Israel’s next chapter, explained Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sept. 15, is the dispensing with legalities, rule by “autarky” and embracing the model of Spartan militarism—but a “Sparta on steroids.” Netanyahu tagged this, “Super Sparta.”
This wasn’t overheard in some back-room bull session, amongst his closest “chicken hawk” political associates. He was speaking at the Israeli Finance Ministry’s “Fifty States—One Israel” economic conference, before the largest delegation of American legislators to ever visit Israel. There, he explained that Israel’s increasing isolation from the civilized world, far from having anything to do with its carrying out mass murders of children, has a cause that American politicians can understand. There is an organized effort, led by China and Qatar, to conduct a “siege” against Israel—"countries like Qatar and China sway public opinion through significant investments in social media. It changes Israel’s international situation; we’ll need to invest huge amounts in this. It’s a type of isolation. Can we get out of this isolation? Yes—I am a devotee of the free market, but we’ll have to have some signs of an autarky.”
This is because, he further explained, that the recent expansion of Israeli military production will be nothing as compared to what is needed now and in the next couple of years. “We’ll need to develop weapons industries here. We’re going to be ... super Sparta. Over the next few years, we’ll have no other choice. We’ll have to defend ourselves and know how to attack our enemies.” But there’s a catch. The public and the political process simply won’t approve what he says has to be done. In his words: “We will not be able to approve these enormous projects” that have to be done.
What is to be done? “We need to cut back the bureaucracy in a draconian fashion. I know this matter will, as usual, meet rejection. There will be rejection by the legal sides.” But, for Netanyahu, this is no barrier. He articulated his rejection of legal procedures: “Life is more important than the law.” It is not likely he was referring to “human life”—more likely, to his political life.
Otherwise, as icing on the cake, the legislators were treated to Netanyahu’s thinking behind his attack on Iran in June, as Israel’s defense of America. How so? First, Iran had plans to attack Europe with missiles. (Do not interrupt with impertinent requests for evidence.) After which, they planned to improve those missiles to reach 8,000 km. Netanyahu then implied that, after that second planning stage, Iran’s missiles would only be 3,000 km away from hitting the U.S.’s East Coast. So, clearly, there may be a third planning stage to close that gap. Assumedly, Netanyahu had to hit Iran before they got to that hypothetical third planning stage. As he summarized: “We pushed [the Iranian threat] away from our door, and away from [the United States'] door, because Iran’s plan was to have ballistic missiles that would reach first deep into Europe, then 8,000 kilometers. You add another three, and you’re on the eastern seaboard.”
There’s no report of any U.S. legislator objecting at any point in this rant. However, within Israel, there was a reaction to the country being taken hostage by a crazy man. Opposition Leader Yair Lapid posted on X that Netanyahu’s remark on isolation is “crazy…. Isolation isn’t fate, it’s the product of the wrong and failing policies of Netanyahu and his government. They are making Israel a third-world country and aren’t even trying to change the situation.”
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was even more to the point. He posted that Netanyahu was “off the rails…. The ‘diplomatic tsunami’ that was predicted ahead of time is hitting us. It’s the fruit of the failures of a confused, abandoned man. The ‘thousand-year Reich’ and the ‘super Sparta’ in South Africa were all erased. ‘Super Sparta’ is the end of the country: economically, politically and militarily.”
