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Will Netanyahu’s collective blame sink Israel?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's collective blame strategy will punish many Israeli Arabs who had no connection to the wildfires and will only aggravate tensions between Jews and Arabs.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) attends a weekly cabinet meeting in Haifa, Israel November 27, 2016. REUTERS//Dan Balilty/Pool - RTSTI2W
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No nation has suffered more than the Jewish people from prejudice and conspiracy theories. It's hard to find nations that have served as scapegoats more than the Jews. In their worst years in European exile, the Jews were accused of spreading epidemics and poisoning wells, intending to annihilate Christians. Hundreds of communities were razed in pogroms that broke out in the Middle Ages in France, Germany and elsewhere following the libel that Jews were poisoning the wells and causing the Black Plague. It was far more convenient than blaming those responsible for the miserable health conditions. To this day there are those who believe that Israel was behind the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. These collective accusations are always accompanied by incitement against a Jewish enemy and by scare tactics. And once collective accusations are made, the road to collective punishment by social ostracization and even by extermination becomes shorter.

And now, that same Jewish victim who suffered from such racist generalizations is copying those who sought to eliminate him. The role of the Jewish well poisoner was assumed last week by the Arabs who set forests and towns on fire. While vast numbers of fires were incinerating entire neighborhoods and green forests, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already knew Nov. 23 that there were "natural and unnatural" causes to the blazes, warning the following day that "anyone who tries to burn parts of the State of Israel will be severely punished." The next day, Netanyahu was already dubbing the wave of fires with the honorific title "terrorism," generally reserved for Arabs. "As with every crime, the most important thing is punishment," Netanyahu said. "There's a price for arson terrorism." He went on in the same vein Nov. 27, saying that "anyone who sets fire, whether with malice or negligence, anyone who incites to arson — we will act against them with all our might."

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