Bibi’s phony fear of ISIS

During Andrea Mitchell’s interview with Benjamin Netanyahu today, this exchange occurred:

MITCHELL:  But you were reelected on a mandate, certainly Israeli voters, your supporters, believe you were reelected on a mandate against a two-state solution.  That is the way the White House is interpreting.  The White House says this is divisive, and it’s so divisive that now the administration is saying that they will not stop the U.N. from conferring statehood.  They will not block — or at least they’re strongly considering not blocking a vote for statehood for Palestinians.

NETANYAHU:  Well, first of all, that state would become a terrorist state.  Iran says that they will arm the West Bank the way they arm Gaza.  We withdrew from Gaza.  We got just a few months ago, not ancient history but a few months ago, thousands of rockets, Andrea, on our heads.

MITCHELL:  So what does that mean –

NETANYAHU:  We don’t want it to happen again.  And I think the administration has said time and time again that the only way to achieve peace is a negotiated solution.  You can’t impose peace.  And in any case, if you want to get peace, you’ve got to get the Palestinian leadership to abandon their pact with Hamas and engage in genuine negotiations with Israel for an achievable peace.

We also have to make sure that we don’t have ISIS coming into that territory.  It’s only two dozen from our borders, thousands of miles away from yours.

Certainly nobody outside of ISIS wants ISIS coming into any new territory at this point, right? But there’s a difference between really fearing a thing and using the specter of that thing to justify your own destructive policies. Netanyahu’s fear of ISIS rings a little hollow when you remember that his armed forces are collaborating with some of the most extreme elements of the Syrian rebellion in Golan, which is equally as close to Israel’s borders as the West Bank. If the IDF has been ordered to work with Jabhat al-Nusra, whose ideology and tactics differ from ISIS’s only in degrees, in Syria, then it’s clear that the threat of radical Sunni groups on his borders doesn’t worry Netanyahu all that much.