Throughout its history, Israel has glorified in its military prowess and brazenly celebrated a tradition of extrajudicial violence against opponents. That has included practices such as torture and political assassinations that international law seeks to prohibit. The sophistry used by Israel to defend these actions has been enthusiastically taken up in Washington -- in particular, when the US began its own programs of torture and extrajudicial murder after the Iraq invasion of 2003.
Israel has ready-made rationalizations and specious soundbites that have made it much easier to sell to western publics the dismantling of international norms.
The upending of international law -- and, with it, a reversal of the trend towards civic nationalism -- has intensified with Israel's repeated attacks on Gaza over the past decade. Israel has subverted the key principles of international law -- proportionality, distinction and necessity -- by hugely widening the circle of potential targets of military action to include swaths of civilians, and using massive force beyond any possible justification.
That has been graphically illustrated of late in its maiming and killing of thousands of unarmed Palestinian protesters for being supposedly too close to the perimeter fence Israel has built to encage Gaza. That fence simply delimits the Palestinian land occupied by Israel. But in another success for Israeli hasbara, western reporting has almost universally suggested that the fence is a border Israel is entitled to defend.
Israel's expertise is increasingly in demand in a west where ethnic nationalisms are again taking root. Israel's weapons have been tested on the battlefield, against Palestinians. Its homeland security systems have proven they can surveill and control Palestinian populations, just as western elites think about their own protection inside gated communities.
Israel's paramilitary police train and militarize western police forces needed to repress internal dissent. Israel has developed sophisticated cyber-warfare techniques based on its efforts to remain a regional superpower that now satisfy the west's politically paranoid atmosphere.
With an abiding aversion to the Communist ideology of their former Soviet rulers, central and east European states have led the move towards a renewal of ethnic nationalism. Civic nationalism, by contrast, is seen as dangerously exposing the nation to outside influences.
Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, is among the new brand of eastern European leaders brazenly stoking an ethnic politics at home through anti-semitism. He has targeted the Hungarian Jewish billionaire and philanthropist George Soros for promoting a civic nationalism, suggesting Soros represents a wider Jewish threat to Hungary. Under a recent law, popularly known as "STOP Soros," anyone helping migrants enter Hungary risks a prison sentence. Orban has lauded Miklos Horthy, a long-time Hungarian leader who was a close ally of Hitler's.
Nonetheless, Orban is being feted by Benjamin Netanyahu, in the same way the Israeli prime minister has closely identified with Trump. Netanyahu called to congratulate Orban shortly after he was re-elected in April, and will welcome him in a state visit this month. Ultimately, Netanyahu is angling to host the next meeting of the Visegrad group, four central European countries in the grip of far-right ethnic politics Israel wishes to develop closer ties with.
For leaders like Orban, Israel has led the way. It has shown that ethnic politics is not discredited after all, that it can work. For Europe and America's new ethnic nationalists, Israel has proven that some peoples are destined for greatness, if they are allowed to triumph over those who stand in their way.
It will be a darker, far more divided and frightening world if this logic prevails. It is time to recognize what Israel represents, and how it does not offer solutions -- only far greater problems.
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