Israel Has No Foreign Policy, Only a Prime Minister Willing to Set the Region Ablaze - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Israel hit a straight trifecta in recent years: no foreign policy, no foreign minister and no Foreign Ministry. Theoretically, all three entities exist. Practically, they don't.
There's something called hasbara – pronounced "Hazz-burrah" by the American pros – that pretends to be foreign policy. This is a version of soft diplomacy first devised by Theodor Herzl: In 1897, at the First Zionist Congress in Basel, he said one of the main tasks of political Zionism would be "to explain our just cause to the nations of the world."
"Explanation" in Hebrew is "hesber." Ergo, hasbara is the act and practice of explaining. Yet despite Jews falling in love with and creating an elaborate nomenclature and culture around the concept – whatever hasbara is, it is not a comprehensive, coherent and structured foreign policy of a modern state, which requires sophisticated and inventive diplomacy.
For many years, Israel has not produced even one diplomatic initiative, one bold reassessment of geopolitics, one innovative idea that corresponds with that assessment. The world changes, the region changes, Israel's challenges change, opportunities arise. Israeli diplomacy has been subdued and paralyzed to rise to the challenge.
During the Netanyahu years, the Foreign Ministry has been hollowed out and reduced to a glorified travel agency. That's a huge shame, because the Israeli Foreign Ministry has an illustrious tradition built over decades by devoted, smart and knowledgeable diplomats who now basically do nothing. Over the past 18 months, they have found it increasingly difficult to impart the government's extremist policies of a constitutional coup and war.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator protesting against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu near the Consulate General of Israel in New York City last month.Credit: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Lastly, we have the so-called foreign minister. No names mentioned, but from a historically weak bureaucratic position meant to placate a political rival or pay governing coalition dues, the position has in the last few years become a refuge for inept, clownish characters who adorn Mr. Netanyahu's gallery of sycophants.
This trifecta is glaringly bizarre given Israel's unique place and status in both the world and region. Historically, Israel's foreign policy was subordinate to defense and security policy. That made sense for the first decades of Israel's existence and there were mitigating circumstances that justified the supremacy of security over diplomacy – and with it, the dominance of the defense establishment over the Foreign Ministry.
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There are peculiar circumstances that explain the absence of a foreign policy, Foreign Ministry and foreign minister for the past 15 years. It's called Benjamin Netanyahu. When you explicitly don't have a coherent foreign policy, what is left is to look at the ad-hoc actions and reactions of the prime minister.
This leads to the conclusion that Netanyahu is untethered and unhinged, and willing to set the region ablaze for his own political calculations. It even warranted a New York Times headline: "Netanyahu, defiant, appears to have gone rogue, risking a regional war."
"Rogue" has a very clear meaning. A "rogue elephant" is one living apart from the herd, possessing and exhibiting savage or destructive tendencies. When it comes to human behavior and characteristics, the Merriam-Webster and Oxford dictionaries define the word as "isolated, aberrant, dangerous, unpredictable, uncontrollable, scoundrel," adding that it can also mean "corrupt and dishonest."
The word "rogue" also has an application to state entities. When a state is called "rogue," it means it defies international law and norms of international behavior.
Members of Magen David Adom conducting a drill for handling war situations, in Kibbutz Afek, northern Israel, last month.Credit: Ammar Awad/Reuters
On Saturday, Haaretz reported that a senior U.S. official said "Biden realized that Netanyahu was lying to him about the hostages." In the meeting between the two leaders, the president specifically told him "Stop bullshitting me," the official said.
While Netanyahu is being criticized by the Americans for lying, stalling and undermining the deal to get the 115 hostages out of Gaza, the administration also views him as having gone rogue in other areas – especially the prolonging of the war in Gaza, and his cumbersome and transparent attempt to precipitate regional escalation.
It's astounding that after 30 years of successive administrations working with him, all developing a deep revulsion toward his antics, demeanor, constant manipulations and callous disregard for American interests, they are only now starting to seeing him as "rogue."
It is truly surprising that the American learning curve was so flat for so long. It should have been crystal clear to the Biden administration that since last October, Netanyahu has had a vested interest in prolonging the war in Gaza, and maintaining and sustaining a war-like atmosphere that in everyone's mind may escalate at any moment.
Netanyahu's political predicament, his direct responsibility for the October 7 debacle, prosecution of a war without clear political objectives, and his engineering and manipulation of the public consciousness and fears led him to a simple conclusion: the war must go on. To justify it being a "second War of Independence," an "existential war" or "a war between the civilized West and Islamofascism" – all his terms – the war must be bigger and more extravagant. "The real war is with America," he told the U.S. Congress last month, advising them on what they need to understand and do.
A permanent state of war, accompanied by uncertainty, fears, anxieties, tensions, economic hardship and mental stress is exactly where Netanyahu wants Israelis to be. Numbing the polity with the reality of an endless war is his objective. Such a state of mind deflates public protest, deepens a sense of despair and dejection, and results in political apathy. It won't work for too long, but right now this is where he has Israel.
Smoke rising from Kafr Kila in southern Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on Saturday.Credit: Karamallah Daher/Reuters
Surely the Americans, who have a thick psychological-political-profile dossier on Netanyahu dating back to the 1990s, have an updated assessment? "Rogue" possibly expresses it.
It seems he has a rare, unique affliction: combined Nero-Claudius-Caesar and Louis XIV syndromes. He seems intent and willing to burn Israel to the ground in a hail of fire because he sees himself as the embodiment of a state that, without him, has no viability or agency.
Netanyahu is the man primarily responsible for not having a foreign policy by design. He truly believes his pontificating and admonishing speeches are a foreign policy. To make sure Israel revolves around him, he basically emptied the entire concept and apparatus of foreign policy. In this respect, he went rogue many years ago, not 10 months ago.