Netanyahu - the most hated person on Earth
DOES NOT CONTAIN SATIRE
Left-wing Israelis protesting in West Jerusalem, demanding an end to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Anadolu Agency
For centuries, Jews have endured persecution, and now, antisemitism is getting worse because of one man – Benjamin Netanyahu, who must surely be the most hated person on Earth.
Let’s try to put things in context.
After World War 2, the creation of the State of Israel within Palestinian territory was deemed by the United Nations to be necessary to give Jews freedom from persecution in the safety of their own ‘promised homeland’, fulfilling long-standing historical and religious connections to the land.
But in the process and up until today, Israelis have brought even more persecution upon themselves and Jews generally.
The proclamation of the State of Israel occurred in 1948. The resulting dispossession and displacement of 700,000 Palestinians was a lightning rod for decades of Middle East hostilities – sparking all-out wars, prolonged Israeli occupations and immense loss of life.
For all this to have happened under the pretext of the ‘promised land’ – the divine land promised by God - demonstrates a strange notion of divinity with its supposed godliness.
After the loss of six million lives in the Holocaust, antisemitism in the Western world was tempered by sympathy towards the Jewish.
The blatant injustice surrounding Israel’s creation had been largely unchallenged in the West, and certainly downplayed where possible by powerful Jewish political and media influences.
Now, the Netanyahu-driven genocidal atrocities in Gaza are causing post-holocaust sympathies to evaporate. Antisemitism is on the rise and it’s making headline news everywhere.
Reprehensibly, many non-Jewish people are now tarring all Jews with the Netanyahu brush. This is proving very problematic globally.
Pity the millions of Jews around the world who abhor the genocide, but are being caught up in waves of blind hatred.
And worse. For these people, being morally outraged by the actions of Netanyahu, his government and many Israelis, must surely evoke deep feelings of cultural and religious betrayal and shame. Judaism is suffering.
Within Israel, one million people have recently attended protest rallies nationwide, calling on Netanyahu and his right-wing government to end the carnage in Gaza.
Absurdly, there is a growing global hate-speech narrative that per se, to march in a pro-Palestine protest opposing the Israeli government, is inherently antisemitic.
There is a glut of hatred in the world at the moment. Much of it is understandable. But let’s keep it targeted where appropriate, and spare the innocent.
No leniency though for Benjamin Netanyahu and his cohorts for their crimes against humanity.
In a recent Substack post by Guy Rundle, he points to the devastating effect on the Judaism faith.
The article is headed ‘Israel is destroying Judaism’, and in true Rundle style is forceful and uncompromising.
Take these two quotes for example:
This is a pretty epochal event. One can know that many Jews, religious and secular, Zionist and non- , are disgusted by Israel’s actions, that it does not represent their religious traditions of mercy, of abnegation, of generosity and care for the world.
But global Judaism has only 15 million adherents by most measures. Half of those are thus Israeli. Earlier Israeli leaders were conscious that their actions would be identified with the religion itself. What seems, ‘adversarial’ now, is that the current leaders have no concern that their actions are trashing, hollowing out, the nurtured traditions of Judaism, identifying it with its opposite, pure violence.
History will surely condemn Benjamin Netanyahu with the full measure of shame he deserves — a mass murderer, a perpetrator of genocide, a merciless beast without conscience.