Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Bayesian's avatar

n.b. the following should not be read as any endorsement of Netanyahu, Likud, any particular Israeli action or inaction, etc.

"Netanyahu did not resign after the unprecedented debacle of October 7th, nor has he promised to do so as soon as conditions permit a change of leadership. Any leader with a normal relationship to democratic accountability and the need for national unity in a wartime context would have done so. "

Really? I'm trying to come up with examples and failing, but I trust you will jog my memory with suitable cases (at which point I am going to be very embarrassed that I can't think of any :) ).

Chamberlain after Norway and Eden after Suez are the closest that I can think of**. And Eden tried fairly hard to hold on to power, in the absence of the cynical considerations that apply to Bibi (I generally have a pretty high opinion of Eden and view it as a pity that his final act was such a tragic failure, based significantly on misreading Eisenhower's reasonably clear IMHO communications).

I don't recall Meir offering to resign after the Yom Kippur debacle (she did eventually resign in June 1974, but only after Alignment lost five seats in the Dec 73 election and even then she managed to form a government (granted a very short lived one, since the Agranat Commission interim report released April 1 1974 held her sort of vaguely responsible). FDR didn't resign after the debacle (that could have been far worse) of Pearl Harbor and the opening weeks of the Philippine/Indonesian campaign(s).

** I'm having a somewhat hard time coming up with many examples of military or paramilitary (as in Hamas) debacles where

1) either the security apparatus broadly, military, intelligence, diplomatic, etc. was caught napping as badly 10/7/23 and 12/7/41, or else a truly spectacular own goal like 1971 in Pakistan or the Falklands for the Galtieri regime; and

2) a typical post-WW2 first world level of democratic accountability.

Suez was a badly failed adventure for France (successful overall for Israel), but Mollet did not offer to resign (he did resign as PM eight months later, but hardly voluntarily - maintaining a working majority in the late Fourth Republic was hard for anyone).

Expand full comment
Argentus's avatar

The problem with this assessment is that if you think Netanyahu is an untrustworthy weasel who should step down and that Israel should not blow Gaza to smithereens, the time to make that argument is *before* Gaza is blown to smithereens. It's extremely stupid to suddenly start making this argument when Gaza is 85% blown to smithereens. Like, look, the post war governance problem in Gaza was *always* there and stopping now will only change two things:

1) 15ish% of Gaza will be slightly less blown to smithereens

2) Hamas gets to claim a victory like Hezbollah did when Israel left Lebanon

That's it. There is no do over button. The idea that the Gaza governance problem hinges on whether Israel steps foot in Rafah or not is absurd.

And, no, I think there is ample evidence that Biden is operating on political expediency. The reason he didn't vocally, publicly, consistently raise these concerns (up to and including threatening arms shipments) right after October 7 was because everyone was very pro-Israel at that moment. If he was deeply worried about humanitarian disaster and post-war governance in Gaza he should have been aggressively pushing those points before most of Gaza was rubble. He's doing it now because public sentiment has shifted. This is not confidence instilling *at all.* Benjamin Netanyahu is a weasel. That doesn't mean Biden isn't overwhelmingly responding to public sentiment either.

Here's my two cents of gut level analysis. The reason left of center people in the USA don't like Netanyahu isn't because he is a weasel. Weasel politicians are a dime a dozen. They dislike him because he successfully obstructed Barak Obama much like Ted Cruz did. The criticism I'm most inclined to trust on Netanyahu is not American liberals. It's right wing Israelis. These analyses are available. I almost never see them presented in American media.

Expand full comment
1 more comment...

No posts