Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

(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.

(First published yesterday at Israelnationalnews.com)

President Joe Biden laid down the gauntlet and I accept. In his State of the Union address (what Sen. Marco Rubio indelicately called a “proof of life speech”), he declared: “I say this as a lifelong supporter of Israel, my entire career. No one has a stronger record with Israel than I do. I challenge any of you here. I’m the only American president to visit Israel in wartime.”

I accept the challenge. Indeed, Biden was the first president to visit Israel in wartime, a brief visit in which he expressed support, said some positive things, and promised to aid Israel’s war effort. The flow of weapons has been critical to the success of the war. It is also true that Biden’s repeated references to being “the only American president to visit Israel in wartime” bears some similarity to his visit to the United States’ porous southern border: he visited the southern border so that he could say he visited the southern border, and he visited Israel in wartime so that he could say he visited Israel in wartime.

It is also true that his interactions with Israel since the first week of the war have been schizophrenic. He helps with his right hand and harms with his left. He praises and castigates. He smiles and he scowls. He provides weapons to Israel and demands that we feed and fuel our enemy, something that is unprecedented in wartime. He may have helped to thwart a Hezbollah attack from the north back in October – but they attack every day now. He supports our war effort – as long as we don’t win. He has financially penalized Israeli citizens without charge or trial. He backed our war against Hamas – but then has attempted to place so many restrictions on our conduct of the war that he has prolonged it and impaired our effort to liberate our hostages. (It is odd that he noted the presence of hostage families at the address but then did not mention their names or introduce them to the audience, the traditional custom in that venue.)

He “demands” an end to civilian casualties in Gaza and massive provision of aid to the enemy population – and then kills five of them by clunking them in the head with airdropped American aid. And then he says we “must” find a different way to defeat our enemy who invaded, murdered, raped, marauded, and seized our citizens as hostages. But he does not suggest another way – so he evidently prefers stalemate and the survival of Hamas.

Is Biden the reason for the delayed invasion of Rafiach? Note that because of Biden, Israel telegraphs every move to the enemy. They knew exactly when we would enter Gaza City and Khan Yunis. They knew when we would search Al Shifa Hospital and when we would uncover the Hamas headquarters underneath. It should be no surprise then that wherever our soldiers go they do not find hostages and the Hamas leadership. What are the odds that there are still hostages or Sinwar in Rafiach? Slim, and that is no way to win a war. For that we can blame Biden – and blame our leaders for going along with it.

Biden is at least consistent. He distinguishes between Hamas and the people of Gaza, even though those same people voted for Hamas and cheered – and some even joined – the massacre on October 7. Similarly, Biden now distinguishes between the Netanyahu government and the people of Israel – the same people that elected the Netanyahu government to power and overwhelmingly support the war objectives of the government. Perhaps he doesn’t understand how democracy works or accept its results unless they accord with his own preferences. But elections have consequences, as do invasions.

Biden’s failure to realize that, as well as his gross and unacceptable interference in Israel’s domestic affairs, undermines whatever good will he gained by his visit. He may not like the electoral choices of the Israeli people but it is the essence of hypocrisy even for a politician to try to manipulate Israel’s elections and then complain (falsely, as it turned out) that Vladimir Putin interfered in America’s elections. Is sauce for the goose not also sauce for the gander? Alas, we break no new ground here by using “hypocrisy” and “politician” in the same sentence.

Are his contentions accurate? Has he been a “lifelong supporter” of Israel? Is there no one in the Senate or in the US government, past or present, who does not have a “stronger record”? Can Biden’s challenge be met? Of course.

Biden’s support for Israel paralleled that of traditional Democrats when he began serving in the Senate in 1973. Back when support for Israel was overwhelmingly bipartisan (unlike today), Biden showed his support mainly by voting for the annual foreign aid budget for Israel and a host of other countries. That was normal, nothing exceptional. Back then, Democrats always voted to give money away – some to Israel and other countries but mostly to their own favored projects (it is true today, as well). It is the simplest thing to do; it is not their money, it is the people’s money, and yet the politicians including Biden reap the reward of directing other people’s money to the favored causes.

Is it true that “no one has a stronger record with Israel” than Biden? Hardly. I lived in New York for more than two decades while Biden first served in the Senate. My Senators were Jacob Javits, Daniel Patrick Moynahan, and Al D’Amato. All three were far more supportive of Israel than was Joe Biden. They never tried to dictate policy to Israel and they never threatened Israel as did Joe Biden.

In one well known Biden outburst in 1982, he hectored then Prime Minister Menachem Begin about Jewish settlements in, of all places, Judea, and threatened to halt all aid to Israel unless Begin froze construction. Begin famously responded: “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.” And when Biden lost his temper and banged on the table, Begin added: “This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats.”

We could use a few more such “proud Jews” in our government today. Biden is currently trying to destabilize the Netanyahu government and force new elections. He wants now to come to Israel and address the Knesset to try to browbeat Israel into accepting the two-state illusion and the delusional diplomatic gambit that partitioning the land of Israel again and giving it to our enemies will save us, not destroy us. Proud Jews should inform him that, no, thank you, such a visit is unnecessary now and will not be necessary in the future until proper respect is shown to our elected government and all of its ministers.

Biden in his State of the Union speech then proclaimed: “I challenge any of you here” to show a “stronger record” on Israel. That would have been a good time for some heckling because every present Republican member of the Senate (except maybe for Rand Paul) is far more supportive of Israel than Joe Biden ever was – Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Jim Risch, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, even the underdressed Democratic Senator John Fetterman, and a host of others. This was just another empty Biden boast that is deflated on faint reflection.

What is it then? How can the same person harbor such inconsistencies – friendship and hostility, generous and menacing words? How can Biden proclaim – as he does repeatedly to Jewish audiences in his stock speeches – that he is a Zionist?

The answer is that Biden is a certain type of Zionist. He is the type who believes that Jewish history began in 1948, maybe 1933, but not before 1897. To Biden, Israel’s sole purpose is as “refuge from a Holocaust.” Such a refuge need not be strong, should not be aggressive, should always be accommodating to its enemies, and should certainly not settle the entirety of the land of Israel.

Biden is not a “Zionist” who has any knowledge of or interest in Jewish destiny, in the grand return to Israel after millennia of exile as foretold in the Bible, or in the great mission of the Jewish people. That is why he is so solicitous of our enemies, stipulating that we feed and fuel them, release their murderers from our jails, and consistently construes our land as their land.

What exacerbates his myopia and makes it especially grating is an ignorance of American history. He touts his Scranton roots, oblivious to the fact that Scranton was built on the land of the Lenape Indians who were killed or driven off. He then moved to Delaware, which was also Lenape territory. Biden grew up on occupied lands and still lives there, proudly, unabashedly – and yet lectures us about Judea and Samaria, the biblical heartland of Israel.

He also doesn’t seem to realize that Americans marching west to fulfill their “manifest destiny” was entirely based on the concept that “might makes right,” and nothing more elegant than that. But Israel is the only nation on earth that has a real “manifest destiny,” recorded again and again in the Bible that Joe Biden purports to covet, that connects us to this land – G-d’s land – like no other nation is connected to any other land on earth (see Keepgodsland.com). Moreover, again to quote Menachem Begin, our residence in the land of Israel is based on “right makes might.” The “right” came first and with the blessings of Divine Providence our generation was rewarded with the might to conquer the land and retain all those areas that we have not foolishly surrendered to our enemies.

Joe Biden is a “refuge” Zionist – not a “destiny” Zionist or a Biblical Zionist. That is why he can endorse whatever little Israel needs to do to retain the “refuge” but nothing more than that. But the age of those Zionists is long gone and can only hinder our destiny going forward. Thus, he sees no inconsistency in demanding a cease fire, in halting our march to victory, or in courting the radical Arab vote in America. It should be alarming to American Jews that Biden’s recent turn against Israel is motivated, many say, by a desire not to lose the “Arab vote” in the fall election. Apparently, he does not fear losing the Jewish vote! Will American Jews see the writing on the wall? It is there, in neon lights.

We should realize that for all his support – and it has been needed and welcome – Biden is ultimately contemptuous towards Israel’s government and, by extension, the people that voted for that government. He is a “lifelong supporter” of a certain type of Israel – docile, concessionary, secular, and deferential to American interests, however flawed, misguided, or fanciful those interests are.

In the Rabbinic axiom, “kabdehu v’chashdehu,” we should respect him and suspect him. He has done some good things and some terrible things – but his geo-strategic vision is so limited that it endangers our future. In his own mind, he has a strong record of support for Israel, and he will not be convinced otherwise. We should keep him at arm’s length.