Bibi's Pitch to the American public over the weekend
How badly is Bibi Netanyahu doing with his international PR on the Israel-Gaza war?
So bad that he made Dana Bash and Kristen Welker sound like hard-hitting journalists.
Dana Bash on CNN1:
Kristen Welker on NBC2:
Ben Samuels puts it this way:
Now that the prime minister is emerging after weeks of retreat, he is again trying to spin and manipulate, appealing to people’s most base interests and placing the October 7 attack in terms of “20 9/11s,” and other such language meant to invoke American emotions.
This time, though, the media is prepared, after more than a month of 24-hour news coverage offering unprecedented focus on not only the current conflict but the months, years and decades leading up to this moment.
In another world, Netanyahu would have been able to get away with reducing the conflict to a binary issue, matching the good-vs.-evil and light-vs.-dark rhetoric emanating from his government.
As evidenced by CNN’s Dana Bash and NBC’s Kristen Welker this weekend, however, the acuities and nuances of the conflict are front-and-center and Netanyahu can’t gaslight his way out of it.3
Netanyahu makes it clear he is against “savages” and “Nazis” and for “civilization against barbarism.” But if he has any clear plan for long-term peace arrangements or even what comes after Israel achieves what it considers military control over the Gaza Strip, he didn’t reveal it in either of these interviews. He does like Second World War analogies, though.
In the polemics of the moment, it’s worth noting that Netanyahu’s references to “savages” and “civilization against barbarism” is very much colonial vocabulary. There have been controversies in recent years and particularly since October 7 whether a “decolonial” perspective is appropriate for understanding the Israel-Palestine conflict. Bibi Netanyahu certainly seems to think that its very appropriate for his polemics against Hamas and the Palestinians more generally.
His insistence on Nazi analogies is also a reminder that such rhetoric can and does slip into a kind of Holocaust revisionism. Waltman Beorn in a recent X/Twitter thread looks at the polemical argument that Hamas is even worse than Nazis and how that position treats the actual historical Holocaust frivolously.4
Netanyahu has indulged in another piece of Holocaust revisionism back in 20155 claiming falsely that Hitler got the notion of exterminating the Jews in Europe from Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in November 1941. months after the Nazis’ decision for an extermination campaign against Jews had been taken and actively put into effect.
In both Sunday interviews, Netanyahu ducked accepting any responsibility for the spectacular intelligence and military-preparedness failures on October 7, for which Israelis are heavily criticizing him. But he’s already been working on laying the blame on the Israeli Defense Force and the intelligence services. Netanyahu is focused on staying in office for the same reason Donald Trump is desperate to become President again: to stay out of jail.
Yossi Verter reminds us that Israeli reporters are not so reticent with Netanyahu as even newly-alerted American journalists. Remarking on Netanyahu’s defensive appearances on US television on Sunday when he whined that Americans didn’t criticize Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor or Shrub Bush after the 9/11 attacks, he writes:
If [Netanyahu] had been facing an Israeli interviewer, she would have brought him back to homegrown failures: the Yom Kippur War and the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which he had called a disaster and over which he demanded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert immediately resign.
If Netanyahu intends to continue mentioning FDR and George W. Bush in interviews with other American networks, here are a few tips for his interviewers.6
He proceeds to reference Netanyahu’s longtime boosting Hamas in order to undermine support for the Palestinian Liberation Organization that administers the West Bank, a fact that is well-known and openly criticized in Israel.7
Verter continues:
If Netanyahu intends to continue mentioning FDR and George W. Bush in interviews with other American networks, here are a few tips for his interviewers.
Roosevelt didn’t transfer suitcases full of cash to the Japanese navy. He didn’t ignore his own generals’ warnings in the preceding nine months that his efforts to pass legislation were conveying weakness and vulnerability, inviting war on two fronts, harming the country’s cohesion and the Israeli army’s military fitness – a “clear and present danger to Israel’s security,” as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it on the night of March 25 (and as hundreds if not thousands of senior security establishment figures said as well).
Bush didn’t make it clear on countless occasions that Al-Qaeda had to be strengthened at the expense of anyone else. The examples Netanyahu chose as a flak jacket only prove the weakness of his case. I would predict that when he’s interviewed on British television, he will surely respond: “Did people ask Margaret Thatcher that after the Argentine army invaded the Falkland Islands?” [my emphasis]
Netanyahu shares 3 things to understand about the war. CNN YouTube channel 11/12/2023. (Accessed: 2023-13-11).
Full Netanyahu: Everyone in the world is 'sitting on the bleachers'. NBC News YouTube channel 11/12/2023. (Accessed: 2023-13-11).
Samuels, Ben (2023): With the World’s Eyes on Gaza, Netanyahu Can’t Gaslight Americans Too. Haaretz 11/12/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2023-11-12/ty-article/.highlight/with-the-worlds-eyes-on-gaza-netanyahu-cant-gaslight-americans-too/0000018b-c4b0-d485-ab9b-ecf1ebab0000> (Accessed: 2023-13-11).
Beorn, Waltman W. (2023): X [Twitter] 11/12/2023. <https://x.com/waitmanb/status/1723828524945903964?s=20> (Accessed: 2023-14-11).
Miller, Bruce (2023): Netanyahu's Holocaust revisionism. Contradicciones (Original) 10/21/2015. <https://oldhickorysweblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/netanyahus-holocaust-revisionism.html> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Greenstein, Tony (2015): Rewriting the Holocaust. Jacobin 10/22/2015. <https://jacobin.com/2015/10/holocaust-denial-mufti-netanyahu-yad-veshem-hagee-palestine-zionism> (Accessed: 2023-04-11).
More on Netanyahu's Holocaust pseudohistory. Contradicciones (Original) 10/22/2015. <https://oldhickorysweblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/more-on-netanyahus-holocaust.html> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
New scholarly article by Michael Sells on Netanyahu's variety of Holocaust pseudohistory. Contradicciones (Original) 10/24/2015. <https://oldhickorysweblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/new-scholarly-articvle-by-michael-sells.html> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Another propaganda source using the same Holocaust revisionist story as Netanyahu. Contradicciones (Original) 10/25/2015. <https://oldhickorysweblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/another-propaganda-source-using-same.html> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Verter, Yossi (2023): How Far Will Netanyahu Go to Evade Responsibility for Israel's Plight? Pearl Harbor. Haaretz 11/13/2023. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2023-11-12/ty-article/.highlight/with-the-worlds-eyes-on-gaza-netanyahu-cant-gaslight-americans-too/0000018b-c4b0-d485-ab9b-ecf1ebab0000> (Accessed: 2023-13-11).
Schneider, Tal (2023): For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces. Times of Israel 10/08/2023. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/> (Accessed: 2023-20-10).