Third Temple: Israel’s Occupation Is Coming Home
Netanyahu’s government is not here to debate—it’s here to rule, and any resistance is an intifada.
You know the story about the guy who spends his whole life eating health food and exercising, and in the end a refrigerator crushes him to death? Oh, the irony: You live in fear of one thing, and then a completely different thing gets you.
Take me, for example: I’ve spent years worrying that Israel would annex the occupied Palestinian territories. The idea of an entire population being oppressed by a messianic minority wasn’t part of the country I wanted to live in. But now, there’s a plot twist: Instead of our annexing the settlements, the settlements are annexing us. They’re trying to import the master-slave hierarchy from occupied Palestine into Israel’s 1967 borders—into Haifa, Kfar Saba, and Tel Aviv. The Palestinians provide cheap labor and hummus; we provide pilots and software developers; and if we ever step out of line, we’ll get what’s coming to us. Zero tolerance. The Israeli traitors may not have olive trees to burn, but they have democracy, and, as it turns out, that can also be set on fire.
The occupation is coming home. The settlers are branching out, spreading their drive to expand, to control, to oppress, and their unshakable conviction that they are better—more chosen—than their neighbors. But the old Israeli politics, which has always valued maintaining the status quo, has been replaced by a new politics that believes only in oppression and defeat. Much as it fights the Palestinians, the settler movement now battles liberal Israel: no adversaries, only enemies. No compassion, only a zeal to seize control and dominate.
Behind the slogans about “mutual responsibility” among all Jewish “brethren” hides a holy, timeless desire for revenge. They’re still getting back at the Palestinians for the 1929 riots, and at us for the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. Fashionably late by 17 years, the “hilltop youth” from the settlements are here for payback. Itamar Ben-Gvir is here to teach the secular Zionist Israeli snowflakes what he’s been trying for years to violently teach his Palestinian neighbors.
Related articles
The polarizing settler ideology dominates public discourse in Israel, and just as every Palestinian who opposes a new settlement is branded a “terrorism supporter,” so too is every protester against the judicial coup labeled an anarchist, and every pilot who suspends his voluntary service called “a pustule.” When Minister of Settlements and National Missions Orit Strook likens the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff to the head of the Wagner Group and scolds him for voicing his opinions instead of keeping his mouth shut and following orders, when Ben-Gvir tells the police to hurt demonstrators and urges them to use water cannons, “skunks,” and mounted officers to inflict maximum damage on “his enemies”—that’s nothing new. They and their sidekicks used similar tactics to pressure army troops in the territories, and it got the job done.
Whether it’s up the highway from Tel Aviv or down the road from Nablus, this government is not here to debate—it’s here to rule, and any resistance is an intifada. Everyone knows you don’t solve an intifada by talking. You do it by force. No compromises, no status quo, just a long road, at the end of which await the Third Temple and the Messiah. But his opinions will have to be vetted, of course. Otherwise, we risk ending up with a lefty messiah.
Support independent journalism that does not fall in line
Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth.
The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more.
But this journalism is possible only with your support.
This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?
