Netanyahu demonizes demonstrators in an act of desperation - comment

In an interview that aired on CNBC on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an unprecedented and shocking statement – sarcasm intended – drew a comparison between the anti-Israel protests on US campuses and the protests seen across Israel since October 7 and the consequent war.

“Everybody’s fixated on these protests [in Israel], which are financed, organized, and so on,” he said. “They don’t reflect the majority of people any more than the ‘mobocracies’ on American campuses. These protesters, these mobs – do they reflect the majority of the American people? No? Well, it’s the same thing here.”

Netanyahu stressed that the majority of Israelis “support a victory” and want Hamas removed, adding that he has “vast support” from the Israeli public.

Supporting a victory, of course, means continuing the Gaza operation and pushing forward in an aggressive Rafah campaign.

A cheap comparison made by the prime minister

How tedious must it be for the prime minister to resort to cheap comparisons in order to maintain his supposed higher ground? And this is not the first time.

Comparing to the judicial reform 

In March of last year, after rioters torched cars and houses in Huwara, Netanyahu compared them to the anti-judicial reform protesters.

As a reminder, the judicial reform proposed a broad change to Israel’s judiciary that would significantly weaken the checks and balances in the Israeli democratic system carried out between the government and the High Court of Justice.

The protesters at the time saw the proposal, as former adviser to the prime minister Mark Regev put it at the time, as “the beginning of the end, the start of Israel’s descent towards becoming the political twin of post-liberal Eastern European nations Hungary and Poland.”

True, these protests often saw clashes with police. Still, they were worlds away from Jewish extremists living in the West Bank entering a Palestinian town, torching Palestinian houses and cars, and attacking Palestinians living there.

While it is not necessarily fair to compare one’s actions to those of family members – after all, they are independent entities – it goes without saying that the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, compared those same anti-judicial reform protesters to antisemites in Nazi Germany.

“What was there in 1930s Germany?” said Yair Netanyahu in an interview with Caroline Glick on her right-wing radio show on Galei Yisrael. “Thugs for hire did [acts of] political terror in the streets – not murder, by the way.”

These comparisons, let’s be frank, are ridiculous. You are comparing citizens of Israel – citizens fighting for an Israel that they believe in – to terrorists and, just one year later, to people who oppose the very existence of the state that the protesters are fighting for.

There is something to be said in comparing the hostage protests to the anti-judicial reform protests, to be sure. After all, many of the organizers are the same people, looking to fight for a fair, democratic country. The hostage protests, however, have a different target in mind, a much more humane one, a simple one: bring our hostages home in a deal.

But let’s focus on the most recent occurrence and show just how stark a contrast there is between anti-Israel protests and return-the-hostages protests.

One opposes the existence of Israel. The other calls for Israel to do what it can to care for its citizens; it is an act of nationalism in and of itself.

One blurs the lines between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The other is a legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.

One sees support in specifically Progressive circles, while the other has broad support in Israel, from Right to Left, from religious to secular.

Both attempt to start a conversation, to be sure, but that is the very point of protests in general. That same argument could justify comparing the agricultural protests in France with Black Lives Matter.

Netanyahu’s comparison holds no water, which raises the question: Why make it in the first place?

The answer is simple: to demonize his opposition and attempt to shrink political rivals. It’s an act of desperation.

The writer is deputy editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.