How Do You Solve a Problem Like Netanyahu

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Netanyahu

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

May 31, 2024

He is politically ruthless. He is willing to align with extreme (some call them fanatic) right-wing politicians regardless of their unsavory characters (and sometimes prior criminal convictions) while pushing out anyone who might pose an actual threat to his hold on power. In many people’s eyes he is dictatorial, while according to others he is powerless to bring order to a country and people riven by a multitude of cultures and opinions. Not to mention ineffective in the face of his wife’s demands and authority to hire and fire at will, and unable (or unwanting) to shut down his son Yair’s controversial polemics on social media.

Without question, however, Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu’s grasp on power in Israeli politics is unmatched. He is well into his 16th year as Prime Minister, well outspanning David Ben Gurion’s stretch of 13 years and Golda Meir’s 5 years. Like many other powerful leaders, he is a populist—while others see him as an elitist. He has promised the kibbutzim and towns in the region enveloping the Gaza Strip peace and security—only to sustain seventeen years of relentless rockets and terror attacks. He has promised security and a quick return home to tens of thousands of evacuated residents of the Galilee region—a promise unfulfilled for more than seven months now as Hezbollah continues ceaselessly to shell the region and set fires to fields, orchards and homes.

He is too strong.

He is too weak.

He will stay but won’t listen to what you say.

Netanyahu succeeded in developing Israel’s economy to unprecedented levels, securing Israel’s position internationally through agricultural, medical, technological and other endeavors.

Yet, under his watch, the bloodiest and most tragic terror attack on Israel and the Jewish People since the Holocaust took place on October 7.

He has engaged Israel in one of the longest wars it has had to fight since the War of Independence (1947-1949) and the War of Attrition (1967-1970). In the process, Israel has become isolated, condemned and reviled internationally. 

Throughout the enlightened world, it isn’t Israel that is blamed for the current “situation.” It’s Netanyahu.

Never mind that the current war was started by Hamas, supported by its evil sisters, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, all funded, trained and equipped by the Iranian ayatollahs and their regime that has sworn to wipe Israel off the map.

Never mind that 125 of the 240 or more hostages taken into captivity in Gaza by Hamas terrorists on that cursed day in October are still not home (God alone knows if any of them are still alive) and have not yet been seen by Red Cross or other “humanitarian” organizations that have been surprisingly (?) quick to blame Israel. Never mind the ongoing indiscriminate attacks against civilian population centers in Israel—it is Israel (read: Netanyahu) that’s condemned in the United Nations and the international kangaroo courts that this august body of hypocrisy has set up for the sole purpose of isolating Israel as the only perpetrator of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the world.

Never mind the antisemitism that has once again become the approved social norm rather than the vilest form of hatred, prejudice and racism that for almost a century now has been restricted to the scum-filled fringe of society, but which now has found new, vibrant life behind the façade of anti-Zionism, anti-Israelism (and in its most refined version, anti-Netanyahuism).

Never mind that Israel is fighting a war for its existence and for its right to defend itself. Never mind that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brothers, the target of Egypt’s hatred (and expulsion), of Syrian mass murder and extermination (anywhere between 10 and 40 THOUSAND between 1976 and 1982) and expulsion from Jordan and other Muslim countries. Never mind all that. It’s Israel that’s accused of genocide—and most nauseatingly, compared to Nazism.

As the war continues without an end in sight, it's Netanyahu who is blamed for “indecision” regarding “the day after.” The very people who accuse him of unbound dictatorial powers seem to believe that determining the fate of Gaza is up to him alone (as did a recent article in Haaretz, Israel’s staunch Labor mouthpiece and anti-Likud newspaper, claiming: “… the Israeli government, by which we really mean Benjamin Netanyahu, won’t make a decision”). You mean the Arab nations will not participate in this decision-making process? Or other international powers, all of whom—Iran, Turkey, Russia, France, Britain and of course the United States—claim a stake in the Middle East? Is it Netanyahu who has to make the final decision on who will run Gaza once the war is over? As though Hamas or any other extremist Islamic group, of which there are at least a dozen, will agree to any settlement that will stop them from their ultimate goal of destroying Israel, of perpetrating the October 7 massacre “seven times, ten times, a million times” over again.

But is Netanyahu “the Israel government?” 

How quickly put aside is the fact that Israel is one of the strongest democracies in the world—let alone the ONLY democracy in the entire Middle East. Never mind that Netanyahu’s election—widely protested by his left-wing opponents—was freely and transparently conducted, and that the coalition he was able to assemble represents the majority of Israelis, a fact that the Left in Israel and the rest of the world refuses to accept. Never mind that a recent poll has shown that the majority of Israelis STILL see Netanyahu as the most capable among all his opponents to conduct the war and bring it to conclusion.

Antisemitism is scorned by the refined, enlightened world (facts notwithstanding). It’s unpleasant and distasteful. But it’s OK to accuse Israel, the country, the people; it’s OK, from the White House on down, to accuse Netanyahu of being a bloody tyrant, to isolate him as the target of Jew-hatred, to make HIM the problem.

Netanyahu has become the poster boy—the whipping boy, if you will—for the strong Jew, something the world fears more than anything else. Calls for his removal actually mean telling Jews to return to their prior position in the world, victims to be pitied rather than fighters and survivors who refuse to be led to slaughter, second-class citizens in eternal exile rather than an independent nation free to defend itself within its own borders, free to define its own identity and determine its own destiny and course in history.

And so a world-wide opposition movement has formed to remove Netanyahu, to arrest him and accuse him of unspeakable crimes.

But the ugly and naked truth is that it isn’t Netanyahu that is the problem here. The real problem has become more and more evident even as the events of October 7—along with their moral, historical and cultural implications—recede into the past and out of memory (does anyone still mention or remember Yahya Sinwar or Muhammad Deif, the masterminds and perpetrators of the massacre?). 

If Netanyahu is removed from power, it must and will be done by and within Israel, through a democratic and/or legal process. As captain of the ship that floundered, as head of a government that criminally neglected, failed to foresee and respond in a timely manner the October 7 attack, responsibility falls squarely on Netanyahu’s shoulders, as well as on the entire leadership level of IDF, the Israel Defense Force. An investigation will definitely take place to determine the whys and hows of that disastrous failure. It’s likely that the results of the inquiry will call for Netanyahu to step down—willingly or not. But that’s none of the world’s concern or business. It’s Israel that needs to make that decision; no amount of pressure from outside powers must force, or even play a part in, that decision. 

So how do you solve a problem like Netanyahu? First, by recognizing that it isn’t Netanyahu, but rather the world’s most ancient hatred that’s the real problem here, the one that needs to be recognized and resolved first, before anything else. The real problem is the desire, born of fear and prejudice, to keep Israel—and the Jews—in their place, to keep Jews submissive and docile, willing to endure whatever comes to them.

To stand up and oppose this view with force and strength as Netanyahu (read: Israel) is doing right now, takes real chutzpah. And if that’s what it takes, then that’s what needs to happen.

The world may seem to suffer from short memory; Israel and the Jewish People do not. And for once, for the first time in more than 2000 years, Israel has the power and resolve to prove it.

Only once the world recognizes this fact will the “problem” called Netanyahu be solved. 

© 2024 by Boaz D. Heilman