Netanyahu’s militarized state of emergency
Op-ed: In a state in which Arabs can only ‘riot’ but not protest, and police are mere stand-ins for the army, the execution of civilians can only be expected - and Netanyahu seems to have said as much himself.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not directly comment on what seems to be another case of police violence against Israeli Arabs, in which a 22-year-old Khair Hamdan from Kafr Kanna was shot as he retreated after attacking an armored police van with a knife. And why would he? The event, which is already being called an execution, is in fact the perfect outcome of the toxic political culture Netanyahu has led, in the guise of working for Israel’s security.
"Israel is a nation of law,” the prime minister said in the only indirect reference he made to the horrific event that only served to throw fuel onto an already burning Israel. “We will not tolerate disturbances and rioting. We will act against those who throw stones, block roads and call for the establishment of a Palestinian state in place of the State of Israel.”
Thus, in a single moment of rhetoric, Netanyahu lumped together "disturbance", "riots", "stone-throwing", "road blocking" and, of course, the calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state - they are all, according to Israel’s prime minister, forms of terrorism, and thus deserved to be treated as such.
In Netanyahu’s Israel, it seems Arabs cannot protest, they can only riot; they cannot perform acts of civil disobedience, they can only cause disturbances and block roads; they cannot demand political change, but only call to replace Israel with a Palestinian state - much like Palestinian President Abbas’ recent attempt to reach statehood through diplomatic channels has been called by Netanyahu and his ilk "diplomatic terror."
The distinction between Israeli Arabs and Palestinians is not a trivial one, and it is most certainly a legal one. While Arabs residing in the West Bank live under either IDF military rule or the Palestinian Authority, those in Israel enjoy - at least on a theoretical level - equal rights to their Jewish compatriots: They vote, pay taxes, use the courts, can call the police when their neighbors make too much noise, can be elected to office and even serve in the military or the police, if they so chose.
As long as Israel is a liberal nation state and not the Islamic caliphate being led by ISIS, then Israel’s Arab population is protected by the rule of law, regardless of religious or ethnic affiliations, and their protection should be the law’s fundamental role.
“Whoever does not honor Israeli law will be punished with utmost severity,” Netanyahu promised, adding that he would “instruct the Interior Minister to evaluate revoking the citizenship of those who call for the destruction of the State of Israel."
Attempting to frame the issue as one of rule of law and loyalty, though no such claims were raised against the police - who blatantly lied about the incident until video footage exposed both the falsehood of their claims and, to borrow Netanyahu's terminology, disregard for Israeli law - Netanyahu further worked to present Israeli Arabs as non-citizens, or citizens on probation pending good behavior.
The call to revoke rioters' citizenship, coupled with the promise to punish them with utmost severity, echoes the claims made by Netanyahu’s police minister recently, who, following last Wednesday’s vehicular terror attack, said that every such attack should end with a dead terrorist - death, Aharonovich said, befits a terrorist. Any Arab in the vicinity of any violence, it seems, is fair game.
Arabs supporting "riots", let alone those participating in one held in wake of terror, are terrorists themselves, and the police mere proxies for the army, which must destroy the enemy indiscriminately. The logic has ceased to be one of policing and shifted to one of warfare; the Arabs must know deterrence, and therefore need to be punished until they learn their lesson.
It is therefore not surprising that Naftali Bennett, currently competing with Netanyahu for the title of most populist right-winger, dubbed Khair Hamdan a “terrorist”, for any attack on any Israeli forces by any Arab is a terrorist, until proven otherwise.
The deterioration of the civilian discourse into a military one is not an anomaly, but rather a policy. The old-school Israeli left used to say that the "occupation corrupts", it seems that this corruption has reached its peak.
A video proving that the police had shot Hamdan, despite the fact that he no longer posed an immediate threat to their lives is only problematic in a society in which the distinction between civilians and combatants prevails - and in Netanyahu’s Israel, no such distinction exists.
