Netanyahu should be an international pariah

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week accused French President Emmanuel Macron of spreading “blood libels” against Israel and standing “once again” with Hamas. All this came after Macron described Israel’s 10-week-old blockade of Gaza as “shameful.” Just what are the origins of the Netanyahu-Macron hostilities?

By any moral reckoning, Macron describing the horror of the Israeli blockade of Gaza as “shameful” was rather mild. “What the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is doing is unacceptable … there is no water, no medicine, the wounded cannot get out, the doctors cannot get in. What he is doing is shameful,” Macron said. Like British ministers, he has used the word “unacceptable,” but not “condemnation.” The “C” word is not allowed. Macron has yet to penalize Israel for its horrific blockade against 2.3 million Palestinian civilians, with the entire population at risk of famine.

Last October, Macron called for an end to the sale of arms to Israel that could be used in Gaza. “The priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop supplying weapons to lead the fighting in Gaza,” he said. Netanyahu delivered a riposte via video message, exclaiming “what a disgrace.”

Macron argued that “Mr. Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a UN decision.” Back came Netanyahu: “A reminder to the president of France: It was not the UN resolution that established the state of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the war of independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors — including from the Vichy regime in France.”

Netanyahu has always supported an ideology that claims all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river as Israeli

Chris Doyle

Franco-Israeli tempers frayed again in November, when armed Israeli police barged into a French-owned church compound, the Pater Noster on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, detaining two French consulate employees. A senior French diplomat had to give up his planned visit to the site.

Macron proposed recognizing an independent state of Palestine in April. This was hardly radical — 147 states had already done so. Yet, for Netanyahu, this represented a “huge prize for terror.” Few counter, as they should, that Hamas, which Netanyahu was clearly referring to, would not see an independent Palestinian state as a victory, but its rivals the Palestine Liberation Organization and Fatah would. It would reward those who have chosen to negotiate and not use force. The reality is that Netanyahu has always supported a “Greater Israel” ideology that claims all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river as Israeli, as stated in the founding Likud charter.

Step into the fray, Yair Netanyahu, Bibi’s son, and darling of the Likud base. He responded to Macron on social media in a less-than-diplomatic manner. His father said that Yair was entitled to his “personal opinion,” but the tone was “unacceptable to me.”

But Netanyahu could not resist having a pop at France’s colonial record. “We will not accept moral preaching about establishing a Palestinian state that will endanger Israel’s existence from those who are opposed to giving independence to Corsica, New Caledonia, French Guyana and additional territories.” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been given fair warning of what is in store for him if London dares to join France in any recognition.

He likes to have an enemy lined up in his crosshairs. He is the ultimate exponent of the blame game — of blaming everyone but himself

Chris Doyle

Macron is just the latest world leader to incur Netanyahu’s wrath. He is not even the first French president to fall out with him. In 2017, Nicolas Sarkozy was overheard telling US President Barack Obama: “I can’t stand him anymore, he’s a liar.” Obama retorted: “You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.” Netanyahu also ranted at President Francois Hollande for backing a “shameful” UNESCO resolution in 2016. Netanyahu has barely had a decent relationship of genuine trust with any world leader, even in the US. He was not trusted by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama or Joe Biden.

All this highlights the very low bar for angering Netanyahu. Macron did not even call what Israel is doing a genocide. He has not called for the severing of relations with Israel or for it to be sanctioned.

But Netanyahu likes to have an enemy lined up in his crosshairs. He is the ultimate exponent of the blame game — of blaming everyone but himself. He wants Israelis to indulge in this bunker mentality, to fall for the line that everyone and everything is against Israel, Israelis and the Jews, from the UN, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice to the papacy, nearly every state on Earth and human rights groups and aid agencies.

Yet most Israelis, along with nearly everyone else, knows that it is Netanyahu, his policies and his partners in crime in this extreme right-wing government that are despised. Even President Donald Trump, who most on the right in Israel saw as their hero, is not buying shares in Netanyahu.

The real question is why anyone is dealing with Netanyahu. Given his orchestration of the genocide in Gaza, war crimes and crimes against humanity, his use of genocidal language and the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him, he should be a global pariah.

• Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London. X: @Doylech