Veteran columnist Bradley Burston opens his new book "The End of Israel: Dispatches from a Path to Catastrophe" with a stinging indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he believes is leading the country towards what could be its final chapter.
He tells Haaretz Podcast host Allison Kaplan Sommer that in recent years, when the country was embroiled in the battle over Netanyahu's judicial overhaul, "it was clear to me already that the Israel that we all once knew was not going to return and that something huge had already happened, some enormous abyss had already opened that would make it impossible for that Israel... to continue."
Calling the Gaza war a "man-made natural disaster," Burston asserts that Netanyahu has a vested interest in endless conflict and instability. "He wants the world to accuse Israel of genocide and apartheid, violent occupation and ethnic cleansing" so that Israelis believe "the world hates us, and he is the only one who can save them."
Also on the podcast, Haaretz Washington correspondent Ben Samuels provides an update on National Unity Party Benny Gantz's visit to Washington, and Vice President Kamala Harris' forceful speech in which she called for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Samuels also notes that in one of the major races on Super Tuesday, AIPAC made its biggest investment in the 2024 election season thus far, targeting California congressional candidate Dave Min who is "ostensibly pro-Israel." Yet the lobby organization and its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, flooded the airwaves with negative ads, none of which had to do with Israel.
The race, Samuels says, is sending a signal to other candidates that if they fail to "meet this threshold of what AIPAC defines as pro-Israel, they will be faced with millions of dollars in attack ads."
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