Actually Existing Netanyahu
Ruthless Cosmopolitan
By Ari Paul
If the small country of Bhutan has a George Washington or a Giuseppe Garibaldi, it’s Ngawang Namgyal, later given the title Zhabdrung Rinpoche.
Rinpoche united warring rivals together in the early 1600s. When he died, the governors feared news of his absence would unravel the consolidated entity he had created.
So they told everyone the leader was away on a silent retreat. They kept this act going for more than half a century.
Today, if US President Donald Trump goes more than a few days without a public outburst or is seen golfing, then social media becomes overrun with theories about his declining health or possible death.
That thing on his hand must be growing. A stroke? He finally ate one cheeseburger too many.
These fantasies are understandable. Alas, to liberals’ disappointment, Trump always manages to reappear.
With the checks on presidential power that have defined US republicanism for 250 years nearly eviscerated, Trump’s sudden fall to his own slovenly habits seems more likely than a successful impeachment or a People Power-style revolution.
Something similar is happening with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Haaretz: “Netanyahu with six fingers, a brimming cappuccino that won’t spill: Conspiracy theories have exploded over social media, in English and Arabic, contending that Israel’s prime minister was killed in an Iranian missile strike and that AI-generated videos have taken his place.”
The rumours started swirling when social media users pointed to a video of the leader in which he apparently has six fingers. Then he appeared in a “proof of life” video at a coffee shop.
It’s unclear that in our information age, Israeli politicians could conceal the death of a great leader like those wise sages of old Bhutan.
In fact, one might even say that it’s impossible for such news not to leak out. For example, Bibi’s foul-mouthed son, Yair, can’t even keep his mouth shut outside a strip club.
But if Netanyahu really did kick the bucket, why would the state keep it a secret?
One theory is that the Iranians or Hezbollah got lucky and hit the man, much like his late brother Yoni, the only Israeli soldier killed in Operation Entebbe.
Israel can’t afford to have the enemy score a victory like that. Killing Netanyahu would be equivalent to another 7 October.
It would humiliate the government and call into question the IDF’s ability to defend the country.
The other related theory is that Bibi serves as a figure for contemporary Israel, similar to Zhabdrung Rinpoche.
Without him, the realisation of the Jabotinskian dream, the Israeli imperial project, would collapse.
There is often debate in the pro-Palestine left about how much attention should be paid to Netanyahu when it comes to the genocide in Gaza and the apartheid Palestinians endure.
If we protest Bibi or concentrate too much on his leadership, we fail to indict the racist nature of the Israeli state and Zionism itself.
After all, he is heading a government with Kahanists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who are to the right of his Likud Party.
Still, today’s Israeli moderates aren’t much better.
Al Jazeera: “After controversial comments by the US ambassador to Israel suggesting it has the right to take over much of the Middle East, the country’s main opposition leader said he agrees with Israeli expansion as far as Iraq. Yair Lapid told a news conference…that his territorial takeover views for Israel are based on Zionist and biblical foundations.”
This is convincing stuff. It says a lot about the ideological changes in Israeli politics that Netanyahu has helped bring about, through his various governments and cabinet positions since the 1990s.
Now, nearly everyone sounds like Ben-Gvir.
While there is concern on the left that condemning Bibi, like former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, exonerates the Israeli state and not its leadership, two things can be true at the same time.
Israel’s political agenda centres on ethnic cleansing, illiberalism, territorial expansion, and apartheid. Netanyahu’s tenure, despite charges of corruption and power grabs, is driven by these principles.
Fantasising about Bibi’s demise feels good because for decades, the left has felt so powerless in the face of the destruction of Gaza.
We marched. Students occupied their campuses. We boycotted, spoke out, wrote op-eds and publicly grieved for the massacred innocents in Gaza. And for what?
Gaza is more or less gone, and Israel appears to want to do the same to Lebanon.
Americans who can remember the Iraq War joke that two decades ago, our government and media at least manufactured consent for that war during the nation’s collective shock from 9/11.
These days, Americans wake up to a new war with no public support while the US and Israel’s buffoonish leaders smirk in our faces. But we, the masses, have changed, too.
The war on Iran and Lebanon has Americans mad and worried. People are talking about stockpiling food out of fear that energy prices and fertiliser shortages will impact global food supplies.
Rising gas prices will eat away at workers’ purchasing power and threaten air travel–“$200 a barrel is not outside the realms of possibility in 2026,” Wood Mackenzie energy analysts said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Anticipatory tension has gripped daily life. Retirement portfolios are in jeopardy as market analysts navigate the constant tumult. And yet there is no collective outrage as in the run-up to Iraq.
There’s no mass action, no mass strategising about stopping the war.
None of this is happening, not because people don’t know the dangers, but because Americans are demoralised. What good does protesting do if the government won’t listen?
AI’s danger to society is multifaceted. On the one hand, it can fool people into believing fake images are real. Worse, it can blur the lines between fake and real to a point of no return.
Coupled with accepting the futility of resistance, it’s easy to smirk at Benjamin Netanyahu’s non-assassination instead of building a revolutionary movement against terror.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.