When he was not serving as prime minister, Netanyahu led the opposition and has consistently served as an Israeli political figure since 1993. He has also led Israel’s illegal expansion and violations of international law, enabled the violence of extremist settlers in the West Bank and the decades-long siege on Gaza, imposed increasingly hostile apartheid policies within its state borders, and under his tenure has created the most violent and aggressive period in Israeli history, exceeding even the 1948 Nakba.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1949, Netanyahu split his childhood years between Israel and the United States, where he lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He returned to Israel in 1967 to enlist in the IDF, where he fought in several expansionist wars and attacks on Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt during Israel’s key periods of aggression. He returned to the US to attend MIT and worked as a consultant for Boston Consulting Group after his graduation in 1976, where he became a colleague and friend of future US Republican senator and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Regardless of the party in power, Israel has consistently been a central actor in the network of the reactionary international since its inception in 1948, as its existence as a settler-colonial entity was made possible by the work of Western imperial powers. However, Netanyahu and the Likud party have spearheaded a policy of Israeli aggression, expansion, and settler violence that extends beyond their political peers, rejecting even the most pro-Israel of international negotiation efforts. For example, Netanyahu was vehemently opposed to the Oslo Accords since their inception in 1993, stonewalling negotiations so much that President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were doubtful he had “any real interest in pursuing peace”. In 2009, he referred to the 2005 Israeli settler withdrawal from Gaza as a “mistake” that he would never repeat. Most recently, Netanyahu has led the effort to flatten the Gaza strip in a genocidal campaign that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, disregarding the warnings even of Israel’s strongest allies.
Netanyahu has taken advantage of the rise of the reactionary right across the globe since 2016, forming alliances with key powers that enable Israel’s ongoing violations of international law. Donald Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel and friend of Netanyahu since the 1980s, made major strides to support his expansionist policies during his presidency. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and spearheaded the 2020 Abraham Accords, which allowed Israel to normalize relations with US-aligned Arab states.
Netanyahu has also built a close relationship with India’s Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi, solidifying India as Israel’s largest arms client; has grown close to the right-wing European leaders Beata Szydlo in Poland and Viktor Orban in Hungary; and has repeatedly voiced support for the former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro;
A major diplomatic strategy of Netanyahu has also been the leveraging of Israel’s world-leading private cyber surveillance industry, whose cyberweapons – most notably NSO Group’s Pegasus – have been coveted by states across the globe. The Israeli Defense Ministry also has complete control over the product’s sales: having classified them as weapons, the ministry must approve the export of Pegasus and similar software to other countries. By far the largest exporter of spyware, having complete control over who can obtain it gives Israel massive leverage in its national security strategy. In establishing its early relationship with NSO Group, Netanyahu stated this plan simply: “With our Defense Ministry sitting at the controls of how these systems move around, we will be able to exploit them and reap diplomatic profits”. It has granted Pegasus to dozens of countries, most notably the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, India, Mexico, Panama, Poland, and Hungary, all of whom have shifted their foreign policy stances on Israel during the period of receiving the software. In its bid to control the industry, Israel has propelled an era of corporate and state surveillance which enables human rights violations and the repression of dissent across the globe.
Since October 2023, Netanyahu has led the Israeli genocidal campaign on Gaza. The long-term political consequences of this period are yet to be seen.
