Naftali Bennett is Israel 's
Minister of Education and Diaspora Affairs as well as a member of the security
cabinet. The thing to know about him is that every time he opens his mouth, he
stiffs himself real hard.
He did it again in an article he
wrote under the title: “My Country Bars Enemies From Entry. Yours Would Do the
Same,” published on January 27, 2018 in the New York Times. His point is that
the people and organizations that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions
movement against Israel (BDS) do not simply object to Israel 's policies; they object to Israel 's
existence. And this gives him the right to ban them from entering Israel .
The argument he put together to
justify his logic begins with the article's title. The points he makes are
contained in the part that says: “Yours Would Do the Same.” It conveys the idea
that if you do not see thing his way; it's because you are pursuing a double
standard. In effect, you would be denying Israel the right to do what
everyone else does. And this, in his view, is what defines the double standard.
So you go over the article to see
how he develops that argument. What you discover instead is that in the same
way the rabbis of old started the intimidation of America
by accusing those that criticized anything Jewish or Israeli of being
antisemitic and working to start a holocaust – Bennett is now accusing those
who support BDS of trying to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.
However, whereas the rabbis succeeded in achieving their goal five decades ago;
Naftali Bennett isn't doing as well today.
Look at his problem. He says that
“BDS is a new name for an age-old strategy: demonizing and delegitimizing the
Jewish people ... The movement aims to make the case that the Jewish state
doesn't have the right to exist in the Middle East .”
But why is there such a movement to begin with? Good question. Well, he says
that the movement was started by the Palestinians in 2005. This happens to be
38 years into the occupation of their country by Israel 's military.
But in case you did not catch
Bennett's logic, he means to say that instead of loving the occupation, having
lived under it for 38 years, the Palestinians decided to ask the world for help
to end it. He is suggesting that this act does not mean the Palestinians have
had enough being occupied by the military of a foreign entity; it means they
are so evil as to have adopted the age-old strategy of demonizing and
delegitimizing the Jewish people.
But deep down, even he suspected
this might be reasoning that's funky enough, he must explain it. And so, he
said this: “The logic behind this policy is sound: We won't welcome enemy
soldiers into our territory. If you actively work for our destruction, you
can't come into our home.” He thus made it so that instead of the Israeli
military being the enemy that invaded Palestinian homes, it was the Palestinian
farmers, carpenters and doctors who were the enemy that refused to welcome the
Jewish invaders when the latter went into Palestine
riding tanks and armored vehicles.
And the long term effect of that
'sound policy' has been that every piece of Palestine
the Jews grabbed became a piece of Israel . In fact, after fifty years
of occupation, what was Palestinian West Bank became Israeli Judea and Samaria . That's the name
Bennett and the gang making up the Israeli government gave it. In the end, the
reality on the ground exposed the intent of the Jewish policy as being a plan
to make the Palestinian identity vanish from the face of the Earth. This was
the latest idea that the Jewish leaders came up with to deal with the
Palestinian question, having failed to demonize and delegitimize the
Palestinian people.
And so, we now have the Orwellian
situation of a Tom, Dick, Harry or Naftali coming from anywhere in the world,
deciding to expel the indigenous Palestinians “out of my country,” having
turned the Palestinians into foreigners in their own Palestine .
And Bennett wants the world to
understand that even if Israel has not yet annexed the entire West Bank, the
fact that the Jews covet that piece of real estate, means it is in theory a
piece of Israel. This is why he says the Jews can treat the Palestinian
population that remains on it as foreign slave labor producing the goods that
the Jews are trying to sell to the world and pocket the money. It is also why,
in the logic of Naftali Bennett, to BDS those goods, is to commit an
antisemitic act aimed at the destruction of Israel itself.