By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Dec 5, 2023
Benjamin Netanyahu must go. Now. Before he wreaks further havoc.
Israel’s prime minister has become a veritable albatross around his country’s neck. And the oft-heard argument that it is unwise to change leaders in the middle of a war is utter rubbish.
Sticking with a failed political or military leader in wartime just so that said leader can continue to enjoy the perks of power is nonsensical at best and potentially disastrous.
It’s worth noting that David Lloyd George replaced Herbert Asquith as Britain’s prime minister in 1916, right in the middle of World War I, and France changed its prime minister four times during that same war. Both countries ended up on the winning side in that conflict.
On May 7, 1940, eight months after the outbreak of World War II, Conservative backbencher Leo Amery called for the ouster of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government. “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing,” Amery declared in the House of Commons, paraphrasing Oliver Cromwell. “Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”
This was shortly after Germany had launched its invasion of Norway, with German warships able to enter Norwegian ports unopposed. Three days later, Chamberlain was out and Winston Churchill became prime minister . . . in the middle of a war.
“Wars are won,” Amery said in the same speech, “not by explanations after the event but by foresight . . . . We were told by the prime minister on 2nd May that all except a relatively small advance guard of the Expeditionary Force which was earmarked for Finland had gone elsewhere and that the ships had been taken for employment for other purposes. Even the small, inadequate nucleus that was kept in being had no transports except warships. Why was this done? For months we had been aware that the Germans had been accumulating troops and transports and practicing embarkation and disembarkation against somebody.”
Amery’s words have resonated ominously with many of us over the course of the past nine weeks, but especially so in light of Friday’s explosive front page New York Times revelation that Israeli military and intelligence officials had had in their possession for more than a year a detailed blueprint of the devastating attack that Hamas was able to execute on Oct. 7.
Still, whatever else one can say about Chamberlain, he did not recklessly allow Nazi SS squads to storm across the channel and murder 1,200— or even a single—British civilians, or violently kidnap over 230—or even a single—British citizens as hostages. He also never moved British troops from strategic positions to, say, Scotland.
In February 2001, one day after the hawkish Ariel Sharon decisively defeated then Prime Minister Ehud Barak in a national election for Israel’s political leadership, Netanyahu wrote in The New York Times that the outgoing “Barak government failed to fulfill its primary duty to protect and defend the lives of Israel’s citizens.” It will not be lost on anyone with an IQ in the triple digits that on Oct. 7, the Netanyahu government “failed to fulfill its primary duty to protect and defend the lives of Israel’s citizens” in spectacular fashion.
Netanyahu continued: “Mr. Barak has lost this election not merely because of personal failings but because of failed policies.” By Netanyahu’s own standards, he should have resigned or been forced to resign in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 since that day’s carnage was a direct consequence of both his “personal failings” and his “failed policies.”
By personal failings I’m not just referring to his multiple criminal indictments which in and of themselves should have ended his political career long ago. I, for one, am far more turned off by his desperate need to hang on to that power at any cost, including by casting his lot with racist ultranationalist extremists in an attempt to scuttle Israel’s independent judiciary so as to prevent it from forcing him out of office if he were to be convicted at trial.
Netanyahu and his motley crew, on the other hand, diverted three military battalions from the Gaza border to the West Bank prior to Oct.7, ostensibly to protect the Jewish settlers there but in reality to placate and curry favor with extremist, far-right members of his government.
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