Netanyahu… Close-up photo – Yahya Abdullah

This article aims to shed light on some aspects of Benjamin Netanyahu’s biography in order to understand the foundations and factors that shaped his personality, thoughts and orientation, especially his political orientation.
He is the second son of the famous Zionist historian Professor Ben Zion Netanyahu and belongs to the most extreme current in Zionism, the “Revisionist Movement” founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. The movement is called “corrective” because it opposes the approval of the General International Zionist Workers’ Union (the organization founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897 AD in Basel, Switzerland, which convened the first Zionist Conference, which coordinated the activities of all Zionist institutions) by the British (the Mandate for Palestine was established by the decision of the Supreme Allied Council of the San Remo Colony in 1920 AD, which included Article (95) of the Treaty of Net, which required Britain to implement the Balfour Declaration and establish a national home for the Jewish people in 117,000 square kilometers of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River), minus Transjordan from the borders of the Mandate for Palestine in 1920 AD, and the borders of the Balfour Declaration, and the establishment of the Hashemite Emirate there. Jabotinsky and his “correction” team insisted on the necessity of annexing the East Bank of the Jordan River to the Jewish state as part of the so-called (Land of Israel) and formed a Zionist terrorist organization to combat this trend. This was the decision of the “Etzel” organization – the National Military Organization – to draw the borders of the British Mandate of Palestine against the background of the map of Palestine. The borders of the Balfour Declaration, that is, on both sides of the Jordan River.
Meaning, this is a man who grew up in a family that believed in the concept of the so-called “Intact Land of Israel,” and he absorbed that belief at an early age. Akiva Pageman, in his book, “How Netanyahu Turned Israel into an Empire,” says Netanyahu absorbed Jabotinsky’s doctrines through his father, who was close to Jabotinsky and even briefly served as his personal secretary when he was young. Netanyahu’s father is a historian who devoted an entire chapter to Jabotinsky’s philosophy in his book, “The Five Fathers of Zionism.”
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When we read the quotations and quotes from the book about Jabotinsky and analyze his approach, it is easy to find the roots of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political tendencies. The following is a quote from the book about Jabotinsky by Father Netanyahu: “There is no friendship in political issues, only pressure. What determines the issue is not the goodness or evil of the ruler, but the size of the pressure exerted by the subjects themselves. Well, if the pressure comes from our opponents, and it is not enough on our side, it is canceled and overcome, then everything that will happen in the country (that is, Palestine) will be against us, “even if the government is led by a man named Balfour or Theodor Herzl, it will happen. ”
According to Jabotinsky’s philosophy, changing policies requires constant pressure and struggle, as he said: “No one without courage, bravery, qualifications or desire to struggle will be able to achieve the minimum desired reforms, even if the government is composed of the most loyal friends of the Israeli people.” This is because the government machine responds first and foremost to the law of popular pressure, just as steel machines are subject to the physical laws of pressure.
Benjamin Netanyahu grew up with these visions and ideas, which is also what the reader feels in his book A Place in the Sun (published in 1995 and translated into Arabic), where he devotes a lot of space to Jabotinsky’s philosophy of “popular pressure”. He calls it necessary and he does not stop persuading and exerting pressure on the international stage to defend the interests of the Jewish people. Netanyahu is carrying out this policy of pressure on the United States of America, which he considers “a living democracy in which all kinds of effective forces operate and influence the formulation of its policies.”
The best evidence of this is the pressure he has recently exerted secretly and openly on the US government regarding the supply of arms and ammunition to Israel, even though the arms and ammunition that the US has provided to Israel so far since October 7, 2023 is incomparable to any military support provided by any other US government, even the air force that the Richard Nixon administration provided to it during the October War of 1973 AD, and even though it provides financial support to Israel in addition to its unprecedented military support. On the night of April 14, 2024, in the face of Iranian marches and missiles directed against it, it has tirelessly sought and sought to impose in the region by all possible means its regional alliances, including some Arab countries, and to strengthen its position in the region, even though it is committed to defending its security and its superiority in quality and quantity over all the armies in the region.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu accused the Biden administration of “delaying the delivery of weapons to Israel” and told it: “Give us the equipment and we will do the job.” , his spiritual mentor. On the one hand, this pressure embarrasses the Biden administration in front of Jewish voters and campaign donors and prevents it from achieving what he calls an “absolute victory” over the current administration. Pressure that costs Joe Biden leverage in the upcoming presidential elections, and he is hungry for Donald Trump, who during his presidency offered Netanyahu more than he could have imagined by canceling the nuclear deal with Iran, the so-called “deal of the century” that disappointed … especially the same Netanyahu, and the entire Israeli right, and that did not end with the relocation of the American embassy to Jerusalem.
It can be said that this is a planned and deliberate pressure, not a random one, or a flash of anger. Benjamin Netanyahu’s career confirms his loyalty to the school of the terrorist Zionist leader Zev Jabotinsky, as well as the concept of the (entire Land of Israel). As the leader of the opposition, he strongly criticized the Oslo Accords (the agreements signed between Israel. and the Palestinians (September 1993), and participated in all demonstrations organized by the right wing, where the Israeli government opposed these agreements and opposed the policies of the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the most famous of which was the famous demonstration. This event took place in October 1995, when demonstrators carried a coffin with the words: “Rabin buried Zionism” and a noose was displayed in the coffin (a month later, Rabin was assassinated at the hands of a right-wing Jewish extremist named Yigal Amir). The Israeli left accuses him of creating an atmosphere for the assassination of Rabin and hindering and obstructing planned peace projects.
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Netanyahu first served as prime minister from June 18, 1996 to July 6, 1999, and two months after taking office, he decided to open a tunnel in the Burak Wall under the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, in order to please the extreme right, expand the circle of the so-called (Wailing Wall), assert Israel’s sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem, impose a fait accompli there, and hinder the Oslo Accords. Also following Jabotinsky’s approach, Netanyahu used assassination and personal liquidation, issuing an order to the Israeli Mossad to assassinate Khaled Meshaal, the head of the Hamas movement’s political bureau, in Jordan (the Jordanian authorities arrested Mossad agents) and forced Netanyahu to provide an antidote that saved Meshaal from death.
Loyal to Jabotinsky’s philosophy of the “All of Israel” problem, Netanyahu rejected and still does what he calls the two-state solution and has declared more than once that the Palestinian state will not be established under any circumstances during his term, and he has worked hard to perpetuate the state of division between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip so that they do not together represent a geographical unit that constitutes the basis of the Palestinian territorial state of the future. True, in 2009, under pressure from the Obama administration, he was forced to give a speech called the “Balaam Speech” in which he first agreed in principle to the creation of a Palestinian state, but the speech set out impossible conditions that prevented the creation of a Palestinian state, including: this state must be demilitarized (i.e., a state open to Israeli orgies), it recognizes Israel as a state of the Jewish people (which would mean expelling about 2 million Palestinians (both men and women) from the Palestinian interior, who represent the obsession with the Israeli state), and it does not concede any part of the city of Jerusalem and makes it the unified and eternal capital of Israel. Israel (including East Jerusalem and the resulting Holy Mosque dependence on it), and demanded that the Palestinian people give up their right of return, and that Israel be entitled to so-called “natural growth” in existing settlements in the West Bank (to continue its settlement expansion policy).
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It is obvious that his upbringing in the most extreme Zionist movement (the “Revisionist” movement) and his conviction to not give up any part of the so-called “integrated land of Israel”, as well as his belief in this philosophy of Zeev Jabotinsky and his oppressive practices, had a significant impact on shaping the character of Benjamin Netanyahu. In the current war in Gaza, the root and influencing factors intertwined with the man’s personal interests, political survival and desire to evade responsibility, led him to insist on continuing the war indefinitely and making it an end in itself, despite the warnings of many politicians and some military personnel.

Professor of Israeli Studies, Mansoura University