It is this extreme form of nationalism that’s been commercialized for more than fifty years. Shir Hever is one of the most insightful experts on the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation. Israeli arms manufacturers sell a particular message, he told me, that reflects the lived experience of brutalizing Palestinians. “If you listen to the [Israeli] arms companies themselves when they go to Europe to sell their products, they keep repeating the same mantra,” he said. “They say that these Europeans are so naive. They think that they can have human rights. They think that they can have privacy but that’s nonsense. We know that the only way to fight terrorism is to judge people by how they look and the color of their skin.” Israel’s status as an ethnonationalist state was there from its birth in 1948, but it’s been turbocharged in the twenty-first century. The Israeli leader who most successfully pursued this policy was Benyamin Netanyahu, a fervent believer in the endless occupation of Palestinian lands. He was the longest serving Prime Minister in the country’s history, though finally lost office in 2021 after more than twelve years leading the government. He won re-election in 2022 with the most right-wing coalition in the country’s history. His vision himself has won, since he convinced many other countries to use Israel as a model. Netanyahuism is an ideology that will outlive him.

— Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein (3% - 4%)