Netanyahu should resign

The best thing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could do, now that his reputation has taken a beating at home and abroad, is to resign from his position.

His arrogance has lately been unlimited.

Speaking before the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, he reportedly told the members on Monday, according to the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, that although he does not want a bi-national state with Palestinians, “at this time we need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future”.

The statement was immediately condemned by the Washington-based delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which stressed that it “proves an extremely dangerous policy-making mindset, and the true intentions of the Israeli government, which is to never grant the Palestinians a state”.

It also said that the “international community, including the United States, must speak out against Israel’s outrageous actions and policies”, adding that the United Nations should provide “protection to all the Palestinian population under Israeli military rule including East Jerusalem”.

Among his several other bad judgements lately, Netanyahu caused an uproar last week when he reportedly claimed before the World Zionist Congress, according to Vice News, that the former grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini, planted the idea of wiping out European Jews when he met Hitler in 1941 in Berlin.

Netanyahu’s speech put Palestinians, according to Vice News, at the centre of the Holocaust — a version of events that is completely unfamiliar to the world’s leading historians of Nazi Germany.

In response, Philip Mattar, a Palestinian-American historian and author of “The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini and the Palestinian National Movement”, explained that while the mufti tried but apparently failed to “stop Jewish emigration to Palestine, which he saw as leading to displacement or eviction of his people”, the thousands of captured German documents used by many writers on the subject since World War II have “produced no evidence of the mufti’s participation in the Holocaust”.

Unprecedented in the American media was an editorial, last Friday, in The New York Times that blasted Netanyahu’s “Holocaust blunder”, which claimed that Huseini “persuaded Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews of Europe”, calling it “outrageous”.

“It is outrageous because the Holocaust is far too terrible a crime to be exploited for political ends, especially in the state linked so closely to the tragedy of the Jewish people. It is outrageous because the only apparent purpose is to demonise the Palestinians and current leader of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.”

It concluded: “Mr Netanyahu should have the decency to acknowledge that he was wrong and out of line.”

Adding to Netanyahu’s diminished status has been the reported sense of insecurity within Israel, revealed in the result of a survey by Midgam for Israel’s Chanel 2 television.

Some 79 per cent of the Israelis polled said they felt less safe, while 21 per cent said their sense of safety has not changed.

In light of this insecurity, 73 per cent said they were unsatisfied with Netanyahu’s performance.

A poll by Panels Politics published in the Israeli daily Maariv newspaper showed that 66 per cent of Israeli Jews polled want to be separated from Palestinians in East Jerusalem, while 24 per cent disagreed.

A surprise standing of two Jewish university professors — Steven Levitsky of Harvard University and Glen Weyl of the University of Chicago — who acknowledged they were “lifelong Zionists” in an op-ed in The Washington Post appealed for boycotting Israel.

They wrote: “In making the [Israeli] occupation permanent, Israel’s leaders are undermining their state’s viability. Unfortunately, domestic movements to avert that fate have withered. Thanks to an economic boom and the temporary security provided by the West Bank barrier and the Iron Dome missile defence system, much of Israel’s secular Zionist majority feels no need to take the difficult steps required for a durable peace, such as evicting their countrymen from West Bank settlements and acknowledging the moral strain of the suffering Israel has caused to so many Palestinians.

“We are at a critical juncture. Settlement growth and demographic trends will soon overwhelm Israel’s ability to change course.”

In short, the sooner Netanyahu steps down the better for all concerned, provided, of course, that a more practical and decent leader will emerge.

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.