Tag: Benjamin Netanyahu

Rising Neo-Nationalism Threatens Social, Economic Progress Worldwide

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Nationalism is on the rise worldwide. A new form of nationalism has emerged in the last decade that pits nativists, xenophobes, and populists against an increasingly globalized world. “Neo-nationalism” as the trend has become known is leading to increasing belligerence between nations and an uninformed suspicion of the “other” that could lead to far-reaching international confrontation.

Three countries exemplify this trend like none other, with deepening consequences to their national reputation and diplomatic standing in the world. India’s Hindu nationalism is leading to an economic boycott of its most important trade partner, the disastrous pandemic response in the US is diminishing its standing, and Israeli nationalism is bringing it ever closer to annexation.

US nationalism meets COVID-19

For decades US politicians have considered their country to be the best of all, solely based on GDP and military might. Even though the US slipped in important metrics, including education and healthcare, it remained a taboo for politicians to declare the US anything but number one. The US is now not even in the top 10 in most fields that would be considered to be signs of “being the best.”

The US now ranks 27th in education in health, down from 6th place in the 1990s. The country is the 19th happiest country, and the 42nd most corrupt. The country is now the 27th in social mobility, which means that there are 26 countries where citizens are more likely to achieve the “American Dream,” or work their way up from poor to rich.

But amid this collapse of living standard and public services, amid a crumbling infrastructure that needs $4.5 trillion worth of repairs and maintenance before 2025, American nationalism has maintained the fiction that the US is the best country in the world. This mistaken analysis was evident in its approach to COVID-19 that has now cost 125,318 American lives.

The US has considered its privatized and decentralized healthcare system more than capable of resisting a shock that caused much more accessible healthcare systems in Western Europe to tremble. The country’s misplaced nationalism meant little extra effort was mobilized even as evidence of the pandemic’s severity emerged from Europe, leading to a disastrous and deadly failed response that has severely diminished the US’ standing in the world.

Israeli annexation fueled by nationalism

There are few people in the world as familiar with the dangers of unfettered nationalism than the Jewish diaspora. The rise of nationalism in Europe led to increasing antisemitism that concluded in the barbarous mass murder of millions of innocent Jewish people. But history is doomed to repeat itself as Israeli hardliners now fuel a similar type of nationalism within their own nation.

Far-right media continuously turn the native Palestinians into a dangerous “other” and push the country further right. Israeli neo-nationalism is visible on a daily basis in publications such as the Netanyahu-aligned newspaper Israel Hayom, and more mainstream publications such as the Jerusalem Post or the Times of Israel regularly feature highly problematic opinion pieces.

One feature of neo-nationalism that is visible from Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orban to Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro is the rapid mainstreaming of nationalist thinking. By employing marketing strategies and exploiting social media, neo-nationalists create a world of alternative facts for their supporters.

The world of alternative facts has turned UN-declared illegal settlers into “brave pioneers” and oppressed native people into “dangerous terrorists.” iI has turned the country’s nationalists against the United Nations, through which Israel was founded in the first place. Now misplaced nationalist zeal could lead Israel to commit a blatant violation of international norms and turn itself into a global pariah as nationalists urge Netanyahu to go further and annex even more Palestinian land.

Indian radical nationalism

India’s Hindu nationalists are transforming their country away from the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru and into a dangerously volatile chaos of misinformation, mob violence, and an increasing war fervor against neighboring China. India’s media has enthusiastically whipped up resentment and even violence against local minorities, blamed COVID-19 on local Muslims, and framed an undisciplined scuffle between border troops as a casus belli.

Indian neo-nationalism is likely the most entrenched form of the trend found globally. Mainstream politicians, news reporting, and the government itself continuously misinform and manipulate public frustrations.

The rise of mainstream nationalist fervor could be seen in Indian Prime Minister Nahendra Modi’s 2019 electoral campaign. After his first successful campaign focused on economic development, whipping up nationalism proved easier to deliver. “We were nationalist, we are nationalists and we will remain nationalists,” he said in a campaign speech.

Similar to neo-nationalism in Israel and the US, Indian nationalism is producing a dangerous feedback loop that could turn disastrous.

When a hand-to-hand fight between a few dozen Chinese and Indian border troops led to casualties, there was no critical media left to see the event as what it was. Troops showing poor discipline that should have been court-martialed instead became national martyrs as ill informed masses cried for war against a country with a far superior military and economy.

Divide and conquer

In the end neo-nationalism serves but one purpose: It masks the negative effects our global neoliberal economics have on the poor and middle classes and instead pitches them against each other. By fueling resentment and hatred of the “other,” neoliberal leaders such as Modi, Netanyahu, and Trump can hide the continuous wealth transfer from the poor and working classes to the rich.

Misinformed working-class Indians, Israelis, and Americans have much more in common with those who they are manipulated into hating, than the millionaires and politicians that foment this discord. Neo-nationalism has become the favored approach by politicians who can no longer promise economic development through neoliberalism, as that theory has again and again been roundly disproved.

“Divide and conquer” appears to be the political mantra of our era, with potentially disastrous consequences for us all.

Israeli Apartheid-Denier Can Deny No Longer

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In an interview with the Associated Press published on June 24, Benjamin Pogrund stated that Israeli annexation would turn Israel into an apartheid state. “There will be Israeli overlords in an occupied area. And the people over whom they will be ruling will not have basic rights,” Pogrund described the potential future of Israel.

Prolific denier

Benjamin Pogrund was born and raised in South Africa and witnessed its Apartheid-era atrocities firsthand. He became a renowned writer on the topic and fostered friendships with Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe as he wrote on Black issues in the white-ruled South African state.

But while Pogrund strongly opposed Apartheid in South Africa until its fall in the 1990s, in 1997 he moved to Israel and became a prominent denier of the similarities between the two countries’ treatment of their native populations. Not counting those people living in the occupied territories as citizens, Pogrund denied their treatment as apartheid-like.

Like many Israel apologetics, he made the convenient distinction of not counting Israel’s atrocities and racism outside its walls and fences. He authored a 2007 New York Times op-ed highlighting several successful Arab Israeli citizens as evidence for an absence of racial discrimination, while ignoring the people in occupied territories under de-facto Israeli rule.

Cognitive dissonance

Pogrund would, in the same article, deny that Jews and Arabs receive different treatment while also arguing Palestinian refugees could not return because they would become a majority, destroying Israel’s “purpose” of being a Jewish state. Those who called for a boycott on Israel Pogrund would label as antisemitic, while interpreting Israeli acts as a “response to Palestinian terrorism.”

For decades Pogrund has ignored the obvious similarities between both apartheid regimes. He appears to have conveniently ignored that while South Africa was in its last stages of shaking off colonization, Israel is still actively colonizing native land.

He downplayed the wall seperating Israelis from the West Bank as “mainly a wire fence, except in populated areas” that was there “primarily to keep out would-be suicide bombers.” By Pogrund’s definition, if South African whites had chased away the country’s Black population and kept them in occupied areas as does Israel, there would not have been “apartheid.”

After decades of witnessing and opposing South African Apartheid, he has spent the rest of his career making pro-Israeli arguments, similar to those of the South African regime that justified violence against Black citizens, as a logical government response to “violent terrorists.”

Changing definitions

Pogrund opposes annexation because it would undermine the cognitive dissonance that he and many others have applied to the Palestinian people living in the occupied territories. Annexing their land would result in them being considered to be some sort of Israeli citizen, and suddenly their treatment would indeed “count” as apartheid.

“At least it has been a military occupation. Now we are going to put other people under our control and not give them citizenship. That is apartheid. That is an exact mirror of what apartheid was,” Pogrund said.

Pogrund started to have doubts when, in 2018, the Israeli parliament enacted the “Nation State Law.” This defined Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people while downgrading the status of another ethnic group, Arab Israelis. Yet, he frames his opposition not as revulsion with the treatment of local Arabs, but instead fears that it would reduce safety and prosperity for local Jewish Israelis.

Annexation

The increasingly colonial attitude of the Netanyahu government appears to have posed something of an intellectual crisis for Pogrund as he has slowly learned of his own complicity in defending Israeli actions. News about the government’s annexation plans made him unable to write on the topic: “I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” Pogrund said, adding that “quite frankly, I just feel so bleak about it, that it is so stupid and ill-advised and arrogant.”

Pogrund has long been a critic of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, describing the occupation of the West Bank as “tyrannical,” but has avoided using the word apartheid. He considers the term “a deadly word” that requires “intentionality” and “institutionalization.” That intentionality and institutionalization already exist in the occupied territories, and by annexing these areas, even deniers like Pogrund will no longer be able to refute the obvious.

“Come July 1, if we annex the Jordan Valley and the settlement areas, we are apartheid. Full stop. There’s no question about it,” Pogrund said.

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