The occupation of the new Israel New Yorker
On Monday afternoon, a few hours before the first fierce attacks of Israel’s land attack in Gaza City, the buildings shivered in distant places such as Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He was in Jerusalem to attend the economy conference. Through the far -right finance minister, Bezallil Smotrich, who was sitting in the front row, Netanyahu took the theater, appears somewhat, and reprimanded the event organizers to discredit his display of the slides. Then he turned to the public: a group of cabinet officials, who needed to persuade him to expand the national deficit in order to finance the next stage of the war.
He said that Israel “faces a new world”, and the reason is not the war in Gaza. Instead, other workers were martyred, “restrictions” were martyred on the country’s prospects. He said that the first is “unlimited immigration” for Muslims to Western Europe, where it became “a very important – very audio, very aggressive.” The second is a digital revolution that led Qatar, China and other countries to invest in social media platforms that strengthen the “anti -Israel agenda”. He said that the result was “a kind of isolation”, which appears to be more ingenuity than being the leader of a country that the United Nations Committee has just concluded in committing genocide.
Since the war began in Gaza, which was ignited by Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, Israeli officials have witnessed increasing international isolation. In a sharp blow to Israel’s diplomatic efforts, many countries – including its allies, have long announced, such as Britain, France and Canada – that it will get to know a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly next week. Some of these countries have restricted the sale of weapons to Israel; A number of others banned the sale of weapons to the country completely. But this ostracism also felt more widely throughout Israeli society, including among the large numbers of Israeli who oppose war. Cultural events, festivals, research grants and academic conferences are increasingly excluded by Israelis because of their nationality. Israeli tourists were devoted to abuse abroad, and violent attacks on non -Israeli Jews are high.
After the International Criminal Court sought to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on war crimes, in May 2024, he criticized against senior prosecutors, describing him as one of the “hostility of the great great in the modern era.” Netanyahu warned in his speech on Monday, where we are increasingly need to adapt to the economy with self -characteristics. Super Sparta. There is no choice. In the coming years, at least, we will have to deal with these attempts to isolate us. What is doing so far will not work from now on. “
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange fell, and a public uproar began. Opposition leader Yire Lapid described Netanyahu’s speech as “crazy.” The Israel Business Forum, which represents two hundred companies in the country, issued a strict warning: “We are not Sparta.” She pointed out that the real problem is that government policies were leading Israel “towards the political, economic and social abyss.” Yossi Werter, from the liberal newspaper HaritzBook a column Entitled “Netanyahu turns the emerging nation into Sparta Nation-and confirms itself along the way.” He suggested that Netanyahu’s speech was a misleading attempt to repeat the famous Winston Churchill evoking “Blood, Jobs, Tears and Sweat.” But he added that this rhetorical failure was still revealing: For the first time, Netanyahu presented a “realistic” filming for Israel’s standing in the world.
Others focused on the strange selection of Netanyahu from metaphor. Nadaf Eyel, a column writer in the middle sheet Yediot AhronotPublishing a historical reminder: “By the way, I lost Sparta.” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, told me: “You thought the man who is proud of his understanding of history patterns will know what he is talking about.” During the last century, Pinkas said, four countries actually acted as Sparta: Nazi Germany, South Africa in the era of apartheid, Albania under its Communist system, and recently North Korea. “This is the club you want to join?” Pinkas request.
By the next day, even Netanyahu’s allies were aware of the repercussions. Channel 12, the dominant television network in Israel, reported that Sottic has particularly told the Prime Minister, “I have been damaged. Now you are the person to be fixed.” Netanyahu hurriedly held a press conference, alternating between Hebrew and English. He said: “There was a misunderstanding,” on the pretext that the only field in which Israel risked the manufacture of weapons. He reiterated that he had “complete confidence” in the country’s economy, and that he praised foreign investments. It was not mentioned that the growth rates of each cloth in Israel were negative for two years in a row.
Government supporters suggested that Netanyahu’s mistake was just wrong in the framework – and that he needed a difficult language in order to persuade Treasury Bururacids to finance his expanded military action. In fact, during his speech to Treasury officials, Netanyahu continued to demand his fans in English, to “reduce bureaucracy!” Pillar in Jerusalem mailIt is a newspaper full of English, Argue The speech was “sales stadium, not its ambitious philosophy.”
But Netanyahu’s speech, if it was not controlled, was an echo: it would be difficult to dispel the image of Israel as a military city. While the analysts argued about the formulation of the Prime Minister, the tanks rolled to the center of Gaza, and tens of thousands of Palestinians fled on foot, heading to the southern regions of the pocket where there is no infrastructure to accommodate them. Hundreds of thousands of others remained in Gaza City, either unable or very stressful to escape. Mohamed Abu Salma, director of the Shiva Hospital in Gaza City, published a picture of six premature children jammed inside one incubator, and warned of an imminent danger to their lives. Haritz I stated that nearly a hundred Palestinians were killed in less than twenty -four hours.