Netanyahu: Profile in Courage

As you know, the Biden administration, taking a cue from New York Times columnist Tommy Friedman, believes that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is the primary obstacle to the achievement of peace in the Middle East.

It is a grotesque distortion, a willingness to blame anyone but the Biden administration for the mess that is currently unfolding in that region.

But, for someone who has been counted out over and over again, Netanyahu continues to prevail. After killing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Rafah and eradicating the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon, he is riding a new wave of popularity.

Historian Niall Ferguson has compared Bibi with Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor. He offers this background on Bibi:

Between 2018 and 2022, Israel held five elections in which one of the rallying cries of the opposition was “Just not Bibi.” In August last year, Israel was racked by anti-Netanyahu protests that drew hundreds of thousands to the streets, including almost every member of the country’s cultural and even military elite. The surprise attack of October 7 was seemingly the final nail in Netanyahu’s political coffin.

And yet, and yet, Netanyahu has prevailed militarily. Winning forgives most sins.

And no wonder. Hamas has largely been vanquished in Gaza, its remaining fighters confined to tunnels under a heap of rubble. More impressively, Israel has conducted arguably the most successful clandestine operation of the Twenty-first century, maiming around 3,000 Hezbollah operatives with exploding pagers. And it is waging a war in all but name in Lebanon, attacking more than 5,000 targets in the past month and eliminating sixteen of Hezbollah’s most senior operatives.

Ferguson adds that Netanyahu has also been a master of Realpolitik:

Asked what a historian might think about him in twenty or thirty years, Netanyahu replied: “The United States was declining. But Israel was able to resist the regional ambitions of Iran by defeating or containing the tentacles of the octopus.” He added that in pursuing this objective, he always took care to avoid antagonizing “superpowers,” meaning Russia and China. The future historian may add that, by focusing relentlessly on the Iranian threat, Netanyahu succeeded in building bridges to the Arab states, including those in the Gulf, while at the same time marginalizing the Palestinians. The Abraham Accords were the result not of idealism but of vintage Realpolitik. In pursuit of his goals, Netanyahu has worked with Russia in Syria, enabled Hamas in Gaza and defied first Barack Obama and then Joe Biden in Washington.

And, it is worth underscoring, yet again, Netanyahu did not merely need to buck Israeli opinion. He rejected the guidance offered by Joe Biden and, before that, by Barack Obama. It is fair to call him a profile in courage.

Forasmuch, he is standing tall against the threat posed by Iran. And he is doing so at a time when the United States is retreating from world leadership.

Of course, Tommy Friedman insists that he is right and that the death of Sinwar will usher in a new world where the two state solution comes into being. Tommy has been consistently wrong. And he has consistently second-guessed Netanyahu. He will never admit to his own errors.

And then, Bret Stephens, in the very same New York Times, explains that there is little chance that the death of Sinwar will move everyone toward a two state solution. 

Many Israelis, most of all the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, feel they’re finally winning the war; they will want to press the military initiative in Gaza and Lebanon despite the terrible risk to the remaining hostages. Whoever next takes charge of Hamas will not want to make a conciliatory move toward Israel as his first leadership act; it could easily be his last.

Fair enough. Responding to the Friedman pipe dream, Stephens writes this:

There’s an argument that ending the war immediately and establishing a technocratic government in Gaza that doesn’t formally include Hamas could marginalize the group politically. 

The problem with the first idea is that it misunderstands how Hamas maintains its rule: not through popularity but through terror. If Hamas, however diminished, can maintain its arms, it will enforce its writ. The problem with the second is that it fails to understand how de-radicalization in a place like Gaza could work — which is not by giving Gazans a moral incentive to wage a long-running guerrilla war. 

The notion that Israelis can marginalize Hamas by making a deal with the Palestinian Authority misses the point, namely, that the PA is allied with Hamas, and that any effort by its leaders to make a deal with Israel will likely cost them their lives.

The Palestinian people have sacrificed three generations to a mindless quest to kill Jews and to take back a land that is no longer the land that they left. Short of a complete defeat for Hamas, the chances that this will happen are nil.

The trick lies in finding a way between two competing imperatives: the need to continue to destroy Hamas as a force that can rule Gaza, but to do so in a way that doesn’t justify, among many Palestinians, its status as a legitimate “resistance” movement.

But, Stephens has a vision for a prosperous Palestine:

Finally, an Arab mandate for Palestine, which I first proposed back in March, could provide a long-term answer for all sides: a credible Arab-led security force in Gaza; European-led economic reconstruction; a long-term path toward a politically moderate, economically prosperous Palestinian state; closer ties between Israel and friendly Arab states. 

Of course, there is currently a Palestinian state. It’s called Jordan. It is not economically prosperous and does not enshrine the principles of liberal democracy.

The per capita GDP in Jordan is around $4500. In Israel, it’s $55,000. If you think that a new Palestinian state is going to prosper, you are dreaming.

Its goal has always been to destroy Israel and to kill Jews. Until it is defeated decisively that will be its goal. And even then.

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