Israel at a Crossroads...

Author: رامي منصور

Since its first day, Israel has lived in a Spartan state, with its economy being a camp, its society mobilized, and its army being "the army of the people". However, what Benjamin Netanyahu meant in his speech about the great Sparta, Super Sparta, primarily pertained to arms manufacturing, in light of several Western countries refusing to supply Israel with weapons and vehicles related to arms production following the continuing war of extermination and displacement in the Gaza Strip. In a press conference the following day, he stated that the imposition of sanctions on supplying weapons to Israel stems from political considerations, not from the strength of the Israeli economy.

In the wake of Netanyahu's statements, the "Ben Gurion Heritage Institute" published a quote from his statements after the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956, in which he referred to the analogy of Israel as Sparta. He said: "Israel's goal is not to become a new Sparta. Our strength and capabilities will be demonstrated by manufacturing facilities, the absorption of immigration, and the superiority of man and society, so that we become a living example for Jews around the world".

In 1955, he stated: "We do not aspire to be Sparta, a people living by the sword; a vision of peace is a Jewish vision. In our military preparations, and even in our military operations imposed upon us, we must not deviate from our position that our ultimate goal in our relations with our neighbors is peace and coexistence". He added, "Our strength is not only measured by victories on the battlefield but by our ability to create a value-based society, a vision for peace, and a shared life".

These were the talks of Ben Gurion, who imposed compulsory military service on Israelis from the first day, established a state built on killing and mass displacement, and harnessed all the community’s resources to build a powerful regular army, outnumbering the Arab fighters in the 1948 war, with military equipment surpassing that of the Arabs in quantity and quality. Despite this, he hesitated to compare Israel to Sparta, perhaps due to his awareness of the fascist values that such a fallen state carried and nurtured.

An Israeli writer mentioned that Ben Gurion was once asked: Is Israel closer to Athens or Sparta? He was perplexed in answering, but Netanyahu 'unlocked' Ben Gurion's quandary in his "Super Sparta" speech, asserting that Israel would be both Athens and Super Sparta, a state of science, culture, and arts, as well as a state of spears. This unsettles and worries Israelis regarding academic and cultural boycott campaigns, as they succeeded in promoting Israel as a state of liberalism and multiculturalism, despite its other face as a state of occupation, settlement, and apartheid—Athens from one perspective, and Sparta from another. Today, the war crimes in Gaza have stripped Israel of its Athena façade.

In his second conference, Netanyahu stated that he wants peace, but he wants victory first, then peace, as if Israel were in an all-out war, while the reality is that Israel is waging a one-sided regional war, exceeding the response to "The Flood of Al-Aqsa" or attacking the Iranian axis. It is waging a war that tells regional countries: I am the great Sparta, an alternative or development of the idea of Greater Israel, with no boundaries, and its might can reach any window in the region.

This feeling of surplus power appeared in the Israeli cabinet protocols during the recent confrontation with Iran, revealed by Channel 13 this week, in which Netanyahu demands the military and security agencies in one of the sessions to "target Khamenei's head", meaning to assassinate him. The protocols also show that the cabinet believed it could destabilize the Iranian regime to the point of toppling it, even agreeing to target a prison in Tehran to enable opposition prisoners to escape and cause chaos against the regime.

However, in conclusion, Israel cannot be the great Sparta in the region; this is an illusion. What allows it to exercise this arrogance currently is the state of Arab humiliation and the Arab regime's attachment to the United States, along with the latter's absolute support for Israel.

Ultimately, what remains concerning and a priority are the Israeli practices of displacement in Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, as the talk of annexing the West Bank is not a geographical issue, but a demographic one, through which Israel aims to turn the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank into hell, whether from the war on refugee camps or surrounding Palestinian towns with military checkpoints, settlements, and settlers. This is what it previously implemented in occupied Jerusalem, pushing many Jerusalemites to the West Bank.

Ben Gurion did not want Israel to live by the sword, nor did he want it to be Sparta or great, because he was aware of the dangers of its values. However, what his project has left today in terms of manifestations of religious nationalist extremism and hostility towards democracy and liberalism, or any form of pluralism, is truly transforming Israel into a dark state, surpassing in its religious nationalist extremism all neighboring countries if what are called "forces of change"—claimed to be liberal and secular—do not succeed in confronting the sweeping extremist current in Israeli society. Sparta, in reality, has become internally divided between "Judah" and "Israel"; Judah is the state of religious nationalists like the settlers, while Israel is the state of secularists and liberals established by Ben Gurion.

Athens, according to Netanyahu's understanding, has become conscripted in the service of Sparta, with science and technology serving the war and killing machine.

The Arab region is not only at a crossroads, but so is Israel. Its injustice and darkness that cover the region emanate from it and cover its interior first.