BENJAMIN Netanyahu’s security strategy has gone from ‘enemies of my enemies are my friends’ (arm Hamas against rivals) to ‘all are Hamas’ (demolish and evacuate all Gaza if necessary) to attacking Iran in the name of ensuring Israel’s security.

Netanyahu’s two books on security and terrorism published last century play-booked a similar strategy: destroy potential threats to the Jewish state because it is surrounded by enemies who will destroy it. The fatal flaw and counter-productivity of wiping out terrorism by extrajudicial killing of anyone who gets in the way, plus by state terrorism towards a people whose land-grabs and occupations Israel has never redressed, were pointed out by four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Vamik D. Volkan.

In his ground-breaking experiments and revealing books, the Virginia University psychiatrist demonstrated that continuous terrorism is guaranteed by such tactics. Traumas generated so fracture identities that, along with unredressed injustices, such grossly angered personalities are seedbeds — even for remote radicalisation.

Since 1975, New Zealand’s process of addressing historical grievances with the Maori people, focusing on returning land, providing financial compensation, and offering public apologies for breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, should be a case study to end the vicious circle in the Middle East. It is beyond time to call out the misguided impunity state of Israel, as the world did with apartheid-era South Africa.

Steve Liddle
Napier, New Zealand

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2025