What happened
An open conflict has broken out between Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country's Commander-in-Chief Eyal Zamir ahead of the parliamentary election. Netanyahu warns of an imminent attack from Iran, a threat assessment that the military leadership rejects as baseless and politically motivated. Meanwhile, defense leadership protests the government's order to force over 1,000 residents from their homes in Hebron after two Israeli soldiers were killed. According to military sources, there is no factual basis for the mass expulsion, which is described as a way to attract nationalist voters. Defense Minister Israel Katz has also attempted to dismiss the general in the West Bank during a live television broadcast, which the Commander-in-Chief has refused to carry out.
Our analysis
When authoritarian leaders are threatened with election defeat, the recipe is always the same: invent an acute external threat, accuse opponents of weakness, and implement collective punishment against civilians. Netanyahu demonstrates how security policy is turned into an election campaign where thousands of people's homes are sacrificed to win votes from the far right.
This power play does not stop at Israel's borders. Every time tensions in the Middle East escalate, polarization and insecurity increase in Sweden. New Swedes, whether Swedish-Palestinians or Muslims, are often forced to answer for events in other countries, while antisemitic threats hit Swedish-Jewish communities. Collective guilt is placed on people who have nothing to do with the conflict.
In Swedish debate, the Middle East is often portrayed as a place of incomprehensible, eternal conflicts. What is rarely scrutinized is how cynically fear is managed from the top. When politicians are allowed to use military escalations to fish for votes, the civilian population pays the price, both where bombs threaten and here in Sweden where suspicion toward new Swedes deepens.
Explained
Collective punishment means that an entire group or population is punished for crimes committed by individual persons, a method that violates international humanitarian law.