I don't think the existence of Israel is evil, and yes, Netanyahu is the most popular politician in that country- but, given history, do you really want to be using personal popularity as a key metric for the validity of any particular leader?
It's not possible to end the Israel/Palestine conflict by making the Palestinians essentially surrender and get nothing but a barely-existing statelet-on-sufferance that the IDF will always keep patrolling through, and which it can take away at a moment's notice?
No Palestinian leader could agree to such a thing and not be immediately overthrown.
All I'm saying is that crushing the foe isn't possible- all that does is create worse foes- that, in a conflict where final military victory is permanently impossible, the only way forward is for everybody to forego claiming victory and for no party to any agreement to be humiliated.
That, and it's not possible to get to peace in this conflict by trying to get whatever Palestinian leadeship Israel ends up engaging with to accept the premises the 1) The conflict is solely their fault; 2) Palestinians have no legitimate grievances and have never been driven by anything but bigotry, and 3) Palestinians aren't even a real national community and have no right to be anywhere on the lands of the Mandate.
In my view, the only reason Netanyahu- and the supposedly "moderate" government that temporarily replaced his, but was led by a hardline far-right West Bank Settler- are insisting that any Palestinian leadership accept the terms they demand is that Netanyahu doesn't want the conflict ever to end. The dominant parties in Israeli politics now can only maintain the support they currently hold is if the myth of the "existential crisis"- it's a myth because Israel has the strongest military in the region and the fourth-strongest on the planet, therefore is not in any danger of ceasing to be- allows them to distract from the massive increases in inequality and poverty happening within Israeli society, and keeps the MIzrahi voting for them even though Mizrahi support for right-wing parties goes entirely against that communities economic and social interests.
As to antisemitism- today, it's overwhelmingly, nearly exclusively, a right-wing form of hate. Non-Zionism/anti-Zionism on the left has nothing to do with antisemitism- and has no practical effect on Israel as a country or whether or not it survives. All a refusal to be Zionist is now- and again, I'm not opposed to Zionism, since there will need to be a long period of reconciliation work done, and this will require something like South Africa's truth-and-justice commission as a mechanism to do this work, to heal the wounds on both sides.
It's not as simple as saying the Israelis are totally wrong; equally, it's not as simple as saying the Palestinians are all wrong, are devoid of legitimate issues with how the IDF has treated them, about the theft of the olive and lemon groves, about unjustified pettiness like the Occupation authorities in the West Bank destroying solar energy systems foreign NGO's had built for Palestinian villages- we're talking about solar power, a technology nobody has any reason to object to and which cannot possibly be weaponized or be any threat to Israel's survival- solely because they hadn't been given the permits to construct it yet.
There's been 23 straight years of the "Iron Glove" approach in the West Bank- there's nothing positive to show for it and there's no chance it can lead to peace.
And there was never any chance that Palestinians would agree to live a lie by saying "ok, we aren't a real people and we have no right to be here, we'll take whatever crumbs we're given". Why even THINK that could happen?
