Gideon Levy – Netanyahu was right!
Gideon Levy, 5 June 2010
The time has come to take off our hats to the prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu’s predictions have proved accurate, and his prophecies are coming true right before our eyes. Now we can proudly declare that our government is led by a man of vision, a statesman who has foretold the future. Even his greatest critics can’t deny it; the facts speak for themselves.
Netanyahu said the whole world is against us. Wasn’t he right? He also said we live under an existential threat. Isn’t it beginning to look like that? Give it another minute and Turkey will be at war with us too. Netanyahu said there’s no chance of reaching an agreement with the Arabs. Wasn’t that spot on? Our prime minister, who saw danger lurking in every alleyway and enemies waiting around every corner, who has always taught that there is no hope, who has drummed into us that we shall forever live by the sword (just as his father the historian taught him ), knew what he was talking about.
We haven’t had anyone like him since David Ben-Gurion. He’s a genuine prophet whose every prediction comes true, one after the other – someone who can really be proud of his accomplishments. Enough mockery, enough ridicule. For Netanyahu is not only a prophet; his leadership has swept up the entire country. There is no longer anyone who can stop him from realizing his vision, and soon the pundits will be writing that Netanyahu was right.
This country now has a blind captain in the cockpit, flying his blindfolded passengers with exemplary precision toward the destination he envisioned. If there had still been any object of his scaremongering that had not yet been attained before this week, along came the outrageous seizure of the flotilla, and that goal too was in the bag.
If anyone was still entertaining a glimmer of hope that our pilot wasn’t totally blind, that he had some special sight-enhancing gadget, along came his declaration that the blockade of Gaza would continue. Let the world and wisdom and Gaza all go to hell, and incidentally Israel too – and dash that glimmer of hope as well. After the saws and knives seized on the Marmara have been publicly exhibited, we will be able to convince ourselves once and for all that there is indeed a danger lurking in every alley, an Al-Qaida operative on every ship, weapons on every deck – and even that the Marmara was an existential threat, no less, just as our leader had foreseen.
Of course, no one will demand to see the guns that the activists are alleged to have fired, or the video footage in which Israeli soldiers are seen firing, or the confiscated photographs taken by journalists. For us, the pictures of the severe beatings that the IDF Spokesman’s Office has released are enough.
Some 7 billion human beings (less about 5 million Israeli Jews ) are wrong. They haven’t got a leader like Netanyahu, and that’s why they go on thinking that seizing passenger ships in international waters is an act of piracy, no different from the deeds committed by the pirates of Somalia. They think (wrongly of course ) that Israel has no right to stop a fleet of boats; that the victims are the people of Gaza and the bleeding passengers, not the naval commandos who raided the ship and were beaten; and that the aggressors were the troops who were dropped onto the ship from a helicopter, killing nine civilians with live fire and wounding dozens.
The world is wrong and Netanyahu, with us in tow, is right. We will not lift the blockade. For four years it has yielded not an ounce of benefit, just damage, but what does that matter? Giddyup! Let’s fulfill Netanyahu’s vision. We’ll become an even more despised country and won’t have a single friend left in the world, not even the United States. True, it was Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, who began this terrible landslide with Operation Cast Lead, after which the world became intolerant of all violent behavior by Israel, but Netanyahu is following in his path.
Despite it all, his vision has not yet been realized in full. He gave rise to one hope: an “economic peace” that would bring prosperity to Palestinians and Israelis. But as yet there has been no greater saboteur of Israeli exports than Netanyahu, and soon everything produced here will have to be sold no further afield than Petah Tikva. Even prophets are entitled to err on occasion, but he had better not give rise to any more hopes.
About half of Israelis want a commission of inquiry, according to a poll published yesterday. It can be assumed that this is only because our soldiers were beaten and humiliated. Why, what else is there to investigate? After all, we have a prophet-statesman whose predictions are coming true, one after the other, and the redeemer is (not ) coming to Zion.