afflicted with a serious mental illness. 

We are ruled by the counterfeit “Israel” and fake “Jews” prophesied in Revelation 2:9. The hosannas offered in Congress to the High Priest Netanyahu, are ample testimony to this undeniable truth.

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”  — Mark Twain

Michael Hoffman’s “Debate” with Netanyahu in 1994

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Netanyahu: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered

The Power of Israel over the United States

By James Petras

            How is it that the ruler (Benjamin Netanyahu) of a puny country (Israel) of 8.2 million (6.2 million Jews) with the 37^th biggest economy (GDP in current prices) in the world  dictates war policy and secures the willing submission of the legislature of the largest economy and most powerful military empire in the world?

What significance does Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress have, beyond the fact that he uses it as a platform to attack the elected President of the US, to denounce US peace negotiations and to demand that Congress adopt policies designed to precipitate a war with Iran?

There is only one reason that Netanyahu is received as a Viceroy overseeing and dictating strategic policy to what clearly is a servile colonial legislature:  over the past quarter of a century, Israel’s proxy in the US, an entire panoply of Zionist political organizations, government officials, propaganda mills, media moguls, billionaires and millionaires, have deeply penetrated the legislature, executive and administrative centers of decision making.  Netanyahu’s arrogance and “brazen” presumption (Financial Times, 3/4/15, p. 6) to dictate policy to the US Congress is rooted in the pre-existing power base created by the proxy Zionist power configuration.

Netanyahu can sneer, with a crooked smile, at the US President, because, after several decades of  Zionist permeation of the US state, he knows that he comes not as an outside power but as a leader and spokesperson of an inside power.

His presence was hailed by all the mass media as a major event, as international news, for over a month in advance.  With Napoleonic presumption he dared to announce in advance that he would advance a war thesis in the fashion of any head of state.  He can act as an unelected dictator because the elected officials have been converted into docile and complicit subjects by his proxy power structure. Netanyahu follows the political precept of his predecessor Ariel Sharon, who faced with Israeli worrywarts criticizing his obstreperous intervention in US politics, once stated “Don’t worry. We lead the US by the nose”.

The crucial theoretical point is that the conditions, that enabled Netanyahu to come, to see and to conquer, were not of his doing.  His presence in the US Congress and his message is derived from the power of his supporters, deeply embedded in the structure of political power in the US.

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Five Books the Cryptocracy Hopes You’ll Never Read

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Otherwise, who would take serious his delusional military fantasies, his clinically paranoid vision of peaceful adversaries, conspiring to “nuke Israel” and then the world, without a single nuclear bomb!

Prominent among Netanyahu’s financial backers are a group of prominent Zionist lumpen-bourgeoisie, billionaires who lent to millions of borrowers at extortionate rates(between 1400 and 4000% ) and played a leading role in the fraudulent mortgage induced crises of 2009-forward.They include Al Goldstein co-founder of AvantCredit and CashNetUSA; Sasha Orloff and Jacob Rosenberg founders of Lendup; Daniel Gilbert founder of QuickenLoans - a predator subprime lender; Ronald Arnall owner of Ameriquest...  They used part of their ill-gotten gains to ease their consciences by donating millions to Israeli and US Jewish causes. Being generous to Israel provides a sort of perverse “absolution” for screwing millions of Americans.

One does not need much imagination to envision them cheering Netanyahu’s AIPAC and Congressional diatribes. It is not surprising that the lumpen-bourgeoisie backs a lumpen-prime minister.

The best and the brightest among the Zionist phalanx of pundits, professors, lawyers, economists and financiers have created an aura of gravitas and profundity around this vulgar beerhall brawler.

This raises a basic question: why do upwardly mobile, prosperous and elite-educated Zionist majorities enthusiastically pledge unconditional loyalty to a crude authoritarian foreign ruler who humiliates their country of birth?

Why did ten thousand American-born Zionist professionals stand and cheer, as they did the day before his congressional speech, as Netanyahu dictated his rabid bellicose political line to them at the AIPAC conference? Is it because they believe he is their Chosen Leader of their Chosen Fatherland?

Netanyahu, with all his vulgarity and mediocrity, strikes a deep and abiding chord in the soul of his Zionist followers.  They believe they are the collective geniuses of a superior species, who need not abide by the legal norms of non-Zionist states and international laws which hinder his colonial rule over millions of Palestinians.

What else but that identity of superiority allows the educated and prosperous, the humane and the cruel, to bond and welcome Netanyahu, as a modern secular Moses crossing the Potomac, delivering “the Jews” (for the messianic Netanyahu claims to speak for “all Jews”) from the mortal threats (Iran) cultivated by gentile politicians.  The great majority of Zionist activists are deaf, dumb and blind to those who criticize and refute his infantile and grotesque lies, the scrofulous screeds about non-existing “existential threats” which infest his speeches.  

Worse they will terrorize and cow any critic, demand that their employers fire them, as they have done over the past two decades.  They believe that the Palestinians, who Israel bombed into the Stone Age, are threats to Israel.  They believe that nuclear weapon-less Iranians, facing hundreds of Israeli nuclear bombs, are a threat to Israel.  They believe there is one “truth”:  that all measures, speeches and actions, which enhance the power and glory of Israel, are virtuous.  It is this “truth” that motivates hundreds of thousands of “virtuous” Zionists to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to buy and/or intimidate presidents and congresspeople, governors and mayors, university presidents and faculty, police informers and academic thugs. 

It is this Zionist power configuration, which allows a political low-life like Netanyahu to enter and dominate the legislative chamber and tell US citizens where and when their next war should take place.  It is for this power configuration that Congressmen and women “perform” - applauding and jumping up on cue for each and every one of Netanyahu’s emotional ejaculations.

Broad sectors of the Israeli public were immensely impressed by Netanyahu’s capacity to humiliate the President, by his willingness to dictate policy to the US and by the hyperkinetic docility and submissiveness of US Congress people.  But this is not surprising:  After all, Israelis are used to dominating Palestinians and torturing them into submission and colonizing a whole people.  Why shouldn’t they gloat and puff up with pride when Netanyahu speaks and acts as a colonial viceroy to the US?  After all, their leader is dominating a so-called ‘world power’!

No doubt the Israeli empire loyalists will overwhelmingly vote for Netanyahu, even if the “opposition” claims they also denounce the US-Iranian peace negotiations.  Opposition leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni don’t have Netanyahu’s gangster look, that crooked smile that says to the US leaders: “We lead you by the nose and you love it!”  What the rest of the world thinks of a braying donkey in Washington led by the nose is not hard to imagine:  US world leadership certainly is not foremost in their minds…

There is much idle chatter from liberals, leftists and progressives, claiming that Netanyahu’s ‘brazen intervention’ would backfire; that it would damage relations with the US;  that it would weaken and undermine US-Israeli relations and allow Iran to secure nuclear weapons.  Liberal Zionists claim that Netanyahu’s speech would weaken support for Israel among Democratic congress people.   Liberal Zionists claim that Netanyahu’s speech would weaken US support for Israel (God forbid!).

These lamentations have no substance; they are mendacious concoctions of minds which lack any capacity to understand power especially the permanent power of the Zionist power configuration.

Even a cursory reading of the political facts which preceded, accompanied and followed Netanyahu’s Congressional dictates, demonstrates the exact opposite.

Immediately after Netanyahu’s intervention, Congressional leaders moved ahead to fast track legislation to heighten Iranian sanctions, to veto any Executive agreement.  The Republication majority and over half of the Democrats chose to back the “foreign Viceroy” on policies of war and peace.

Far from “prejudicing” relations with the Obama regime, the Administration in the person of Secretary of State John Kerry vetoed a measure passed by the UN Human Right Commission condemning Israel’s savage war crimes against Palestinians… Obama’s United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power did her usual belly crawl for Israel at the AIPAC conference following Netanyahu’s rousing diatribe. US-Iranian “negotiations” in Switzerland increasingly turned on exactly the issues Netanyahu demanded.  US Secretary of State Kerry insisted on on-going intrusive inspections of Iran’s entire nuclear and military installations; retaining most sanctions for a decade; eliminating most enriched uranium …In a word disarming Iran, increasing its military vulnerability to an Israeli nuclear attack, without any deterrence or retaliatory capacity!  Iran is formally negotiating with Kerry on behalf of the 5 plus 1, but the agenda and demands are set by the raucous over-voice of Netanyahu, who is the most influential invisible presence.

In other words, there is ample evidence that Netanyahu’s intervention, far from ‘damaging’ US-Israeli relations, further reinforced Israel’s power over the US.  By securing the Administration’s declarations of unconditional loyalty while humiliating the President and seizing executive prerogatives, Israel demonstrates to the world that it can and will dictate US strategic policy and denounce its President with total impunity.

Netanyahu is far from being ostracized. He has a global platform from which to spew his rabid chauvinist diatribes against peace and negotiations.  His speech, its content and style, received front page and extended prime time coverage.  His war-mongering resonated with the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and US News and World Report.

Netanyahu’s political line inspired AIPAC’s ten thousand ultra-Zionists, who stormed Capital Hall and demanded Congress people and Congressional staff act on His message. Not a single dissenting voice emanated from the Presidents of the “52” — the 52 Major American (sic) Jewish organizations whose first loyalty continued to be toward Israeli interests as defined by their Prime Minister.

The voices of dissent among the few dozen Jews on Capitol Hill, and outside the AIPAC conference hall, did not register in Congress or among the vast majority of Jewish community leaders or in the mass media.

Contrary to the lamentations and claims that Netanyahu has “weakened” Israel, the facts on the ground demonstrate that he has strengthened his “leadership” among the billionaires who buy US Congressional leaders.  He has demonstrated that US officials, even ones who he insults and attacks, will continue to support Israeli war crimes in international forums; regale Israel with $3 billion a year in military aid to enhance its military supremacy in the Middle East; and incorporate its demands in any strategic negotiations with ‘Islamic’ countries like Iran, even if it undermines the basis of any negotiated agreement.

Clearly Netanyahu alienated a minority of US Congressional Democrat but mostly on procedural issues of protocol rather than on the more substantive issues of mongering for war and sanctions against Iran.  Netanyahu’s messianic claim to speak for “all Jews” did arouse over 2,000 American Jews and non-Jews to sign a paid advertisement denying his status as the Second Coming of Moses.

But as the rousing welcome and conclusion to his speech by the Congressional majority and the unanimity of AIPAC’s thousands demonstrate, Israel’s formidable Zionist power configuration still dominates US policy in the Middle East.

The ‘debate’ over Netanyahu’s episodic presence in the US Congress and humiliation of the US President is misplaced. What really needs to be debated is the more fundamental question of the permanent presence, power and prerogatives of the Zionist power configuration in the making of US Middle East policy.

   No other visiting Prime Minister or President will be received with so much media attention and political fanfare as Netanyahu because none possess the formidable, organized, well-financed and disciplined political apparatus which Israel possess.  This is an apparatus which defends and promotes US wars on behalf of Israel, Israel’s war crimes, land seizures and torture of Palestinians.  That they support Netanyahu’s gross humiliation of Obama is not surprising – it merely confirms the “Law of the Return”:  that for American Zionists there is only one true state of the Jews –and that is Israel; and that their only “true” leaders are Israelis… As it happens, today he is called Benjamin Netanyahu.  And that any US policy, negotiations or agreements in the Middle East have to be in accord with their leader.

Congress knows that. The “52” know that.

Only the majority of the American electorate, who still believe they live in a free and independent country, is not privy to that reality, even though Netanyahu’s intervention in the US Congress and gross humiliation of the President should tell them otherwise.

But then we live in a peculiar sui generis ‘meritocracy’ in which the opinions of the 2%, the so-called chosen people, counts more than that of 98% of our citizens.

The critics, Jews and non-Jews, must realize that their problem with Netanyahu requires them to delve deeper, and that their opposition needs to become more systematic and more directly confrontational with the Zionist power configuration. Otherwise, there is no basis for believing that the US can end national humiliations and regain its status as a free and democratic republic.

Prof. James Petras is the author of a four volume study of U.S. - Israeli relations.  The most recent book in the series is The Politics of Empire:  The US, Israel and the Middle East (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2014).

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"Dangerous Speech Project"

REVISIONIST NEWS FROM MICHAEL HOFFMAN

www.revisionisthistory.org

December 18, 2013

I. In a case in Russia where a Judaic person, Mendel Beilis, was not guilty of ritual murder, the innocent accused person was acquitted by decent gentiles: http://forward.com/articles/189185/blood-libel-trial-of-mendel-beilis-reverberates-a/ (Pay attention to the disparaging (but instructive) remarks in this article about Malamud's novel "The Fixer" - a book worth reading).

This does not signify that every accusation of Judaic ritual murder is not true, a claim refuted by Prof. Ariel Toaff in his book "Blood Passover," before he was forced to recant his thesis due to threats to his academic career and even his freedom.

II. Borrow a copy of today's Wall Street Journal and turn to page A15 in the first section and read the editorial column, "A Prelude to Murder: Calling Humans Vermin.”

Susan Benesch, founder and director of the “Dangerous Speech Project"

In the column, Susan Benesch, a fellow of the US Holocaust Museum (she founded something called the “Dangerous Speech Project”), and her co-author Michael Abrahamowitz (a US Holocaust Museum director), offer as examples of hate speech-purveyors, Nazis, Buddhists, Greek Rightists, and Iranians who refer to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a "rabid dog.”

Benesch and Abrahamowitz have not a word to say about influential rabbis such as Ovadia Yosef who declare their desire to annihilate the Arab people and subjugate the goyim. Benesch and Abrahamowitz give the impression that hate is being spewed by one broadly caricatured class of miscreants tracked and exposed by high-minded Judaic persons who are morally positioned to judge the offenders -- and exempt the rabbis.

"Dangerous Speech Project":
http://www.worldpolicy.org/content/dangerous-speech-along-the-path-to-mass-violence

Dossier on Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's Hate Speech:
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2013/10/rabbi-ovadias-record-of-hate-speech.html

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Revisionist News is a service of Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 USA. Please send a donation to help to underwrite this service. Thank you.

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Why the Israelis Didn’t Win in Gaza

Why Israel Didn’t Win

By Adam Shatz

London Review of Books 

http://www.lrb.co.uk/ 

December 6, 2012, pp. 3-5 

The ceasefire agreed by Israel and Hamas in Cairo after eight days of fighting is merely a pause in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It promises to ease movement at all border crossings with the Gaza Strip, but will not lift the blockade. It requires Israel to end its assault on the Strip, and Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets at southern Israel, but it leaves Gaza as miserable as ever: according to a recent UN report, the Strip will be ‘uninhabitable’ by 2020. And this is to speak only of Gaza. How easily one is made to forget that Gaza is only a part – a very brutalized part – of the ‘future Palestinian state’ that once seemed inevitable, and which now seems to exist mainly in the lullabies of Western peace processors. None of the core issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict – the Occupation, borders, water rights, repatriation and compensation of refugees – is addressed by this agreement. 

The fighting will erupt again, because Hamas will come under continued pressure from its members and from other militant factions, and because Israel has never needed much pretext to go to war. In 1982, it broke its ceasefire with Arafat’s PLO and invaded Lebanon, citing the attempted assassination of its ambassador to London, even though the attack was the work of Arafat’s sworn enemy, the Iraqi agent Abu Nidal. In 1996, during a period of relative calm, it assassinated Hamas’s bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash, the ‘Engineer’, leading Hamas to strike back with a wave of suicide attacks in Israeli cities. When, a year later, Hamas proposed a thirty-year hudna, or truce, Binyamin Netanyahu dispatched a team of Mossad agents to poison the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman; under pressure from Jordan and the US, Israel was forced to provide the antidote, and Meshaal is now the head of Hamas’s political bureau – and an ally of Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi.

War in Gaza as a means for the Israelis to test their new rocket defense shield, Iron Dome

Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s latest war, began just as Hamas was cobbling together an agreement for a long-term ceasefire. Its military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, was assassinated only hours after he reviewed the draft proposal. Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, could have had a ceasefire – probably on more favorable terms – without the deaths of more than 160 Palestinians and five Israelis, but then they would have missed a chance to test their new missile defense shield, Iron Dome, whose performance was Israel’s main success in the war. They would also have missed a chance to remind the people of Gaza of their weakness in the face of Israeli military might. The destruction in Gaza was less extensive than it had been in Operation Cast Lead, but on this occasion too the aim, as Gilad Sharon, Ariel’s son, put it in the Jerusalem Post, was to send out ‘a Tarzan-like cry that lets the entire jungle know in no uncertain terms just who won, and just who was defeated’.

Victory in war is not measured solely in terms of body counts, however. And the ‘jungle’ – the Israeli word not just for the Palestinians but for the Arabs as a whole – may have the last laugh. Not only did Hamas put up a better fight than it had in the last war, it averted an Israeli ground offensive, won implicit recognition as a legitimate actor from the United States (which helped to broker the talks in Cairo), and achieved concrete gains, above all an end to targeted assassinations and the easing of restrictions on the movement of people and the transfer of goods at the crossings. There was no talk in Cairo, either, of the Quartet Principles requiring Hamas to renounce violence, recognize Israel and adhere to past agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: a symbolic victory for Hamas, but not a small one. And the Palestinians were not the only Arabs who could claim victory in Cairo. 

In diplomatic terms, the end of fighting under Egyptian mediation marked the dawn of a new Egypt, keen to reclaim the role that it lost when Sadat signed a separate peace with Israel. ‘Egypt is different from yesterday,’ Morsi warned Israel on the first day of the war. ‘We assure them that the price will be high for continued aggression.’ He underscored this point by sending his prime minister, Hesham Kandil, to Gaza the following day. While refraining from incendiary rhetoric, Morsi made it plain that Israel could not depend on Egyptian support for its attack on Gaza, as it had when Mubarak was in power, and would only have itself to blame if the peace treaty were jeopardized. After all, he has to answer to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s parent organization, and to the Egyptian people, who are overwhelmingly hostile to Israel. The Obama administration, keen to preserve relations with Egypt, got the message, and so apparently did Israel. Morsi proved that he could negotiate with Israel without ‘selling out the resistance’, in Meshaal’s words. Internationally, it was his finest hour, though Egyptians may remember it as the prelude to his move a day after the ceasefire to award himself far-reaching executive powers that place him above any law.

Israelis fear Arab democracy

That Netanyahu stopped short of a ground war, and gave in to key demands at the Cairo talks, is an indication not only of Egypt’s growing stature, but of Israel’s weakened position. Its relations with Turkey, once its closest ally in the region and the pillar of its ‘doctrine of the periphery’ (a strategy based on alliances with non-Arab states) have deteriorated with the rise of Erdogan and the AKP. The Jordanian monarchy, the second Arab government to sign a peace treaty with Israel, is facing increasingly radical protests. And though Israel may welcome the fall of Assad, an ally of Hizbullah and Iran, it is worried that a post-Assad government, dominated by the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brothers, may be no less hostile to the occupying power in the Golan: the occasional rocket fire from inside Syria in recent days has been a reminder for Israel of how quiet that border was under the Assad family. Israeli leaders lamented for years that theirs was the only democracy in the region. What this season of revolts has revealed is that Israel had a very deep investment in Arab authoritarianism. The unravelling of the old Arab order, when Israel could count on the quiet complicity of Arab big men who satisfied their subjects with flamboyant denunciations of Israeli misdeeds but did little to block them, has been painful for Israel, leaving it feeling lonelier than ever. It is this acute sense of vulnerability, even more than Netanyahu’s desire to bolster his martial credentials before the January elections, that led Israel into war.

Hamas, meanwhile, has been buoyed by the same regional shifts, particularly the triumph of Islamist movements in Tunisia and Egypt: Hamas, not Israel, has been ‘normalized’ by the Arab uprisings. Since the flotilla affair, it has developed a close relationship with Turkey, which is keen to use the Palestinian question to project its influence in the Arab world. It also took the risk of breaking with its patrons in Syria: earlier this year, Khaled Meshaal left Damascus for Doha, while his number two, Mousa Abu Marzook, set himself up in Cairo. Since then, Hamas has thrown in its lot with the Syrian uprising, distanced itself from Iran, and found new sources of financial and political support in Qatar, Egypt and Tunisia. It has circumvented the difficulties of the blockade by turning the tunnels into a lucrative source of revenue and worked, with erratic success, to impose discipline on Islamic Jihad and other militant factions in the Strip. The result has been growing regional prestige, and a procession of high-profile visitors, including the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who came to Gaza three weeks before the war and promised $400 million dollars to build housing and repair roads. The emir did not make a similar trip to Ramallah.

Hamas’s growing clout has not gone unnoticed in Tel Aviv: cutting Hamas down to size was surely one of its war aims. If Israel were truly interested in achieving a peaceful settlement on the basis of the 1967 borders – parameters which Hamas has accepted – it might have tried to strengthen Abbas by ending settlement activity, and by supporting, or at least not opposing, his bid for non-member observer status for Palestine at the UN. Instead it has done its utmost to sabotage his UN initiative (with the robust collaboration of the Obama administration), threatening to build more settlements if he persists: such, Hamas has been only too happy to point out, are the rewards for non-violent Palestinian resistance. Operation Pillar of Defense will further undermine Abbas’s already fragile standing in the West Bank, where support for Hamas has never been higher.

Does Palestine have a right to defend itself?

Hardly had the ceasefire come into effect than Israel raided the West Bank to round up more than fifty Hamas supporters, while Netanyahu warned that Israel ‘might be compelled to embark’ on ‘a much harsher military operation’. (Avigdor Lieberman, his foreign minister, is said to have pushed for a ground war.) After all, Israel has a right to defend itself. This is what the Israelis say and what the Israel lobby says, along with much of the Western press, including the New York Times. In an editorial headed ‘Hamas’s Illegitimacy’ – a curious phrase, since Hamas only seized power in Gaza after winning a majority in the 2006 parliamentary elections – the Times accused Hamas of attacking Israel because it is ‘consumed with hatred for Israel’. The Times didn’t mention that Hamas’s hatred might have been stoked by a punishing economic blockade. It didn’t mention that between the start of the year and the outbreak of this war, 78 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed by Israeli fire, as against a single Israeli in all of Hamas’s notorious rocket fire. Or – until the war started – that this had been a relatively peaceful year for the miserable Strip, where nearly three thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israel since 2006, as against 47 Israelis by Palestinian fire.

Collective guilt of Gaza: the Israeli warrant for genocide

Those who invoke Israel’s right to defend itself are not troubled by this disparity in casualties, because the unspoken corollary is that Palestinians do not have the same right. If they dare to exercise this non-right, they must be taught a lesson. ‘We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza,’ Gilad Sharon wrote in the Jerusalem Post. ‘Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki too.’ Israel shouldn’t worry about innocent civilians in Gaza, he said, because there are no innocent civilians in Gaza: ‘They elected Hamas … they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.’ Such language would be shocking were it not so familiar: in Israel the rhetoric of righteous victimhood has merged with the belligerent rhetoric – and the racism – of the conqueror. Sharon’s Tarzan allusion is merely a variation on Barak’s description of Israel as a villa in the jungle; his invocation of nuclear war reminds us that in 2008, the deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai proposed ‘a bigger holocaust’ if Gaza continued to resist.

But the price of war is higher for Israel than it was during Cast Lead, and its room for maneuver more limited, because the Jewish state’s only real ally, the American government, has to maintain good relations with Egypt and other democratically elected Islamist governments. During the eight days of Pillar of Defense, Israel put on an impressive and deadly fireworks show, as it always does, lighting up the skies of Gaza and putting out menacing tweets straight from The Sopranos. 

 The Israelis, not Hamas, are the region’s pariahs

But the killing of entire families and the destruction of government buildings and police stations, far from encouraging Palestinians to submit, will only fortify their resistance, something Israel might have learned by consulting the pages of recent Jewish history. The Palestinians understand that they are no longer facing Israel on their own: Israel, not Hamas, is the region’s pariah. The Arab world is changing, but Israel is not. Instead, it has retreated further behind Jabotinsky’s ‘iron wall’, deepening its hold on the Occupied Territories, thumbing its nose at a region that is at last acquiring a taste of its own power, exploding in spasms of high-tech violence that fail to conceal its lack of a political strategy to end the conflict. Iron Dome may shield Israel from Qassam rockets, but it won’t shield it from the future.

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