Lieberman’s War on Everything Palestinian – and Why He Will Fail
(Image: Luis Vazquez, Gulf News)
By Ramzy Baroud
Division within Palestinian society has reached unprecedented levels, becoming a major hurdle in the path of any unified strategy to end Israel’s violent occupation, or to rally Palestinians behind a single objective. Newly-appointed Israeli ultranationalist Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman understands this too well. His tactic since his ascension to office last May is to invest more in these divisions as a way of breaking down Palestinian society even further.
Lieberman hates everything Palestinian. He is an ‘extremist’ even if compared to the low standards of the Israeli military. His past legacy was saturated with violent and racist declarations and his more recent exploits included an attack on the late and venerated Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s most celebrated poet.
Just two months after his appointment by Israel’s equally right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the new post, Lieberman took on free speech, demanding more patriotic programming on Israeli radio and lashing out at Israeli Army Radio for broadcasting a programme about the poetry of Darwish.
Darwish’s poetry has been pivotal in captivating and inspiring not only thousands of Palestinians and Arabs, but also others around the world, and Lieberman’s lashing out against this icon indicates just how truly threatening the words of Darwish are.
Of all the offensive comparisons, Lieberman went as far as comparing Darwish — whose poetry advocated freedom and justice for all Palestinians — to Adolph Hitler. “According to the same logic,” Lieberman said in response to the radio programme, it would be possible to “glorify during a broadcast the literary marvels of ‘Mein Kampf’” — referring to the Nazi leader’s autobiography.
But this is certainly not Lieberman’s most outrageous statement.
Lieberman’s past provocations are plenty. In 2015 he threatened to behead Palestinian citizens of Israel with an axe if they were not fully loyal to the ‘Jewish state’; he also advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens of Israel; and issued a death ultimatum to former Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya.
Yet Lieberman’s latest onslaught on freedom of expression must not be viewed separate from the disturbing trend afflicting his society as a whole. In fact, Lieberman is a mere representation of it.
Israeli society is constantly swerving to the Right and by doing so, the country’s entire political paradigm is being redefined regularly. That Israel is now ‘ruled by the most extreme right-wing government in its history’, has grown from being an informed assessment to a dull cliché over the course of only a few years.
In fact, that exact line was used in May 2015, when Netanyahu formed his thin majority government of like-minded right-wingers, religious zealots and ultranationalists. This sentiment, with the same rhetoric, has being infused again through Lieberman — Netanyahu’s choice as he expanded his coalition.
Considering Lieberman’s rowdy and violent politics as demonstrated in his two terms as Foreign Minister (from 2009 to 2012 and, again, from 2013 to 2015), being a Defence Minister in Israel’s ‘most extreme right-wing government in history’ would allow all kinds of terrifying prospects to be realised.
Lieberman’s advent has, however, apart from his ultranationalist ideas, confused an already muddled Western media discourse on Israel. Lieberman’s predecessor, Moshe Ya’alon was known for his particularly violent past, yet some journalists chose to cast him in a different role as soon as Lieberman emerged as the new Defence Minister.
Moshe Ya’alon, was regarded by some as an example of professionalism and morality. He is ‘well-regarded’, wrote William Booth in the Washington Post, compared to the ‘polarising maverick’ Lieberman.
But, ‘well-regarded’ by whom? By Israeli society, the majority of whom support the ‘cold-blooded murder’ of Palestinians?
Israel has adhered to its own definition of political terminology for a long time. Its early ‘socialism’ was a blend of communal living, facilitated by military onslaught and sustained by insatiable colonialism. Its current definition of ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘centre’ are also relative, and unique to Israel itself.
Thanks to Lieberman — the former Russian immigrant, club bouncer-turned-politician who is constantly rallying the roughly one million Israeli Russian Jews around his ever-violent political agenda — Ya’alon was hurriedly whitewashed as an example of level-headedness and morality.
Yet while Ya’alon carried out his bloody military missions since the 1973 war quite efficiently, Lieberman is not a combatant in the same sense. He takes hatred and racism to an entirely new and deranged level, pushing all sorts of bills in the Knesset to suppress freedoms, demand vengeance and attempt to outlaw the very essence of Palestinian identity.
His latest ploy, however, is the most outlandish yet. He is planning to colour-code Palestinian communities in the West Bank, dividing them into green and red, or ‘good’ and ‘bad’, where the former shall be rewarded for their good behaviour, while the latter shall be collectively punished, even if just one member of that community dare resist the Israeli occupation.
A version of that plan was attempted nearly 40 years ago, and utterly failed. The fact that such despicable thinking is accruing well into the 21st century with no international uproar is not only baffling but perturbing.
Moreover, Lieberman wants to resurrect the Village Leagues, another failed Israeli experiment to impose an ‘alternative’ Palestinian leadership by ‘engaging’ Palestinian ‘notables’. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is poorly regarded amongst Palestinians anyway, is too weak a leader, according to Lieberman, who of course, is little interested in respecting the democratic choices and rights of the Palestinian people.
Thus, Lieberman’s solution is to manufacture a leadership, which, like the ‘Village Leagues’ of the 1970s and 80s, will most certainly be regarded as collaborators and traitors by the wider Palestinian society.
Lieberman is certainly not an astute student of history, but even he knows well that his plan is doomed to failure. Currently he is interested in further fragmenting Palestinians, busying them with another prolonged, internal fight.
The most consistent phrases in the Israeli political discourse is that Palestinian leaders are either too weak or are terrorists and that Israel has no partner with which it can reach a peace agreement.
Consequently, Israel has done its utmost, to both isolate and brand the supposedly ‘terrorist’ leaders and to further weaken the ‘moderate’ ones. This way there can never be a serious discussion of a peaceful solution, and Israel can continue to build its illegal colonies and entrench its occupation unhindered.
Expectedly, the debate in Israel is on whether colour-coding Palestinians is a military sound strategy or not; and whether the ‘alternative leadership’ stratagem will deliver.
The international community, which is witness to Lieberman’s racist views and plans, also has the ability to contest and protest against them. It is called upon to demand a rejection of his absurd and destructive thinking and to force Israel to adhere to international law and human rights, and to respect the democratic choices and rights of the Palestinian people.
– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include Searching Jenin, The Second Palestinian Intifada and his latest My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.
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