The science of modern psychology asserts that when one is gripped with fear for his/her life, the animal instinct to ensure survival takes over by shutting down all the human faculties. People gripped with fear rely on others to think for them and lead them like a herd in the wild, spooked blindly following the ‘Alfa male’ in their stampede towards the cliff overlooking the abyss. Fear is the instrument employed by hungry power-seekers to control and manipulate the public to support their self-serving agenda to stay in power.
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “strongly believes” and strongly wants the world to believe, as well, that the so-called Palestinian flare-up that is terrifying Israelis is not related to his colonial policies, liaised with apartheid in any way, and “could be easily crushed by the sword of Israel”. He must be reminded of the divine truth written in the Torah that states: “Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.” Netanyahu is trying to market his policy of fear by connecting the third Palestinian intifada (uprising) with the carnage orchestrated by Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) all over the world.
When mobilising the killing Zionist machine to terminate Palestinian teens yielding mere kitchen knives — after they lost hope to realise a decent future, in which, they could live with dignity, and were disgusted with the daily humiliation rendered by the Israeli military occupation — it is certainly like one sticking his head in the sand, refusing to see the truth. By ignoring the cause behind the Palestinian anger and claiming something else to fool the world, Netanyahu is really fooling himself by blindly leading the Zionist state towards an abyss.
Expanding colonies on stolen Palestinian lands, maintaining a military occupation for decades without end, denying Palestinians their human rights and terminating all hope for a peaceful political solution are the very reasons behind Palestinian resistance, carried out by desperate Palestinian youths. The number of Zionist colonists in the Occupied Territoies, when the 1993 Oslo Accord was signed, was less than 45,000. After years of peace negotiations that led to nowhere, the number now is around 500,000. Negotiations to attain the two state-solution is a tactic used by Israel to buy time for full Judaisation of historical Palestine.
An editorial in the Israeli daily, Haaretz, recently said that, “the Prime Minister’s view of current spats of violence has a name: It is called apartheid. There can be no other explanation to the fact that there are two types of inhabitants of the same land — one enjoying political rights and the other is not and is being forced to endure a military occupation without end”.
Israeli writer Avi Kleinberg also commented that, “Netanyahu is responding to the aspects of flared-up violence with a greater deadly violence, without dealing with the real cause of this disease — which is the occupation”. He asked: “What drives ordinary people, not professional fighters, to take up violent means without a preplanned strategy?” Denying the real cause is Netanyahu’s ploy to free himself of the blame for causing this violence by his termination of the peace negotiations”, he added.
Uri Savir, one of the founders of the Peres Centre for Peace criticised Netanyahu’s exaggeration of the danger and his fuelling of emotions against Palestinians, saying: “The greater the fear, the more dependent the Israelis [are on] him to make them feel safe. Blaming [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] and putting the blame of the Holocaust upon the Palestinian Mufti (Haj Ameen Al Hussaini), who died decades ago, are all tricks to evade the blame for ending the peaceful resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.” He advised Israelis to replace their hysteria with deep thinking that examines the root cause, which is the absence of a serious negotiating process ending with two states. Furthermore, he warned that all Palestinians will continue to fight to gain independence and “without a political process, leading to final borders along the 1967 lines, the government would drag us all to face a civil war with [Palestinians from 1948 areas] along with the rest of the Palestinians within the reality of one bi-national state”.
A senior Israeli officer portrayed an extremely pessimistic picture of the current situation. Guy Goldstein, a commanding officer in the Israeli army, wrote, saying that the wave will not stop and “we are sitting on a barrel of explosives and it is only a matter of time before it blows up”.
Netanyahu’s ploy to fuel fear is intended to keep him in power. He may call for elections in mid-2016 or form a national government with the opposition. He may also entice 500,000 of French Jews to move to Israel. Fuelling Islamophobia in Europe is part of his agenda. He recently called militant fundamentalists of Daesh “the new beastly Mongol hordes”. As the sage of old times said: “It is the singer, not the song” and so blaming the divine song of Islam for the evil singers of Daesh and Al Qaida is foolish indeed.
Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
