Tag: Benjamin Netanyahu

Bibi’s evolving Hamas story

On By Martin Kramer

Last November, I asked this question: why didn’t Benjamin Netanyahu keep his 2009 campaign promise to topple Hamas? I found at least part of the answer in his 2022 memoir, Bibi: My Story.

In that account, Netanyahu explained, first, that “the cost in blood and treasure was not worth it.” Overthrowing Hamas would involve the loss of “many hundreds [of soldiers] on the Israeli side,” burden Israel with governing Gaza “for an indefinite period,” and result in “the wholesale destruction of Gaza, with tens of thousands of civilian deaths.” Second, it wasn’t a priority. “Did I really want to tie down the IDF in Gaza for years,” he wrote, “when we had to deal with Iran and a possible Syrian front? The answer was categorically no. I had bigger fish to fry.”

In a new interview with TIME, conducted by Eric Cortellessa, Netanyahu preempts the question before it is asked. After rationalizing the Qatari funding of Gaza, he explains that before October 7, he had conducted “three full-fledged military campaigns against Hamas in which we killed thousands of terrorists, eliminated some of their top military leadership, and sought to prevent them from having the capacity to attack us.” But he adds this:

One thing we didn’t do was we didn’t come out to eradicate Hamas completely, because that would require a full-scale ground invasion for which we had no internal legitimacy or international legitimacy. Look at the problem we have with legitimacy now, after they conducted the worst terror onslaught on the Jewish people since the Holocaust…. We sort of cut the weeds, but we didn’t come in to uproot them completely until October 7th. October 7th showed that those who said that Hamas was deterred were wrong. If anything, I didn’t challenge enough the assumption that was common to all the security agencies.

The interviewer said he would “come back to that in a second,” and when he did, he formulated the question in his own pointed way: “Why didn’t you take out Hamas earlier? You could have gone all the way in 2014.” Netanyahu responded:

No I couldn’t. I don’t think there was—there wasn’t a consensus. There was, in fact, a consensus among the military that we shouldn’t do it. But more importantly, you can overrule the military, but you can’t act in a vacuum. There was no public, no domestic support for such an action. There was certainly no international support for such an action, and you need both or at least one of them in order to take such an action. I think that became evident right after the October 7th massacre.

“I decided”

These explanations differ significantly from the rationales Netanyahu provided in his memoir. There, it isn’t the public that lacks “consensus” over toppling Hamas; rather, “The public invariably expects the government to continue the battle and ‘flatten Gaza,’ believing that with enough punishment the Hamas regime would collapse.” In his memoir, Netanyahu credited himself with tempering this unrealistic expectation, which was fueld by political rivals who would “irresponsibly take contrarian positions which they know are wrong.” The final decision he claimed for himself alone: “I decided against a full-scale ground invasion.”

As for the need for “international” (largely American) legitimacy, Netanyahu made no mention of it in his memoir. While he obviously faced constraints during the eight years of Barack Obama, everything changed during his four-year partnership with Donald Trump. A centerpiece of the memoir is Netanyahu’s exploitation of Trump’s unprecedented support, from enhancing the Israeli status of Jerusalem and the Golan to rolling back the Iran nuclear deal. There is no evidence that Netanyahu prioritized Gaza.

And that brings us to the most important difference in Netanyahu’s latest apologia. It makes no mention of his earlier view of the relative threat posed by Hamas. According to Netanyahu’s own strategic priorities, a final showdown with Hamas would have been a trap: “After destroying the Hamas regime, Israel would have to govern two million Gazans for an indefinite period. I had no intention of doing that, especially since I had my gaze fixed on Iran, a much greater threat.”

Netanyahu, then, wasn’t simply aligning with the “consensus” of “security agencies” and the public when he held back on Hamas. Clearly, he calculated his priorities and took a decision that ended a policy debate. The TIME interview is disappointing for not quoting his memoir. Bibi: My Story offers the most comprehensive statement of his pre-October 7 strategy.

Another question remains unlikely to be answered: Did Hamas leaders who read the relevant passages of his memoir in 2022 conclude that Netanyahu, should he return to power, would be preoccupied elsewhere? Did they believe that as long as Netanyahu ruled, they enjoyed immunity from destruction? And did this belief embolden them to implement their plan, assuming he would stop short of toppling them? The mere possibility serves as a warning to all leaders: one should never publish one’s most closely held strategic thoughts before stepping down for good.

Bibi: My Story sold well. In November 2022, it spent three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It remains the most reliable starting point for understanding the events leading up to October 7.

Header image created by DALL-E, OpenAI’s image generation model.

Israel must never stand alone

On By Martin Kramer

Israeli politicians often assert that Israel can and will “defend itself by itself,” a longstanding formula dating back decades. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated it often. But he’s added an amplification: Israel will do so “even if we must stand alone.”

From here, from Jerusalem, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, I send a message, loud and clear: ‘You will not tie our hands.’ If Israel is forced to stand alone, we will stand alone, and will continue to smite our enemies until we achieve victory. Even if we must stand alone, we will continue fighting human evil.

This is borrowed from Winston Churchill, specifically his “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech in the House of Commons after Dunkirk in June 1940. There he said Britain would fight “to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.”

Netanyahu isn’t the first leader to steal a phrase from the incomparable Sir Winston. But it’s a very partial crib, as Churchill said more in that speech, and it’s the forgotten part that is more relevant.

No sooner had he spoken of fighting “if necessary alone” than he began to name allies: “The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.”

And then this:

We shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas… would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

When Churchill aimed to raise the morale and stiffen the resolve of the British people, he promised more than blood, toil, tears, and sweat. He also promised the support of allies. When he wanted to warn Hitler against an invasion, he alluded to American intervention. The speech is about the courage to fight—and the value of alliances, especially with America. America had “power and might,” and it would come to “rescue” and “liberate” Britain.

The only friend that counts

In his Holocaust Day speech, Netanyahu said: “We know we are not alone because countless decent people around the world support our just cause.” But this is anemic. Countless people, decent and otherwise, also support the Palestinian cause. And the question isn’t whether your friends can or can’t be counted; it’s whether they are strong enough to help you stand up in a crisis. As with Britain, so with Israel, that friend is the United States.

Since October 7, Israel has not stood alone for a moment. In the direct channel, there has been a U.S. airlift of thousands of tons of war materiel, the largest since 1973. Dozens of U.S. C-17s and 747 cargo planes have shuttled in and out of Israel from U.S. bases around the world: Dover in Delaware, and bases in Germany, Qatar, Spain, Italy, and Greece. More than half of the munitions in this war have come from the United States. Looking ahead, Congress has appropriated $14 billion in special military aid to Israel.

Regionally and internationally, the United States has deployed its premier naval assets to Israel’s shores and the Red Sea approaches to deter both Hezbollah and Iran. It played an indispensable role in coordinating the region-wide blunting of the Iranian barrage on Israel on April 13. Additionally, it has provided a diplomatic firewall for Israel in hostile international forums and wavering capitals.

Has there been a grinding of gears in the U.S.-Israel relationship? Obviously. But as Churchill once put it, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.”

The wrong lesson

Israelis often say that the lesson of the Second World War is that, since no one stepped up to save the Jews during the Holocaust, the Jewish state must be prepared to fight alone. This past Holocaust Day, Netanyahu quoted a Holocaust survivor who told him that “gentiles (goyim) who make promises are not to be trusted.”

These heroic survivors are right. In the terrible Holocaust, there were great leaders in the world who stood by, so the first lesson of the Holocaust is this: If we don’t protect ourselves, no one will protect us.

But Israel is more similar to the states of pre-war Europe—Czechoslovakia and Poland, Belgium and Holland, even France and Britain—than to the stateless Jews who perished. Like Israel, these states had sovereignty, armies, industrial bases, weapons factories, and even fleets. However, they lacked strong, committed allies, so Nazi Germany either overran them or, in Britain’s case, bombed them relentlessly.

Their lesson from that war wasn’t that “we will continue fighting human evil even if we must stand alone.” It was that you must never stand alone. If you want to defeat human evil, you must rely on powerful allies. The combination of smallness and isolation invites aggression; strong alliances deter it. Today, these states are all embedded in an alliance system centered around the United States.

Leave no doubt

Israelis are a proud lot, and with good reason. Israel has the size and population of New Jersey. If you dropped New Jersey on the far shores of the Eastern Mediterranean, it might struggle to survive. Americans, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are right to admire a Jewish state that has held its own and more for seventy-six years.

But it’s time for its leader to stop talking like a Holocaust survivor and act like what he is: the head of a sovereign but small state whose job is to leave Israel’s enemies in no doubt that the Jewish state will never stand alone. To even suggest that “the gentiles” might shun it is an invitation to unending assaults. Any leader who errs there should be left by the Israeli people to fight for his own political survival—alone.

Header image created by DALL-E, OpenAI’s image generation model.

The accountable leader from Golda to Bibi

On By Martin Kramer

During these days in April, fifty years ago, Israel was engulfed in turmoil.

On April 1, 1974, the Agranat Commission, a national commission of inquiry established to investigate the failures of intelligence and preparedness leading to the Yom Kippur War, published its initial findings. It laid most of the blame on IDF Chief of Staff David (“Dado”) Elazar and Director of Military Intelligence Eli Zeira, leading to their immediate resignations. But the commission found no fault with Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. The commission concluded that “reasonable conduct” for a government minister effectively equated to merely rubber-stamping the advice provided by military commanders.

Protests erupted over the lenient treatment of Israel’s political leaders, particularly Dayan. As the minister of defense in 1967, he had garnered laurels for the victory. Now, holding the same office, he was evading responsibility for the catastrophe. The protests overwhelmed Meir, who was already burdened with guilt and remorse. On April 10, she resigned, automatically precipitating the government’s collapse. After a new government was established in June, Meir retired from politics, and Dayan exited the cabinet, his prospects for leading Israel irreparably damaged.

In the six months from October 1973 to April 1974, Israel had struggled to regain its footing. After the initial Arab offensive, Israel turned the tables on two Arab armies backed by the Soviet Union. In November, Israel concluded a prisoner exchange with Egypt, and by January, it reached a separation of forces agreement in the Sinai. (Similar agreements with Syria were secured in May.) At the end of December, Israel conducted delayed elections, which were originally scheduled for October. Meir led Labor to an electoral victory, albeit with a diminished majority. Meanwhile, throughout that winter, the commission of inquiry meticulously gathered testimony from Meir, Dayan, Elazar, Zeira, and fifty-four others across 140 sessions.


First meeting in Jerusalem of the Agranat Commission, November 27, 1973. Credit: Sa’ar Ya’akov, National Photo Collection, Government Press Office.

As Abba Eban, then Foreign Minister, later recalled,

the imminent publication of the Agranat report brooded over our scene like a hot, humid sky waiting to explode. When the cloudburst came, all the elements of stability in our society were flooded away. If the intention in appointing the committee had been to bind up the nation’s wounds, the exact opposite occurred.

Israel could only move forward if the leaders responsible for the catastrophe departed. Only then, and despite the pain of huge losses, could Israel begin to rebuild and heal. Meir’s resignation finally made that possible.

The numbing of Israel

Compare the situation today. We are also six months into an October war, the one that began on October 7, 2023. The IDF is still fighting, not against two armies but against two terrorist groups. Over a hundred innocent Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza by Hamas. Tens of thousands of citizens are displaced from northern Israel by Hezbollah fire, and cannot safely return to their homes. The government hasn’t established a commission of inquiry, and no official body has collected testimony under oath. There’s been no official assignment of responsibility, and no one has resigned. All this, we are told, must await the elusive “total victory.” Much of the public is still numb. Reconstruction and healing can’t begin.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on whose watch the October 7 debacle occurred, has effectively stopped the political clock: he will only explain himself “after the war.” In the meantime, he says that Israeli elections would be a victory for the enemy and, in any case, “elections have a date, it’s in a few years.”

When asked about his responsibility, he avoids mentioning the obvious parallel of Yom Kippur and promotes other, more remote analogies: “Did people ask Franklin Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, that question? Did people ask George Bush after the surprise attack” of 9/11? His preference is self-explanatory: FDR continued in office for over three years after Pearl Harbor, and George Bush, over seven years after 9/11.

First shoots

Golda Meir wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of a commission of inquiry, and even told her government that “heads would not roll.” But she understood that Israel needed an accounting. Despite her formal exoneration, she accepted the verdict of an angry public, despite having won an election after the war.

Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t enthusiastic either but sees no need for an accounting. Après moi, le déluge could be his motto; and though the deluge actually occurred on his watch, he predicts a worse outcome if it sweeps him away. (One outcome, certainly worse for him, involves battling criminal charges in court.) So, whereas there was a public accounting and a course correction in 1974, today, neither has occurred.

Still, one enduring lesson of both October wars is that even when nothing seems to be happening, something is stirring. Political protests are sprouting from the ashes. Just as in the spring of 1974, so too in the spring of 2024, demonstrations are swelling in size and volume. Alongside these protests, the wider public’s demand for accountability intensifies. Those who occupied the nation’s top positions on October 7 will have to account for their actions or, more precisely, their inaction, sooner than they’d like. Israel’s very survival depends on rooting out the sources of catastrophic failures, lest such failures become normalized or, worse, routine.

That’s how Israel picked itself up in 1974. That’s what it must do in 2024.

Header image: Protestors call for the resignation of the government and Moshe Dayan, April 1974. Credit: Dan Hadani Collection, The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, The National Library of Israel.