The Psychopathology of Netanyahu

“The greater the crime perpetrated by the powerful, the more they insist it is done in self-defense.” - Chris Hedges

“The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.” - Simone de Beauvoir

“All colonizers lie, all of them. They have to lie, for they cannot legitimize their domination any other way.” - Frantz Fanon

Benjamin Netanyahu's 2009 comeback read like a lesson in how power can pass for compromise. He returned as a symbol of dominance. His Bar-Ilan declaration, which seemed to support a Palestinian state, was actually an enhanced twist of lies that recognized Israel as the Jewish state, gave up the right of return for Palestinians, and give up Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. These conditions served as a guide for submission. The Palestinians' sovereignty was undermined regardless of whether they agreed or not.

While rhetoric raged, Israel attacked and killed over 50,000 settlement units between 2009 and 2020, seizing land, dividing communities, and using geography as a weapon to make a people helpless. Conquest was aided by legal documents and administrative details, such as the Nation-State Law, the negative stereotyping and the target of being subhuman of Arabic speakers, and the cancellation of East Jerusalem residency for Palestinians.

Benjamin Netanyahu intentionally developed a harsher, more brutal inhumane style of governance in Gaza. He found the raw material for a long game in Gaza, isolating, impoverishing, and exploiting after opposing withdrawal and witnessing Hamas solidify after 2007. Under the guise of security, the blockade turned into a policy and a form of punishment that suffocated Palestinians in this open-air prison. Netanyahu was conniving and devious at creating contradiction, keeping Hamas strong enough to splinter Palestinian unity, weak enough to obstruct efficient governance, and consistently violent enough to support an ongoing state of emergency Israeli bombings and drone attacks and daily sniper killings of men, women and children.

Under the pretence of self-defense, Netanyahu's wars were actually driven by the darker forces of power, hatred, and jealousy. He used the opportunity to launch Operation Protective Edge, a campaign that would consume Gaza for fifty days, in 2014 following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers. Israel reported 73 dead, while over 2,000 Palestinians slaughtered, the majority of whom were civilians. Netanyahu called Hamas "genocidal terrorists," using the occupation of Gaza as a weapon to defend Israel's growing control over the territory.

However, Israel was charged by the UN with using excessive force and committing war crimes. But Netanyahu stood unmoved, wrapping himself in the story of a besieged protector. The cycle was repeated years later. In 2021, as families in the West Bank's faced Israeli airstrikes once more destroyed Gaza, killing thousands more Palestinians under the cover of a state that justified its retaliation as necessary. This was the ruthless pathological mind of Netanyahu of power: to attack so brutally that resistance is replaced by fear, to transform war into genocide. Envy, fear, hatred, and racism are the silent mindset that keeps leaders like Netanyahu in power.