Will the leonine prime minister roar again?
Netanyahu is certainly the main guardian of the security of Israel. An Israeli citizen can easily praise the fact that he has reopened the Iranian question after the crazy agreement made by the Obama administration; brought the United States to recognize Jerusalem as its capital and the Golan Heights as part of Israel; avoided another war in Gaza; and has opened unprecedented diplomatic relations with countries in the Arab world and in Africa. Yet despite Netanyahu’s ability to maintain peace and deterrence, and the brilliant state of the economy, science, technology and culture in Israel, today’s slogan has become: “Get rid of Bibi!”
There are many simplified reasons why he must be defeated, but in the end, there is a global cultural message that has invested all the chattering classes. His profile, in the eyes of the European Union, the United Nations and US Democrats – in short, an international cultural society led by the left from Hollywood to Rome – is annoyingly tied to someone they don’t like. The globalist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBT, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and white elite is against Bibi, and has exported to Israel their point of view preparing to equate the idea of him as a dictator, an oppressor, against democracy and human rights. It doesn’t matter that in Israel, there’s no trace of a right turn: Netanyahu is a right-wing imperialist. He talks about the Jewish state, speaks loud and though, threatens and attacks the Islamic regime in Iran – all things that those with globalist ears find obnoxious…
But 50% here harbor the desire to re-enter the globalist and international universe of which Peres was a champion (Rabin was much less a dreamer and even less a member of the “jet set”), in which the “nation-state” is a bad term; where we should gloss over Islamic hate and respond to anyone that discusses it that they are guilty of Islamophobia; and say that anti-Semitism is mostly a right-wing phenomenon, despite all the evidence that points to the contrary. Most of the West thinks this way.
Israel is a miracle. It allows disabled people to undertake military service; it sends rescue squads throughout the world; it hosts Palestinians, Syrians and children from Gaza in its hospitals – all of this is indeed a sign of an amazing concept of its role in the world. Netanyahu has kept the famous “village in the jungle,” with incredible technological capabilities, a frowning mask toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, a humane army and a philanthropic society.
