Leadership Woes

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

The relentless effort to topple Binyamin Netanyahu is almost thirty years old and continues unabated. There are politicians who arouse opposition and others who arouse irrational hatred. Netanyahu is in the latter category, to which should be added Donald Trump, whose mere existence also makes people lose their minds and who, like Netanyahu, is the subject of withering but dubious legal assaults from his haters who control prosecutions (but not necessarily convictions).

Each time Netanyahu is elected there are immediate calls for “new elections, now,” public protests and demonstrations, amid demands for his resignation. To his detractors, elections have only one legitimate and acceptable outcome – Netanyahu’s defeat. It seems that 99.5% of the people screaming for his resignation now were screaming for his resignation on October 6. They assume that new elections will spell certain electoral defeat for Israel’s longest serving prime minister. They should learn a little history.

Golda Meir presided over an even worse military debacle fifty years ago when she failed to preempt the Egyptian and Syrian attack on Israel on Yom Kippur 1973. Nevertheless, Golda won re-election less than three months after the war’s outbreak. It is true that she lost seats, with her party garnering 51 mandates (down from 56 in the previous election); but it is also true that no single party since then has won 51 seats in the Knesset. She formed a government with 68 seats in the Knesset, what today would be construed as a landslide. She resigned in April 1974 after the Agranat Commission laid blame at the feet of senior military intelligence officials – but did not reprimand Meir or Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

Other examples stand out as well. George W. Bush was president only nine months when Arab terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Almost 3000 Americans were killed, thousands more in the wars the United States fought for the next 20 years in the Middle East. Only the shrillest Bush haters blamed him for the 9/11 attacks and America’s unpreparedness. The American people did not, and Bush handily won reelection three years later with a larger majority than he won in 2000.

Similarly, Japan launched “an unprovoked and dastardly attack” on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, less than a year after Franklin D. Roosevelt began his third term. The United States was completely unprepared for the attack – and for the war that followed. It took months to build up American manufacturing to provide the weapons of war. FDR, too, was not blamed, although he did immediately fire the commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, Husband E. Kimmel, replacing him with Chester Nimitz who steered the US to victory over Japan. And almost exactly three years later, in November 1944, FDR was reelected to an unprecedented fourth term.

It is worth noting that the next scheduled parliamentary elections in Israel will not be held until October 2026 – i.e., exactly three years after Hamas’ brutal Shemini Atzeret invasion of Israel.

“Three years” seems like the magic number at which voters can evaluate the level of culpability of their leaders; most often they are not held liable for failures that occur on their watch, especially when they were not informed. We do not know, and will perhaps never know, the extent to which Israel’s intelligence agencies blundered in the months and years before October 7, what information they dismissed, what they reported, and what they concealed, and the extent to which the involvement of certain elements of the security services in anti-Netanyahu protests played a role. Of course, writ large, the Prime Minister is responsible for everything that happens on his watch (although it is understandable why in the era of the mindless sound bite and negative advertising, Netanyahu does not want to be recorded saying he is responsible). In any event, responsibility is different from culpability.

To be sure, there is a difference between parliamentary governments where snap elections can be called at any time and representative democracies like the United States where elections occur at fixed intervals. Yet, in principle, it should not matter. If an American president deemed himself (or others did) guilty of such malpractice that national security was endangered or the US was invaded, he could resign. That it hasn’t happened does not mean that it can’t or even shouldn’t happen. It does mean that the people are often able to ascertain who is and isn’t blameworthy in ways that confound the elites who consider themselves the intellectual superiors of the people. (Of course, Winston Churchill was driven from office just two months after winning World War II for the British people, so you never know.)

The point is that there is no natural way for a parliamentary government to fall which would necessitate new elections unless it disintegrated on its own, and the more unified a government, the less likely that is to happen. Netanyahu’s present government is cohesive although not rock-solid. There is a greater chance that some discontented Likud members would foment internal strife than that the Haredi parties would resign (say, over failure to pass a draft exemption bill) but anything is possible. The biggest variable will be the expected mass demonstrations in the streets by the same people who were demonstrating against Netanyahu before the war, and especially how the media will drive the narrative of a country in disarray, just like the media did before the war which greatly contributed to the timing of Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Personally, I cannot blame Netanyahu for Hamas’ invasion or the IDF’s initially tepid response because it is not known what he knew and when he knew it. His conduct of the war has been focused and determined, has inflicted massive harm on the enemy, and is poised to achieve the war aims, given enough time. He has been remarkably unwavering in resisting most aspects of American pressure, something that he has not always done. That being said, he should be held responsible for a series of mistakes both before and during the war. PM Netanyahu is responsible for the “quiet-for-quiet” policy which proved catastrophic to Israel’s security interests. He is responsible for providing food and fuel to our enemy and its hostile civilian population which has prolonged the war, after boasting immediately after the attack that not one drop of fuel or one morsel of food would enter Gaza until all the hostages are released. And if he caved to American pressure because of our need for the replenishment of armaments, then, yes, he too is responsible for not rescinding Ehud Barak’s egregious decision to stop manufacturing light arms and producing missiles in Israel, which would have rendered Israel more immune to American pressure.

The Prime Minister also steadfastly insisted on distinguishing between Hamas and the civilians of Gaza, playing to a Western narrative that is a convenient fiction. Every poll indicates widespread support for Hamas among the Arabs of the land of Israel. That too was a grave error in the conduct of this war. The Shalit deal, forced on the government by mobs of protesters and their media inciters, was a monumental mistake that has led to the current imbroglio. Undoubtedly, all these decisions seemed reasonable, or at least plausible, at the time they were made, and it is impossible to foresee the consequences of choosing differently. Yet, we must, because these decisions were devastating to Israel’s security.

The continued tap-dancing around Rafiach is another blunder, as it would be extremely unlikely that the remaining four Hamas battalions are just sitting there waiting for our attack, as it is unlikely that the hostages are still there as well. For all we know, one out of every fifty tents in the Rafiach encampment contains a hostage, incarcerated by the same Gaza “civilians” for whom we must be show such great deference. After six months, we have no idea where they are and who is alive. These are all functions of leadership and in that Netanyahu must be perceived as lacking.

The problem is that you can’t beat something with nothing – and who in Israel’s political and military leadership is not guilty of the same mistakes, the same flawed conceptions? Gantz and Gallant, Eisenkot and Saar (who also unleashed on Israel the legal dictatorship of Gali Baharav-Miara, who should have been dismissed years ago), Lapid and Lieberman – who hasn’t proffered the same policies over the last twenty years? Who hasn’t suggested surrendering more of our land to the enemy or indulged the two-state illusion? Deri and Goldknopf – both of whom aspire only to leadership of their small segment of the population but not the nation as a whole? Who else will lead? That is Netanyahu’s greatest strength, despite his failings, and that has contributed in no small measure to his extraordinary political longevity.

Indeed, the two politicians who have been consistently correct in their statecraft have been Smotrich and Ben Gvir, now anathematized to Americans and much of the Israeli public for their resolute commitment to eternal values. They are not always right, but the more right they are, the more their enemies hate them. It was FDR who pleaded: “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” They, and Netanyahu, could assert the same sentiment.

The great conservative William F. Buckley once declaimed: “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.” On a similar note, there are moments when I think that I would rather be governed by 120 guys chosen randomly from Golani, or Givati, or Maglan, or Egoz, than the current 120 members of the Knesset. They would represent a very fair cross-section of society, hail from diverse backgrounds and profess different world views – and yet have learned to work together, constructively, productively, efficiently, harmoniously, and successfully, achieving the noblest and most meaningful goals amid sundry challenges and obstacles.

The good news is that the leadership crisis – not only in Israel but across the globe – is part of the Torah’s narrative of the end of days, when we realize that we look in vain to human beings whom we elect for our salvation. Rather, we look to Heaven, and pray for the arrival of His chosen one, the Moshiach, who will usher in an era of endless peace, uphold it through righteousness and justice (Yeshayahu 9:6), who will possess the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Hashem (ibid 11:2).

Let us be worthy of that day and prepare for that era.