Netanyahu’s ‘super-Sparta’ vision braces Israel for isolated economic future

Original article by Julian Borger in Jerusalem

Hours before unleashing a ground offensive against Gaza City on Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu braced his country for a future of mounting economic isolation, urging it to become a “super Sparta” of the Middle East.

The future the prime minister laid out for Israel, of a more militarised society, a partial autarky – or economically self-sufficient country – with limited trade options and relying increasingly on homemade production, has stirred up a backlash among Israelis who are ever more uneasy at the prospect of following him down the path to a pariah state.

On Tuesday, Israel took a few more steps along that path. As its tanks lumbered through the streets towards the centre of Gaza City, a UN commission of inquiry published a detailed and damning report which concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

On the same day, the European Commission prepared to discuss the potential suspension of part of the Israel-EU trade agreement, while the list of countries pledging to recognise Palestine continued to grow – as did the number of states threatening to boycott the Eurovision song contest if Israel took part.

On the news, and on social media sites, there are daily stories of Israelis getting into scuffles or being assailed by hostile local people while on holiday abroad. For many Israelis, who have grown up thinking of themselves as an outpost of “the west” in the Middle East, all this is deeply troubling.

Stocks on the Tel Aviv stock market took an immediate dip after Netanyahu’s super-Sparta speech, and the shekel fell against the dollar. Those on the trading floors who knew their ancient history remembered that the Spartans fought hard – but lost disastrously.

“How romantic to fantasise about the heroic and ascetic Spartans, a mere few hundred of whom successfully fought a powerful Persian army. The problem is that Sparta was annihilated,” the veteran columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the centre-right Maariv newspaper. “It lost and disappeared.”

“I don’t want to be Sparta,” Arnon Bar-David, the head of the country’s biggest trade union federation, Histadrut, said at a union meeting on Tuesday. “We deserve peace. Israeli society is exhausted, and our status in the world is very bad.”

As the ground offensive began, a group of 80 prominent Israeli economists added up the country’s self-harm in billions of shekels. They warned that the attempt to conquer and destroy all of Gaza was “a threat to the security and economic resilience of the state of Israel, and could distance it from the group of developed countries”.

In his speech on Monday, Netanyahu blamed foreigners for Israel’s increasing isolation, which he referred to as “a siege that is organised by a few states”.

“One is China, and the other is Qatar. And they are organising an attack on Israel, legitimacy, in the social media of the western world and the United States,” he said. To the west, he added, the threat was different but equally pernicious.

“Western Europe has large Islamist minorities. They’re vocal. Many of them are politically motivated. They align with Hamas, they align with Iran,” Netanyahu declared.

“They pressure the governments of western Europe, many of whom are kindly disposed to Israel, but they see that they are being overtaken, really, by campaigns of violent protest and constant intimidation.”

His remarks seemed to be a reference to the UK, France and Belgium, which are expected to recognise Palestine at the UN general assembly later this month and have been increasingly critical of Israel over the Gaza war.

The prime minister’s claim that western European governments were somehow in thrall to Islamism was an echo of conspiracy theories propagated by the growing far-right movements in those countries.

Netanyahu and his coalition have increasingly made common cause with the extreme right in Europe and the US, turning a blind eye to the antisemitic lineage of those movements.

As far as his domestic critics were concerned on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s heightened oratory was no more than a characteristic refusal to take responsibility for the consequences of his government’s actions.

One commenter, Sever Plocker, writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper and using a biblical reference, said Netanyahu’s policies “truly are leading Israel straight into the tragic situation of a ‘people who shall dwell alone’, cut off from the developed western world, a country that other nations don’t want to go anywhere near, visit, host or much less trade with”.

The chair of the Democrats bloc in the Knesset, Yair Golan, voiced a widespread suspicion in Israel that Netanyahu was determined to keep Israel steeped in war, as a means of warding off early elections, remaining as prime minister, and therefore staying out of jail.

At a hearing of his trial on corruption charges on Tuesday, the prime minister did indeed use the ground offensive as an argument to limit his attendance in court.

Netanyahu’s message to his citizens ahead of the Jewish new year, Golan argued, was: “In order to keep my seat, I need eternal war and isolation. And you will sacrifice the country, the economy, your children’s future and your relationship with the world.”

For all the criticism Netanyahu has faced over the past two years of warfare, he has defied expectations by staying in power. Support from Washington – reluctantly from Joe Biden, and more indiscriminately from Donald Trump – has helped him stay in place. The Gaza City ground offensive followed a green light delivered in person by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday, when he vowed “unwavering” support to eliminate Hamas.

In domestic politics, meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox and national religious electorates have risen in importance, just as Israel’s old secular, technocratic elites have faded.

Netanyahu’s coalition partners on the far right welcome the siege mentality the prime minister is seeking to instil, as it wards off the prospect of compromise and foreign influence that would inhibit the drive towards a greater Israel built on the ruins of the Palestinian territories.

Amihai Attali, a rightwing commentator and journalist, argued on Tuesday it was time for Israelis to realise they were in a religious war to the death, in which some economic hardship was a small price to pay.

“Yes, this will take longer than we have grown accustomed to fighting; yes, this will be more exhausting and will heavily tax our national and social resources,” Attali argued in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. But, he added: “We have no option but to wield our swords.”