A few examples to show to what extent the current coalition is based on ********ting. Netanyahu keeps repeating that the world is attacking the legitimacy of Israel’s existence. He wants to create the impression that peace would neither bring security to Israel, nor end its international isolation. As Shlomo Avineri has pointed out lately, this is blatantly false: except for Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the far fringes of the European and American Left nobody says that Israel’s existence is illegitimate. The overwhelming majority of the world simply wants Israel to end the occupation. No more; no less. Netanyahu ********s, because it is in his interest to hide that his political survival depends on not confronting the ideological right in his own party and in his coalition; and that his ideology, and not the Free World, condemns Israel to ever-growing isolation.
He similarly ********s Israeli citizens when he states flatly that the 1967 borders are indefensible, as if this was an established fact of nature. If it were, the former generals and former Mossad and Shabak Chiefs Lipkin-Shahak, Mitzna, Ayalon, Yatom and Peri would not subscribe to the Israeli Peace Initiative, which calls for negotiations based on the 1967 borders. In an open society, Netanyahu would engage with their arguments. But the one thing Netanyahu and his coalition must avoid like the pest is a open, critical and calm discussion. It would be their political demise.
Rational discussion would expose the blatant falsehood of its major ideological dogma: that Israel can be a democratic country with a Jewish character while continuing the occupation. A clear-headed discussion would show that the greatest danger for Israel’s future today lies not in the Arab world, but in the disintegration and radicalization of its political culture
