3 Comments

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

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

“ But there is a vast difference between maneuvering within political constraints and being fundamentally cynical and self-interested. It’s a character judgment, ultimately, and I simply think that Biden is a political leader of vastly superior character to Netanyahu.”

Yes, the character of elected leadership must be considered discretely from the political and strategic forces they struggle to navigate. I wish more people had your understanding. Unfortunately, it may well be that not enough of us do. *IF* more Americans DID have this understanding, Biden’s presidency would not be so endangered by the current Israeli meltdown in seriousness and humanity which is so tragic in so many soul crushing ways.

As deplorable as Netanyahu is though, he is not to blame for what so many (including me) think of as the genocidal onslaught on Gaza. In parallel, if Trump should somehow reoccupy the White House, this will be less of an indictment of the US political system, or Biden’s judgement, as it would be of the collective character of the US citizenry.

In the case of Israel there are tragic reasons why even a leader of great integrity and immense courage might have followed a course that, up until nearly now, would not have been drastically different from Bibi’s. But if Biden continues to stiffen his position, another less legally and less morally compromised leader, or simply one with different coalition partners, could creditably claim that he failed to achieve “total victory” over Hamas because of “misguided” US interference. How the Israeli electorate would respond is beyond my ken.

In the US there are many who view the international situation as so full of danger and treachery, that they only feel comfortable with a leader willing and able to operate as if governed mainly by the rule of “nature, red in tooth and claw” (or like a brutal crafty Mafia don). In Israel, this type of mentality is even more understandable given the precarious nature of the state of Israel’s geopolitical situation and the tragic history of “the people of Israel.”

I can hope (and would also pray if I was a certain type of “believer”) that Biden’s character and the currents of domestic politics and strategic geopolitics guide a policy that helps bring about justice for Palestinian people, and that circumstances evolve so that more Israeli citizens come to understand what their (too ignored and too often disparaged) luminaries have LONG been trying to tell them. This is that the lessons of the Holocaust MUST include the awareness that ALL peoples (not only Jews AND Palestinians) deserve the status of persons with dignity and citizens with rights as part of decent state that ensures they are treated that way and not as disposable organisms or noxious pests.

I AM a believer to the extent that I know that most Israelis along with most Americans and most of the world’s populations believe that Israel can, MUST, and WILL somehow live in peace together in the same land with Arab Palestinians. I also believe that most Israelis know somewhere buried in the central core of their understandings though, for so many understandable reasons, it remains too painful to fully acknowledge.

Expand full comment