Haaretz Slams Netanyahu Over Haman’s Extermination Plot

“This is the indisputable result of an immature, intrusive, and arrogant campaign by the prime minister to manipulate American politics.”

Tel Aviv, March 24 – The editorial board at Haaretz laced into Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu this morning, accusing him of irresponsible leadership and failure to prevent the ancient extermination plot against the Jews by the ancient Persian vizier Haman in the sixth century BCE.

In what has become almost a ritual, Haaretz found little to recommend Netanyahu’s stewardship of the country, specifically noting that his alienation of allies, hard-line stance on negotiations with the Palestinians, and dismantling of the welfare state over the course of his last seven years in office contributed to an environment in which a high official of the Persian Empire could plot with the king to kill all the Jews in the realm in a single day 2,500 years in the past, and no one would bat an eye.

“Bibi has failed once and for all, and must step down while there is still hope for rebuilding this society along more enlightened lines,” read the editorial, which appeared on the front page. “Not even our American allies, so steadfast for decades, have said a word about Haman and King Ahashverosh explicitly plotting the genocide of Jews across the region two-and-a-half millennia ago. This is the indisputable result of an immature, intrusive, and arrogant campaign by the prime minister to manipulate American politics, and it has backfired. No one in the administration, from President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry on down, has offered even mild criticism of the extermination initiative since Bibi’s controversial speech to Congress a year ago. It is past time for Netanyahu to step aside and hand the reins over to someone with a modicum of political and diplomatic acumen.”

The editors also cited Netanyahu’s tolerance, even sympathy, for the Haredi parties in his bare-majority coalition. “It is not only fitting, but entirely predictable, that such acceptance of bigoted, backward sensibilities all but gave the green light to other nations’ similarly bigoted and backward policies,” they wrote. “What he fails to grasp is that other people’s policies are exclusively in response to our own, and that if we were more accommodating to our neighbors’ preexisting genocidal impulses in the first place, we would not be having this discussion. The prime minister’s fallacious notion that other people, especially in the Middle East, have volition, or can be expected to behave morally, has led to nothing but isolation, economic disaster, and our impending doom.”

It also called Minister of Education Naftali Bennett a “radical failure,” as under his aegis, the ministry has not managed to impart any sense of chronology or cause and effect to the next generation of students.