How to "Stir the Pot" and Create Chaos - Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996

“History and sacred memory are weapons; those who know how to unearth them can summon violence as surely as armies summon blood.” - Chris Hedges

“Every handshake across enemy lines can be staged theater, a mask for expansion, a performance meant not to reconcile but to pacify outsiders.” - Edward Said

“The genius of political deception is not in lying outright but in cloaking conquest with the language of survival and security.” - Hannah Arendt

Netanyahu pretended to be a proponent of "secure peace" when he was first appointed prime minister in 1996. It was a language designed to arouse domestic fear, diplomacy, and menace while calming North America and Europe. The promise of protection and retaliation propelled his rise to power following the Hamas suicide bombings. He signed the Hebron Protocol and arranged for the redeployment of Israeli forces, showing the world that he was willing to pretend to help Yasser Arafat. But for his base, every handshake would lead to the expansion of trying to conceal Israeli settlements in Palestine, against the United Nations and international law.

Numerous people were killed in deadly riots that broke out in 1996 when the Western Wall tunnel was opened. However, this chaos is Benjamin Netanyahu's mark served as a reminder that historical memory and sacred ground were just as powerful as bombs and bullets. A fact Benjamin Netanyahu clearly understood how to stir the pot and create extreme tension amongst Zionist and Palestinian Christians and Muslims, create division and chaos, and push his political ethnic cleansing agenda. By inciting these religious groups, he exposed the ease with which hatred could be turned into a weapon and the way racism, hidden as survival, could turn into the expansion of Israeli territory.