Has Benjamin Netanyahu Endangered Every Jew In The World?
By
Leonard Zwelling
Since 1948, Israel has been the Jewish homeland. It was the first recognized homeland of the Jewish people in about 2000 years. All of the previous Jewish governments in Israel lasted under 100 years each. That is not a sterling track record for my people when it comes to independent self-governance, yet we tried again in the shadow of the Shoah to finally find a place where we could be ourselves and live without fear of persecution and death.
Today, the weight of Jewish survival rests largely upon the governments of two countries, Israel, obviously, and the United States of America. Perhaps more than at any other time in my life, a life that began in the same year as the modern state of Israel began, the interests of the United States and Israel are diverging over the consequences of the joint attack on Iran by Israel and the U.S.
Israel wants Iran destroyed, the mullahs gone, the Iranian proxies driven from territory surrounding Israel, and the nuclear threat eradicated. Mr. Trump just wants the price of gas to drop–again. He bit off more than he could chew when he joined Israel in bombing Iran. He has realized it is no longer doing him, or his fellow Republicans running in November, any good. Further, as former National Security Advisor John Bolton noted in The Wall Street Journal on July 13, the bombing of 2026 has left Iran is disarray, not speaking with one voice, and economically crippled. In essence, “Iran is too weak to make peace.” (https://www.wsj.com/opinion/iran-is-too-weak-to-make-peace-4aabb236?mod=opinion_lead_pos8)
This unusual U.S.-Israel schism is occurring in the wake of the Israeli response to the atrocities of October 7, 2023 when Hamas breached the border between Israel and Gaza and killed 1200 Israelis and captured 250 more, many of whom also died. Israel’s response to the invasion was lethal. The Israel Defense Force leveled Gaza. The Israeli military has been reported to have killed over 70,000 Palestinian Arabs. Add to this the invasion of Southern Lebanon to stop Hezbollah and the continued persecution of the Arabs on the West Bank, often by Israeli settlers, and you begin to realize that the Netanyahu government has killed a lot of civilians in the past three years.
Despite this, Israel may not be any safer than it was on October 6, 2023, but it has surely become a pariah nation around the world. And what people think of Israel, is what they think of Jews. Thus, every Jew on this planet may be at risk based on the behavior of one man, and that man is not Donald Trump. It is Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Netanyahu believes that it is in Israel’s interest to kill as many Arabs as possible no matter where they live near Israel. His behavior has turned the world’s initial sympathy for Israel on October 7, 2023 into hate, scorn, and frankly, anti-Semitism. His cabinet ministers clearly want to annex the entirety of the West Bank. Now who wants the territory from “the river to the sea?”
In the United States, recent Democratic elections in New York became contests among rivals who tried to outdo each other vilifying the state of Israel. Many of these politicians are socialists. If the Democratic Party believes its future is in socialism, it may become a party limited to Philadelphia, New York City, and Denver. America is still a right of center country. Socialism in America is not part of a winning political strategy. Got that, Bernie?
Where did this all go wrong?
It started when Israelis gave Netanyahu another chance at the premiership despite his coalition being dominated by the extreme right wing of Israeli Knesset membership as well as Netanyahu’s clinging to power to escape the Israeli justice system and accountability for October 7.
After October 7, Mr. Netanyahu needed to really consider his options. If he invaded Gaza and killed many, which he did, what would be gained? If instead, he had approached the Sunni Gulf states and asked for their help in ridding Gaza of Hamas or teamed then with President Biden to clamp down on Iran and its support for its violent proxies, might this current wave of Israeli hate have been avoided? We will never know. Besides, at that point in late 2023, Mr. Biden was barely functional.
Like it or not, all of us Jews are judged by the world’s opinion of Israel. When Israel was an underdog at war (1967, 1973), Jews were proud of Israel and we were treated better than we had been in a thousand years. Now, many call Israel’s aggression genocide. Whether it fits the definition, there can be no doubt that Israel officially killed tens of thousands of innocent people and certainly has not advanced any peace process on the West Bank. In fact, the situation in the West Bank is almost beyond hope for a two-state solution. Israel has essentially and functionally annexed a great deal of the territory and spends many shekels and many man-hours suppressing violence in West Bank cities.
At the time of the October 7 attack, I wondered aloud, “what if Israel does nothing right now and instead tries to expand the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia?” Jewish anger and anguish may have precluded such a response, but in retrospect, every Jew on Earth would have been better off. Could we all have been smarter and not killed the thousands despite our justifiable rage?
This situation can only get better if the people of Israel elect a different government than the one currently in power. If it takes a deal to keep Bibi out of jail to get him to retire, that seems like a good deal to me. What he really needs to answer for is not the cigars and champagne, but the lack of adequate defense of his people on October 7. Their deaths happened on his watch. An investigation of why is necessary.
As I have written before, this is a difficult time for us Jews, in Israel and in the United States. The political party (Democratic) we once predominantly backed is going off the rails, and many MAGA supporters want to turn America into a Christian nation in which we may or may not be allowed to vote.
Ronald Reagan famously said in the 1980 presidential campaign, and I paraphrase, a recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. A recovery is when President Carter loses his.
Mr. Netanyahu has to lose his job as soon as possible for the survival of Israel and for the survival of Jews everywhere.
