Eretz Nehederet
, Israel's main satirical program, this week parodied Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu singing with the most radical members of his government to the tune of
We are the world,
the famous song performed in the 1980s by a cast of American stars for Raise funds to alleviate famine in Ethiopia. In the satire, the title was
Without the world
and contained stanzas such as: “The time has come to sing loudly before the world: 'we no longer need you',” “we will manage very well, even without the United States.” or “we do not need favors from the
goyim
[non-Jews].”
The
sketch
reflects the rhetoric of Netanyahu and his main far-right allies in the week in which Washington wanted to express its annoyance with its great ally by abstaining in the United Nations Security Council so that the first ceasefire resolution in Gaza could be passed. . It is an unusual measure in the relations between both countries and one that the United States had not resorted to since 2016, when Donald Trump was preparing to occupy the White House and Barack Obama with nothing to lose took advantage of the stoppage time to claim eight years of trouble. with Netanyahu with another abstention, this one on a resolution condemning the Jewish settlements.
This Monday's will not foreseeably have practical consequences, but it has opened the debate on whether the Gaza war has put Israel in a labyrinth towards international isolation, in particular due to its obstacles to the entry of humanitarian aid and its insistence on invading Rafah. , the border area with Egypt that concentrates the majority of the population, already forcibly displaced by the army from other parts of Gaza.
The problem with the debate is that both Netanyahu and the United States and even Hamas (its leader, Ismail Haniye, celebrated this Thursday in Iran the “unprecedented political isolation” of the Israeli enemy) have an interest in feeding it, although reality does not point in that direction. . The first two, for electoral interests. Netanyahu, with one eye on the elections that are expected to be held in the coming months, should focus the debate on how he faces external pressures for the sake of national security. And President Joe Biden feels deep in the neck, in the middle of an election year, the growing unrest among Democratic voters over the few cracks in their support for Israel.
“There is a feeling that Israel is isolated, but it does not correspond to the facts and has been exaggerated for various reasons,” says Yonatan Touval, senior policy analyst at Mitvim, a Tel Aviv-based
think tank
that analyzes foreign policy. Israeli. “Being isolated internationally is something else: sanctions, implications in sport or culture... And that is not happening,” he adds. Israel, for example, will participate in Eurovision in May and its team played last week against Iceland in qualifying for the European soccer championship, unlike what happened with Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
Touval highlights two ideas. One, that the growing anger is not so much “against Israel as a country” as “
ad hominem,
because of how Netanyahu is managing the war and because of the suspicion that he is acting for his own interests.” The other was that the ceasefire resolution at the UN coincided with Washington's wishes, so the abstention did not represent "a change in position", but rather "a message to Israel that it cannot continue taking its support for granted." ", whatever you do.
Food insecurity
So far, in almost six months of war, the Israeli Armed Forces have killed some 32,500 people in Gaza and placed another 1.1 million in phase 5 (the highest, considered catastrophic) of food insecurity. They are more than during the extent of the famine in Somalia in 2011, with six times less population. The destruction in the Strip is unprecedented since World War II (1939-1945) and on social networks videos recorded by Israeli soldiers themselves openly show murders of civilians, burning houses for fun, robberies, humiliation of detainees, jokes with women's underwear that they found in displaced people's houses and other expressions of deep dehumanization of Palestinians.
Some Palestinians waited for the delivery of food from a humanitarian organization, last Wednesday in Jabalia (Gaza Strip).JABALIA, GAZA - MARCH 27: Crowd of starving Palestinians, including children, wait to receive food distributed by charity organizations among Israel's blockade as the situation dramatically deteriorates in Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza on March 27, 2024. (Photo by Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images)Anadolu (Anadolu via Getty Images)
Despite the outrage in the streets, especially in the Arab world and in some Western capitals, and diplomatic condemnations, none of the five Arab countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel (Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain) They have cut them. The European Union, made up of countries with different sensitivities regarding the Middle East conflict, has not called for a definitive ceasefire. And the United States, the ally that provides Israel with 3.8 billion dollars (about 3.52 billion euros) in military aid every year (more than any other country), maintains deliveries of weapons and financing, and has vetoed three cease-fire resolutions. fire before abstaining on the last one.
The Biden Government, which this Friday echoed the “pain” that American Arabs suffer today, has been silently authorizing in recent days – in which the tone against the invasion of Rafah was raised – the delivery to Israel of 1,800 MK84 bombs of 900 kilos, 500 MK82 bombs of 227 kilos and 25 F-35 fighters and engines, as revealed this Friday by The
Washington Post
. In the first weeks of the war alone, Israel dropped hundreds of the first bombs in Gaza (one of the most densely populated places on the planet), even though they can kill or injure up to 300 meters from where they hit. They leave a crater of more than 10 meters and are four times heavier than the largest ones that the US army used in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
“There are differences with the United States, but the truth is that in these six months they have given us the most important thing that Israel needs,” Zaki Shalom, an expert on relations between the two countries at the Misgav Institute of National Security and Zionist Strategy, admits by phone. , based in Jerusalem. “First of all, freedom of action. In Gaza we do almost everything we want to do, including things that were taboo in previous confrontations, such as spending two weeks in Al Shifa hospital, or destroying mosques or universities that we believe could pose a threat,” he adds.
Two recent controversies prove that the Biden Administration does not intend to go into conflict or reduce weapons deliveries, something that previous administrations did. The first has been his insistence on describing the resolution in which he abstained as “non-binding”, when all of them are. The second, the quick clarification of the statement by the country's highest military commander, Charles Q. Brown, that the Israeli interlocutors ask them "almost in every meeting" for the weapons they want, but "they have not received everything they asked for." Pentagon spokesman Jereal Dorsey clarified that he was referring to technical issues. “The US continues to provide security assistance to our ally Israel as it defends itself against Hamas,” he stressed.
Alex Lederman, of the American Jewish organization Israel Policy Forum, wrote for this reason
in the newspaper
The Forward
that Netanyahu has chosen to "put his hands on his head" after the American abstention "because it serves him politically", signaling to "his right-wing bases that he will not surrender to outside pressure", in an "attractive message for Israelis who are already predisposed to see the world against them.” A rhetoric that the prime minister has recently used (“We all have to stand together against the US position that we should not enter Rafah”) and his controversial Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, when accusing Biden of preferring “the line” of Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahia Sinwar, and Palestinian-American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
One of the Democratic congressmen who are pressuring the president to toughen his stance, Ro Khanna, criticized this Thursday in a podcast the false equation on which the relationship pivots: “What I disagree with and it is part of the media narrative [is that] Netanyahu and Biden are somewhat on an equal footing. No. We are the great world superpower, we give weapons to Netanyahu and he should show deference to the president of the United States, whoever he is. I find it insufferably arrogant that he acts as if he were in an equal position.”
Follow all the international information on
and
X
, or in
our weekly newsletter
.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_