After pissing on Palestinians for so long, it’s easy to see why Benjamin Netanyahu is dehydrated 

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is affectionately nicknamed “Bibi” by his adoring core of hard-right-wing-Zionist-fascist supporters, has recently been sent to the hospital for successive runs of dehydration.

This emergent medical situation can be caused by several conditions. One possibility is that Netanyahu—prosecuted for fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes from powerful media moguls and wealthy associates—is hyperventilating over his current legal woes, exhaling liters of anxious steam into the dry Israeli air. That could definitely be the culprit.

But, generally speaking, dehydration is the result of not drinking enough fluid, or of losing more fluid than you’re taking in. Body fluids are predictably lost through sweat, tears, vomiting, urine or diarrhea, and the correct balance can be easily disturbed.

It doesn’t take a medical specialist to find the answer for Bibi’s distress. I’ve used my own, handy-dandy “Diagnostics-for-Idiots” primer for the correct cause of his dehydration. Any casual observer can see that Netanyahu is dehydrated because of his endless pissing on the Palestinian people.

The U.S., with its $4 billion in annual aid to Israel, is a partner in this horror, essentially unzipping Netanyahu’s pants each time as he continues his persecution and would-be genocide of his nation’s closest neighbor and a rightful claimant as co-owner of the Holy Land.

The atrocities of Netanyahu’s regime against the Palestinians have gone on far too long. And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of international organizations trying to end the horrifying scenario. The United Nations has been committed, since 1947, to help work out a fair, humane resolution for the sharing of the Holy Land and yet, the problems are not being solved. Instead, they’re escalating, and this year has been the worst in the past two decades.

Recently, the U.N.’s Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the “situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory,” described the plight of Palestinians in these words: “… deprivation of liberty, since 1967, Israel had detained approximately one million Palestinians in the occupied territory, including tens of thousands of children. There were [are] 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including 160 children, and approximately 1,100 of them were detained without charge or trial.”

Albanese described the Palestinian territory, essentially, as “a constantly-surveilled open-air prison” and accused Israel’s government of “de-civilianizing them” and failing to honor their protected status. Furthermore, the U.N. has referred Israel’s human rights violations and murderous incursions to the International Criminal Court, describing it as the ultimate threat of the very existence of the Palestinian people.

Israel has, effectively, turned the occupied territories into a concentration camp for its residents. One would think that the historic persecution and genocide of the Jewish people should have made Israel’s government more empathetic toward others. Instead, it’s just another example of the well-documented phenomenon of the abused becoming the abusers.

As Israel’s most dedicated benefactor, why doesn’t the U.S. say, “Enough is enough?” In 2023, thus far, over 150 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, and over 575 Palestinian homes have been demolished as punishment—using the same provocation that a school kid would employ: “He hit me first.”

And yet, it’s easy to see who first hit whom. While it’s true that the frustrated, long-abused, militant factions of the Palestinians have voiced their interminable anger with a few, mostly ineffective attacks on Israel, it wasn’t the Palestinians who disenfranchised their neighbors. Israel has sought, from the beginning of the Jewish State, to erase the Palestinians from the Earth. It simply doesn’t want to share the land it claims was given to them “by God.” The numbers are always the same; the ratio of Israeli-Palestinian deaths is never tit-for-tat. If one Israeli dies, there will be a half-dozen Palestinians who pay with their own lives.

It baffles me, how this can have gone on for so long, particularly because we all know that U.S. foreign aid can be manipulated for better political outcomes. Historically, if our country gives financial aid, we will insist on calling some of the shots.

After all, foreign aid isn’t necessarily about an altruistic desire to help people. It’s about how the U.S. uses money in an attempt to run the world. A good example is the questionable support it has provided Ukraine in fending off its Russian invaders, demanding that Ukraine submit to certain constraints on how it uses that military aid. More specifically, it’s a case of, “We’ll give you munitions, tanks, guns and fighters, but you cannot use those supplies to hit the Russians on their own soil.”

Understandably, the U.S. is concerned that the Ukraine invasion could end up in an international fireball. Putin’s egomania is a well-established fact. His preoccupation with recreating a greater Russian union is his passion. He wants to see all the breakaways of the USSR reunited and has shown that, in attempting to accomplish that goal, he’s willing to sacrifice thousands of Russian lives. So, the world has a reason to worry—Ukraine aid is accompanied by the threat of retaliation by Putin.

The point is, if there are always strings attached to foreign aid (allowing the U.S. to make decisions in the allocation and use of the funds), why hasn’t our country put its foot down on Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians?

Instead of making progress, Netanyahu has further infuriated Israel’s neighbors with his incessant commitment to Zionist territorial expansion and the trampling of Palestinian rights, recently authorizing another 1,000 housing units on Palestinian land. And Zionist settlers have gone on rampages, terrorizing and murdering their neighbors. The Palestinian Authority and its radical Hamas have every right to be mad.

It's time for our country to tie its $4 billion-per-year Israel aid to a standard of decency, civility and humanity, and to recommit to the long-term goal of providing a two-state, lasting peace in the Holy Land.

We should all be sick of being the enablers. We must stop unzipping Netanyahu’s fly.

The author is a retired novelist, columnist and former Vietnam-era Army assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife Carol and the beloved ashes of their mongrel dog.