How do you put into one word the way the Netanyahu government operates? How do you categorize in terms of ideology and performance and style and political direction, the declarations and legislative initiatives and world-view and exhortations of its principal spokesmen, Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett?

How about "Pornography"?

Pornography, that is, in a political form. But pornography nonetheless.

Pornography, marketing a line of goods which has roots in love - in this case, love of country - but which turns every aspect of it into something dirty, frequently something obscene and hateful, something which, as all pornography does first and foremost, objectifies people.

All kinds of people, objectified at our government's porn shop: Arabs, especially Israeli Arabs, who are secretly traitorous, and Muslims wherever and whoever they are (we've already proposed legislation deciding that Christian Arabs aren't really Arabs after all, no matter what they may think); Africans; asylum seekers in general; all Germans; Jews whom we shouldn't like; Ashkenazim who don't vote right; leftist Jews, all of whom we should detest the most, especially teachers and the ones who live in Tel Aviv; and American Jews who know nothing (the ones who voted three to one for Obama, and for Kerry before him) and are half-breeds anyway.

Pornography tells us that because these people are, in and of themselves, nasty, we can use them and abuse them as we like. Our government, in word and deed, tells us that these people aren't really real. Not like we are. They don't have the same depth of feeling as we do, the same sensitivity, the same histories of personal loss and tragedy and victimization as we do.

In short, "pro-Israel" political pornography as practiced by the Netanyahu government and its supporters, does exactly what Natan Sharansky once

famously told us that present-day anti-Semitism does: it demonizes people, applies double-standards to them, and delegitimizes them.

The pornography of governance in the time of Bibi is meant to serve the needs and urges of a ruling coalition which spends most of its time engaged in sleazy words and acts which are little more than bizarre riffs on real life - often intended to arouse what courts, in trying to define pornography, have called prurient interest ("marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire").

And, pornography being what it is, it spreads out to cover the demand of a wide range of fetishes. First and foremost, for the Netanyahu government, is the Holocaust fetish, and the not-unrelated sado-masochism of the anti-Semitism fetish, the one which takes prurient interest, and release - and blissful, furious freedom from the consequences of one's own wrongdoing - in reveling in the glow of an entire world hating the Jews.

Example? How about the Holocaust hat trick earlier this month, in which Bennett, his messianic sidekick Moti Yogev, Netanyahu and his minister of, yes, culture, Limor Livnat, greeted a strongly pro-Israel Knesset address by anti-boycott German politician Martin Schultz with a shameful, competitive, parliamentary Fellini Satyricon of rightist posturing, hectoring, insults and walk-outs, capped by demands that Schultz be the one to apologize.

We gave him every respect," Livnat told the house. Then, referring to a point Schultz raised, which hinted that settlers use proportionally more water than Palestinians –something which most Israelis know to be true and which many, in fact, applaud - Livnat continued, "but when he tells an outright lie, and in German yet, no wonder MKs and ministers get upset.

Lest anyone mistake the subtext, already clear as Kristallnacht, Bennett's kingmaker MK Uri Orbach noted that, while Orbach knew nothing of Schultz' family background, the "generation of the parents of the minister" had annihilated the Jews of Europe. Translation: Scratch a German supporter of Israel, and find a Nazi.

Naturally, along with the fetishes, political pornography nurses and profits from fantasies. Example: Netanyahu chose the eve of the current peace-push visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and on German television, to bathe in the fantasy of all Israeli rightist fantasies: Settlements are not an obstacle to peace, Netanyahu declared.

He declined to point out what he knows better than anyone – that obstructing a future peace and cementing Israeli control over a maximal Greater Israel are, in fact, the raison d'etre of the entire settlement enterprise, and always, from the first illegal outpost, have been.

In the time of Bibi, many other fantasies abound, of course, among them: There Are No Palestinians; There is No Occupation; Israeli Cannot Be Headed For Apartheid; Boycotting Settlements is Terrorism; There is No Demographic Problem; and All Arabs Want to Kill The Jews And None of Them Will Make Peace, But We Have To Keep The West Bank and Millions of Them Under Our Control Anyway.

At the same time, Porn-Again Zionism, as pornography should, also elevates the crank, the loner hothead, to larger-than-like status, as we saw with a royal Likud-Beiteinu reception for a high school student who, displeased with a teacher's leftist politics, single-handedly nearly got him fired.

Finally, like all pornography, Porn-Again Zionism feeds off of and thrives on a particular form of prudery. In this case, it is the political prudery of "Pro-Israel" Neo-Victorianism, constricting debate worldwide in Jewish community centers, synagogues, campus Hillel houses and other public venues.

The ground rules? Speakers and events are banned as improper if they question too seriously or too stridently the fantasies listed above.

Through all of this, what's Netanyahu betting on? That beyond all else, political porn, as it corrodes and corrupts, is also powerfully addictive. The prime minister is betting that Israel simply can't get sober. It's a pusher's bet. And sadly, all too often, it's the pusher who wins.

Open gallery view Women draped in Israeli flags praying at the Western Wall, Jerusalem. Credit: Michal Fattal