Does Benjamin Netanyahu hate Arabs?

This should be an easy enough question to answer. Nobody can know what he feels deep in his heart, but Bibi’s been a public figure for more than three decades, and that should be enough to provide ample evidence one way or the other. He has made countless speeches in Israel, led multiple election campaigns, written books and op-eds, and his private remarks – real or fabricated – are routinely leaked to the media.

Netanyahu has led Israel through the perpetual brawl of the Middle East for years and along the way, has had to relate to his views on Arabs and Palestinians as opponents or peace partners. That has created endless opportunities for him to have said something that could be interpreted as politically incorrect, if not downright racist.

At the same time, his natural constituency of right-wing voters, settlers and Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern origin (Mizrahim) are suspicious of Israel’s Arab minority and look down on Palestinians. For a politician like Netanyahu, who’s perpetually running scared in anticipation of the next election or internal threats to his leadership inside his Likud Party, playing the Arab card would be a natural.

In fact, Yedioth Aharonot columnist Nahum Barnea last week quoted a private conversation Netanyahu reportedly had with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon sometime in the last few months, in an effort to lure him back into the Likud: “You’ll never get the votes of the Mizrahim. Only I know how to get them. I know they who they hate: They hate Arabs. And, I know how bring them the goods,” the prime minister is supposed to have said.

A tendency to panic

You can analyze this quote ad infinitum. Could he really have ever said such a thing? If he did, what does it mean? Was it just idle boasting? Does Bibi actually hate Arabs, or does he simply exploit those who do? Would it make any difference?

On the whole, however, the quote doesn’t quite stand the smell test. Looking back at the 2015 campaign, it’s hard to find Bibi’s expertise in Arab-baiting much in evidence. The now infamous call for Likudniks to go to the polls (“Hurry friends, the Arabs are going out in droves to vote, bussed in by the left”) was made the last day of the campaign amid expectations that the Likud was about to get trounced. It was racist in a way, but it certainly doesn’t add up to a planned strategy of incitement. It looks more like typical case of Bibi’s tendency to panic.

No matter, Bibi’s warning has become Exhibit A for the case that he is an implacable hater of Arabs. It is also Exhibit B, C, D and the rest of the alphabet because the fact is that despite more than three decades in public life, there is preciously little to evidence of racism to tar him with.

We live in an era of hyper-sensitivity to perceived racism, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia, ageism and many more hatreds in a lengthening list of oppressed and marginalized. Once, these terms meant something very material. Racists lynched black people or forced them to sit in the back of the bus. Women were denied property and voting rights and regarded as subservient to men. Homosexuality was illegal. Jews were cordoned off into ghettoes and systemically exterminated.

A hypersensitive environment

It’s not as if racism and other social maladies have vanished, but the reality is that there’s been a revolution over the last half century, in the West at least, in attitudes about race, sex and sexuality, religion and class. The revolution isn’t over, but these days it’s consuming itself in phenomena such as micro-aggression, egged on by a police force of media, social media and interest groups ever on the lookout for racial or other slights.

In this hypersensitive environment, Netanyahu is vulnerable. His comment last week about constructing a fence around Israel to protect the country against the “wild beasts” just over the border is a case in point.

He was quite clearly referring to Islamic militants, but Britain’s Guardian, for instance, chose to describe it as referring to all “Palestinians and the citizens of surrounding Arab states.” Another UK newspaper, The Independent, juxtaposed Bibi’s "beasts" remark with his condemnation of Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration, implying that both men were equally racist and that Netanyahu was a hypocrite, to boot. One Haaretz commentator imputed the remarks to include Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

If Bibi plays dangerously close to anti-Arab sentiment, it’s when his nationalism rears up, as it did after the Tel Aviv shootings by an Israeli Arab last month. “You can’t say ‘I’m an Israeli vis a vis rights and a Palestinian vis a vis obligations,'” he said. “Whoever wants to be Israeli should be an Israeli all the way.”

His implication that Israeli Arabs should surrender their Palestinian identity if they want to be full citizens aroused a great hue and cry – and justifiably so, especially as they were uttered by a man whose government seems determined to strengthen Israel’s Jewish identity, which ipso facto leaves Arabs on the outside.

One home, divided loyalties

Netanyahu should know perfectly well there’s no reason why Israeli Arabs can’t retain their Palestinian identity, just as Jewish Zionists can be loyal citizens of America or France. He certainly cultivates that dual loyalty when he visits the Diaspora. At home, however, his nationalist instinct causes him to lose perspective.

Fortunately, however, Bibi’s pragmatism is his dominant side. A week before his Israeli-all-the-way remarks, his government committed to spending $3.8 billion developing infrastructure, housing, education and the like in Arab communities over the next five years, a bigger sum by far than any Israeli government has ever pledged.

Netanyahu is the kind of man who’s hard to love and easy to hate -- and once you hate him, the temptation is to hate him for everything. Ostensibly, he has a harridan for a wife, is overly fond of tycoons and the high life, runs up enormous supermarket bills at the taxpayers’ expense, is quick to go to war, and is paranoid, distrustful and cynical.

Some of these things may well be true, others irrelevant and still others are false, but those who can’t stand him have no interest in making such fine distinctions. They all serve the purpose of making the prime minister not just politically objectionable but gruesomely loathsome. If it were true, the racism charge would be very relevant, but the fact is, it’s baseless.