Benjamin Netanyahu has been Israeli leader for nearly 13 of the past 14 years. Until the weekend, he would probably have been known for being the longest-serving Israeli prime minister, and for facing corruption and fraud charges while in office. But after Hamas’ assaults on Israel and the ensuing atrocities, however, he will be known for overseeing the greatest security and intelligence failure in his country for 50 years.
Netanyahu is surely the unlikeliest recipient of such a title. His leadership of Israel has been characterised by the institution of an apartheid-like separation of Palestinians from Israelis, a massive investment in security infrastructure, the ongoing killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, and the steady seizure of Palestinian land to extend Israeli colonisation.
He has been dismissive of any concern other than Israel’s security, dismissing Western leaders’ mealy-mouthed professions of support for a two-state solution as irrelevant to Israel’s need to control its security.
As it turned out, Netanyahu’s relentless hostility towards Palestinians, rather than enhancing Israeli security, undermined it. How do we know this? What left-wing or Palestinian propagandist offered that take? In August, YnetNews reported that Ronen Bar, head of Israeli security agency the Shin Bet, had warned Netanyahu that Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinians would incite Palestinian terrorism and that the Israeli Defence Force was having to divert resources to deal with increased violence in the West Bank as a result of settler violence.
Netanyahu has long encouraged the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied land and done nothing to curb illegal settlements. Early this year, he appointed far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich — himself from an illegal settlement — to control the West Bank.
In 2020, an array of former Shin Bet and Mossad heads condemned Netanyahu and warned he was a threat to Israeli security and the country’s continuing existence. Among their criticisms was that Netanyahu used “strategic assets” for his own benefit.
The accusation echoes ongoing revelations about how Donald Trump — a friend and ally of Netanyahu — misused and shared secret information and classified files after losing the US presidency. Trump faces dozens of charges in relation to the misuse of more than a million documents, thereby endangering US national security.
Netanyahu’s aggressive support for the colonisation of occupied Palestine contributed to the failure to prevent the weekend attacks — similar to the way in which Western (particularly US and UK military) interventions in the Middle East, allegedly intended to reduce the threat of terrorism in Western countries, in fact led to more terrorist attacks — according to some of the most senior figures in Western intelligence services.
For a non-Western parallel, look no further than Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose nationalist aggression has only led to humiliation in Ukraine and a dramatic exposure of his country’s military inadequacies.
We even have a miniature version right here, with the detailing of how Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, for all his “tough on borders” reputation and rhetoric, presided over a stunning breach of our border security by organised and people traffickers.
Netanyahu’s response to the Hamas atrocities is to vow an unprecedented vengeance — with the, in the words of his defence minister, “human animals” of Gaza the first to be targeted. In doing so, he’ll follow the exact script that the US followed in response to 9/11, which resulted in the waste of trillions of dollars, the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the extension of Iranian power in the Middle East, and the emergence of performatively monstrous terrorist groups such as Islamic State. Goading the US into such a response had been Osama Bin Laden’s plan, and George W. Bush almost gleefully cooperated.
Doubtless a new generation of militants and terrorists will be created by the Israeli response, just as Hamas intends, enabling it to harvest the bloodshed to reinforce its ranks. Whether Israel will be any better off in a decade, or 20 years, isn’t clear. The US experience suggests no-one will be.
