Netanyahu: The Archetypal Jewish Scapegoat
Bibi-hatred is a Rorschach of projected and internalized antisemitism.
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This is a guest essay written by Mallory Mosner.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Throughout history, the antisemite has scapegoated the Jew as the reason for all misfortune, evil and wrongdoing.
It is a tired, ignorant, and dangerous trope that has resulted in persecution, genocides, pogroms, and expulsions against Jewish people across time and space.
We are blamed for allegedly controlling media, government, and society; blamed for apparently trying to replace the “superior” white race; blamed for all war in the Middle East and hindering peace and unity worldwide.
The hatred is relentless and disgusting, and it comes from all sides.
Naturally, at some point, even Jewish people cannot be completely impervious to insidious, omnipresent antisemitism. Needless to say it is unfortunate to watch Jews around the world pile onto this rhetoric — on display in no worse form than the past few days, when many have piled onto the hateful chorus of Jew-haters worldwide as they astonishingly blame Benjamin Netanyahu for Hamas killing six hostages.
If you scanned mainstream media headlines from the last several days, you might think that Netanyahu killed the hostages himself with his bare hands — that is, if you were not lost in the slough of misleading headlines which minimized the means of the hostages’ savage murders to the extent that it would seem they merely passed away peacefully from natural causes in Gaza.
Let me be very clear, Netanyahu is a politician. That means, like most politicians, he possesses qualities that could easily be described as self-aggrandizing, dishonest, ineffective, and/or corrupt. And since he is the leader of a free country, it is important to be able to criticize him and hold him accountable.
But the conflagration of deliberately misleading, vicious blood libels that have swept headlines across the media the last few days have nothing to do with accountability. They are derived from sheer, unadulterated hatred — one that is related to the kind of malignant hatred which masses feel for conservative leaders, but tinged by the specific je ne sais quoi (a quality that cannot be described or named easily) of Jew-hatred.
After all, Netanyahu represents the only predominantly Jewish country in the world, the Jewish homeland, and therefore one of the most loathed and contentious places on this planet (despite having a very diverse population of Jews and non-Jews alike, with full and equal rights and representation in the government and so on).
However, Netanyahu did not start this war. Hamas started this horrific war, when on October 7th, they broke into Israel, killed over 1,200 people, kidnapped hundreds more into Gaza, raped and tortured people, and burnt down entire villages. Every single day that has passed since then, this war could have ended with the return of the hostages, and the surrender of Hamas.
But that will not happen, because instead of the world, the media, the United Nations, and the U.S.-led West putting pressure on Hamas to stop the atrocities they started, all blame has instead shifted onto Israel — much to the delight of Hamas’ benefactors in Iran and Qatar.
The endlessly racist infantilization of Palestinians and Hamas runs so deep, and the bittersweet balm of Jew-hatred is so tantalizing, people can’t help but parrot ugly, abusive rhetoric — rhetoric straight from Hamas! — that somehow Hamas executing hostages with gunshots to the head was Benjamin Netanyahu’s fault.
My heart goes out to Israelis, who are living in fear, and who have suffered so much trauma and loss and pain. If my child or partner was held hostage, I am quite sure that I would manically, desperately do anything within my power to bring them back.
But there seems to be a collective amnesia (among other things) fueling the inconceivable hatred that many are projecting onto Netanyahu and his hardline about any hostage deal. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was released in a similar exchange in 2011 (after receiving life-saving surgery in an Israeli prison).
Considered one of the masterminds of October 7th, Sinwar bears responsibility for every one of those killed and taken hostage, and these circumstances were made possible through his release. There are too many nuances being glossed over in regards to a hostage deal that are ignored in favor of turning Netanyahu into a perfect, villainous scapegoat.
Every tunnel in the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border is another opportunity to smuggle in cash, weapons, and other resources (and potentially smuggle hostages out of Gaza) for Hamas to continue their campaign of destroying all Jews and Israel; of carrying out October 7th “again and again” as they have promised to do on multiple occasions.
Does Benjamin Netanyahu bear responsibility for national security failures on October 7th? I am sure he does. Is the entire attack and all ensuing events his fault? Absolutely not. He is a fallible human being, and he is a not-so-beloved politician, but to suggest that this war could have been over any sooner (particularly given the meticulousness with which Israel has carried it out to prevent civilian deaths, as well as the continued pressure from so-called allies to halt or minimize fighting) — and that he is merely fighting for political gain — is an ugly fabrication.
People will gleefully spread blood libels about Netanyahu waging this inconceivably complex urban war (including in what is effectively an entire underground city of terror tunnels) for sport and pure political gain, while they can barely stop a mole from burrowing in their lawns.
Every time anyone, including Jewish people, insinuates that Netanyahu merely loves to murder and sacrifice for sport, they are participating in the time-honored tradition of being a nasty, loathsome Jew-hater, like folks from the prestigious Montreal-based newspaper “La Presse” earlier this year who had a familiar gem to contribute to discourse: a political cartoon depicting Netanyahu as a vampire with long claws, pointed ears, and wearing an overcoat — imagery reminiscent of Count Orlok, a vampire from the 1922 silent film, “Nosferatu.”
In the cartoon, Netanyahu is standing on a ship above an inscription that reads “Nosfenyahou, en route to Rafah.”
Again, you can criticize and disagree with Netanyahu without placing the weight of every atrocity that has ever happened onto him. And if you are so eager to maintain all blame for this war on Netanyahu, then congratulations — you may have succumbed to the same brain rot that led the longtime-Nazi-sympathizing New York Times to permanently cease making political cartoons in 2019 after they could not help but publish this delectable image of Netanyahu as a Jewish dog:
Or this deeply intellectual University of Pennsylvania lecturer who posted several cartoons earlier this year, including many depicting Netanyahu and Zionists as sipping Palestinian blood (you know, the usual).
I will not bother sharing the type of “hook-nosed evil Jew goblin harvesting organs” imagery that has been published across Arab media this year. But you are in the company of those odious people as well if this is truly the hill you wish to die upon.
Anger can be an important part of grief, especially in circumstances like these ones. It is not only acceptable but important to ensure this can never happen again — including by demanding answers, change, and accountability from leaders. But mass tragedy and war is a unique, murky, and unpredictable experience.
It may be tempting to place the burden of all blame onto Netanyahu because he is a familiar face of calumny and impassioned Jewish disagreement, but turning Netanyahu into an internalized or projected antisemitic caricature while absolving Hamas of any blame does not help anyone, except Hamas.
Well said. In fact I wonder if anyone else could do as good a job at this time as Bibi is doing. I feel like too many people are unrealistic about what we are dealing with here and now. How many have actually read the Koran to get a sense of where the genocidal death cult gets its ideas with respect to us. They want a Jew free world. Me I’m a simple Jew older now but I sure would love to make a better world by putting 2 in the head and 1 in the chest of YahYah Sinmore. These mofo’s have caused me to have way too much hatred in my dotage.
Absolutely right. Netanyahu is not the problem here. We see the western press label him as the demon. My heart breaks for Israeli families caught up in this it is heart breaking! The main stream media labels Netanyahu but I believe he is following the correct path. No weakness must be shown to the evil Hamas regime. The more the Israeli public protest against Netanyahu, the stronger Hamas will become, they see the weakness and exploit it. From the very first moment that the hostages were taken, the US and the UN should have demanded their release and come down like a ton of bricks on Qatar. Things would be different. Israel must support it’s Prime Minister at this stage, show a united front, otherwise things will not go well.