‘Sparta non merci!’ – Zionist disowns Bibi

Israeli prime minister and fugitive from justice, Benjamin Netanyahu, with Zionist forefather Theodor Herzl in the background

Israel was set up from the get-go – on the back of violent ethnic cleansing and given a specious legitimacy by the crimes of another continent – as a racist entity.

I recently saw a YouTube clip of a displaced Palestinian asking a blue-eyed “Israeli” Jew, raised in Argentina by parents of Ukraine stock, what entitles him to her land. It reminded me of that old joke about how tough life must have been for Jesus, growing up as the only blue-eyed white kid in the Middle East …

No less important, it was set up from the get-go as a beachhead for Western imperialism and still functions as such, albeit at exorbitant and rising cost, through the alignment of Jehova’s Plan ¹ for a Greater Israel, as revealed in Genesis through to Joshua, with increasingly reckless efforts by America’s Neocons and Christian Zionists to shore up a dying empire.

None of which stops Israeli Jews, liberal Ashkenazi in particular, ² from viewing their ethno-state as a beacon of light in an oil rich and geo-strategically pivotal region darkened not by Western interference but Muslim backwardness. The only democracy in the Middle East, they insist, as if democracy in anything but name could possibly be squared with apartheid. ³

Or with genocide, committed with impunity conferred by a hegemon squandering its economic and military power, along with all semblance of morality.

Fascinating, then, to see that more liberal wing, painfully aware of how the world now regards ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’, seeking to disown its current leadership; as though the latter’s crimes were the bizarre and twisted product of political accident …

… as opposed to the end-game of a logic baked into the Zionist project long before October 7; long before 1948.

My cue to hand over to one Ilan Mor – “a retired Israeli diplomat who served as ambassador to Hungary and Croatia” – writing yesterday in the Jerusalem Post.

From start-up nation to Sparta: Israel’s tragic turn toward isolation

Prime Minister Netanyahu admitted this week that Israel is in a “kind of diplomatic isolation. But there is no such thing as “a kind of isolation.” What we are facing is real, tangible isolation, tightening around us in every sphere: with Europe, the United States, in the Arab world, and in the broader international community.

Instead of confronting this challenge, the prime minister suggests we live in a country that must be both “Athens” and a “super-Sparta.” Yet the simple truth is that you cannot be both.

Sadly, Netanyahu has already made the choice for us, and he chose Sparta. I say it clearly: I do not want to live in Sparta. His dramatic words were not only a description of our situation; they revealed the vision he sketches for the citizens of Israel. It is an anti-Zionist vision: international isolation in the spirit of “a people that dwells alone,” with unending war, deep social fracture, a theocratic state, and continued inequality in the burden of service. It stands in stark contradiction to Herzl’s Zionist ideal, one of prosperity, openness, and partnership with the world.

Only two years ago, we were the Start-Up Nation, admired globally as a model of economic growth, technological innovation, and creative diplomacy. Today, Netanyahu himself describes us as isolated, almost ostracized.

It is a tragic reversal, from a nation seen as a light unto the nations to a state that is closed, cold, and defined solely by war. History tells us what this path means. Sparta sacrificed everything for its army. It lived by the sword, with a weak economy, a suffocated society, a barren culture. Ultimately, it disappeared. Athens, which Netanyahu mentioned in the same breath, gave the world democracy, philosophy, and a cultural legacy that endures to this day.

To choose Sparta is to renounce Israel’s founding principles: democracy, innovation, and international partnership. What Netanyahu hints at, an autarkic economy, is also no solution, but a threat. Israel has flourished thanks to its openness to the world: exports, foreign investment, research and cultural cooperation. Without the world, there is no hi-tech, no advanced defense industry, no innovation. What is now being offered is not a modern economy but a path leading us toward the model of isolated regimes like North Korea or Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“Kind of isolation” or complete isolation – these are not acts of fate. They are the result of deliberate policy: the prolongation of the war in Gaza without a political solution and the release of the hostages, the deepening of internal rifts, and contempt for global public opinion.

Instead of looking in the mirror, Netanyahu blames Muslim migration in Europe, as well as Qatar, China, the bureaucracy – everyone but the man truly responsible.

The choice is ours. We can surrender to a vision of Sparta on steroids, a closed and isolated state, or we can restore Israel to its true path: Zionist, democratic, open, creative, and a light unto the nations. Our fate will be determined by the choice we make. My choice is clear: I do not want to live in Sparta.

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1. For slam-dunk testimony on the thesis that Man created God in his own image, look no further than the first five (Torah) books of an Old Testament conceived by a warlike tribe, its deity a boastfully jealous God given to psychotic episodes and a firm believer – yea, even unto the third and fourth generation – in the virtues of collective punishment.

   Sound familiar?

2. Israel’s Mizrahi Jews tend to be less coy about expansionism, settlement and contempt for Arabs.
3. It has to be said though that much hinges on how we view the d-word. Plato’s democracy, like foundational America’s, had no problem with apartheid in the form of slavery.