A disturbing book about Netanyahu’s relationship with Hamas
Adam Raz
Avshalom Halutz writes in Haaretz on 12 May 2024:
On the day of the horrific events of October 7, Israeli political historian and author Adam Raz had a big fight with his mother. A longtime leftist and devoted Meretz voter, she surprised him with her harsh reaction. “She said: ‘They should pour gasoline all over Gaza and blow it up,'” recounts Raz, whose work deals with political theory, the Israeli-Arab conflict and the nuclear arms race. “I realized that I needed to delve into the psyche that made even left-wing Israelis think this way.”
The end result is “The Road to October 7: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Production of the Endless Conflict and Israel’s Moral Degradation,” which came out in Hebrew this week (by Pardes Publishing and the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research). It is dedicated to his parents. In the preface, he even writes that he hopes the book will help his mother better understand his stance on the burning current events in Israel.
If ever an Israeli publication deserves a global audience right now, it’s this short, powerful and disturbing book. It is essential reading about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, offering an insightful, eye-opening explainer into the makings and manipulations behind it.
Only a few days after the Hamas massacre in Israel’s south, Haaretz ran an op-ed by Raz titled “A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance.” In it, he described the symbiotic, long-standing relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian terror group. The piece received a lot of attention internationally and provoked a backlash locally, particularly for Raz’s closing, foretelling paragraph:
“In the future, more details will emerge that will shed additional light on that mutual understanding. Don’t make the mistake of thinking – even now – that as long as Netanyahu and his present government are responsible for making decisions, the Hamas regime will collapse. There will be a lot of talk and pyrotechnics about the current ‘war against terror,’ but sustaining Hamas is more important to Netanyahu than a few dead kibbutzniks.”
That paragraph led to a full-length book that poured out of him at a feverish rate. The end product is divided into two parts. The first is a detailed analysis of how Netanyahu and Hamas fed off of each other for years: Netanyahu, who has always opposed the two-state solution, strengthened Hamas in order to prevent an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Raz cites significant and sometimes little-known issues from Netanyahu’s past – such as the arrest of senior Hamas member Moussa Abu Marzouk in the United States in 1995, and Netanyahu’s role in his eventual release and extradition to Jordan.
In the second part, “The Pariah Country: On the First Days of Fighting in Gaza,” Raz delves into the sinister tricks and cruel actions Netanyahu took following October 7, and how the Israeli leader used the heightened Israeli sentiment for revenge and turned it into one of the worst offenses against civilians in the 21st century. It is written in short segments, which Raz calls “tunnels.”
“Netanyahu, who was on the verge of losing his power, is a genius manipulator. In his speech at 8 P.M. on the evening of October 7, when he said ‘Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created; we will turn Gaza into ruins,’ he managed to lure Israelis from the center-left. The same people who only a day earlier were protesting against his judicial coup,” Raz says.
The strategic campaign of airstrikes Netanyahu commanded is unprecedented in the 21st century. Yet the people who did it weren’t settlers or the ultra-Orthodox; it was secular, center-left Israelis who serve in the army – educated pilots who bombed Gaza. I wished to explain in the book that it is a well-known conclusion from past wars that airstrikes don’t work. I have interviewed many senior army officers, who told me that there simply was no military strategy in the early bombings of Gaza. It was a strategy of revenge. Not a military praxis but a political praxis.”
What you are saying is that the massive airstrikes, which resulted in a huge number of Palestinian casualties, were not meant to fight Hamas but to gain support from bloodthirsty Israelis?
“The ‘Dresdenization’ of Gaza is serving Netanyahu. He manages to make the Israeli public, which was eager to avenge the crimes of October 7, a partner in crime. And with the killing of so many civilians, he ensured that Israel would become more and more isolated. The war in Gaza is a continuation of his judicial coup and his attempt to turn Israel into a ‘second-world’ country – from a so-called democratic and liberal society into a state that is not part of democratic societies or international law. For years, he has been weakening Israeli institutions from within, and now he is harming Israel’s standing in the world.”
What makes Netanyahu want to change Israel so badly? Until 2016, Raz argues, when Netanyahu’s corruption trials became a public matter, “he was pretty much a neoliberal conservative. He had a legitimate stance, even if I don’t agree with it. But over the course of time, he changed because he realized that the trials could mean he and possibly members of his family could end up in financial ruin, and maybe locked away for many years. He had never been an enemy of the courts before that.”
One of the book’s “tunnels” is called “A Strategy of Denial.” “Every Israeli knows, one way or another, that horrible things are taking place in Gaza. In our name, in my name, in your name, a mass starvation is taking place. Soldiers kill civilians and upload videos showing their actions. The Gazan health system is being annihilated. Gazan mothers cannot breastfeed their babies because they don’t receive enough water. We saw the repeated use of Mark-84 [2,000-pound] dumb bombs in residential neighborhoods, without any regard for collateral damage. Israeli society has lived in denial since 1948. But the latest events expose the public’s ability to be in denial even in a clearly abnormal situation.
“People at the Military Advocate General [responsible for implementing the rule of law within the Israel Defense Forces] told me they were certain there was going to be mass insubordination – but there was hardly any. Netanyahu took events that were objectively horrifying [October 7], and turned the emotions of the public into a crime strategy. Many of the bombings were done by artificial intelligence. Pilots didn’t even know what they were bombing. One pilot told me: ‘If I wanted to know what I bombed in Gaza, I would wait for the next morning and hopefully read it in Haaretz.’ The feeling is that it’s a huge system in which everyone plays a small role, and nobody feels responsible for the army’s actions.”
Raz goes so far as to say that “October 7 was a calculated risk on behalf of both Netanyahu and Hamas,” using the words of Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar. In 2022, it was revealed that Sinwar sent Netanyahu a cryptic note that read “calculated risk” in Hebrew. “I’m not saying October 7 was a conspirative event – neither side thought October 7 was going to be such a huge massacre. But prior to that, both Hamas and Netanyahu were losing their power. There were multiple, serious warnings about a possible attack that were ignored. It was, so to say, a calculated risk.”
What are your thoughts on Netanyahu’s Holocaust Remembrance Day speech, in which he said “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone”?
“Seventy percent of the arms Israel is using come from the United States. The Zionist project cannot exist without the Americans and their support. Netanyahu used that in his speech to further broaden the rift with America. It serves his desire to turn Israel into a nondemocratic country, where all the power is held by a small group of people with this mob mentality.”
Do you see any reasons to be optimistic about our future?
“Listen, a country doesn’t simply disappear. But the Zionist project, the way our grandparents saw it – as a just society where Jews and Arabs can live together in peace – is over. And being an Israeli and a Jew right now means being isolated and unwanted. We will not be able to extend a hand to our neighbors without firstly recognizing what we have done. We didn’t face either ’67 or ’48, yet in this war we already killed more people. And I haven’t even mentioned internal Israeli issues. We’re turning into a kind of Bosnia after the war: a society with a huge number of uneducated people, violent and polarized. Unless we tackle these issues, it will be very hard to be optimistic, even once Netanyahu and his mob government are gone.”
The item on Adam Raz and his book is reproduced in its entirety