After 500-plus days of using Israel’s national emergency to defer elections, squelch national inquiries, and keep power despite failing catastrophically on October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is allowing us to return to normal.
Apparently, we’ve subdued our enemies enough for him to assail the national security establishment and the rule of law, demoralize reservists by refusing to address them honestly, and tolerate ultra-Orthodox draft evasion to keep his coalition staggering ahead. That justifies everyone demanding elections – now. In the spirit of our desperately needed national renewal, the prime minister should quit – along with all the other failed opposition leaders who were blinded by the conceptzia [or confirmation bias]: Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, and Yair Golan.
It’s hard to believe that Netanyahu remains in power. Hasn’t he gotten the memo? Israelis are fed up with him, his divisiveness, his contempt for democracy; with his refusal to take responsibility for October 7 and other disasters, with his hostility to any critics. Nearly three-quarters of Israelis want him resigning immediately or after the war.
Yet he and his devotees keep earning gold medals in authoritarianism, bullying, and cowardice – distracting Israelis from genuine enemies outside by treating fellow citizens as traitors within.
Alas, looking Left, they just keep demonstrating. Haven’t they heard? Most Israelis are fed up with the blocked traffic and impotent fury.
The hostage protesters sabotaged their own cause by weakening Israel’s bargaining position, harassing Israeli leaders at home rather than protesting Qatari embassies worldwide. Now, a few fanatics foolishly keep infuriating most Israelis, feeding Bibistas’ paranoid fantasies of a condescending Ashkenazi elite earning their gold medals in sore-loserdom. More shockingly: Who’s the protesters’ martyr this week? The Shin Bet head who, like Bibi, should resign for his October 7 failures.
Extremists from both sides forget that our enemies delight in our divisiveness, our partisan venom.
We must keep pressuring Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Iran. We should correct the Israeli and foreign reporters claiming that Netanyahu only continues attacking Gaza for “domestic considerations.” You have to dig deep in most articles blasting Israel’s renewed bombings to find the word “hostages.” Although Israel must protect its borders and keep crushing Hamas, the dynamics would change immediately if all the Gazan terrorists holding them released every hostage.
It is time for others to lead the country
WITH AT least two dozen Israelis still enduring unspeakable abuse in Hamas tunnels and “innocent” Gazans’ homes, Defense Minister Israel Katz finally warned that the more Hamas persists, “the more territory it will lose to Israel.”
This should have been clear long before October 7. When Hamas bombarded Israel after the 2005 Gaza disengagement, I proposed in these pages that Israel seize 10 meters of borderlands for each barrage. Territorial loss is the traditional language of war: Palestinians understand that language, too.
Facing these threats, it’s unconscionable that our (mis)leaders – especially Bibi – divide the country, depress our soldiers, and divert attention from Israel’s existential fight for survival – domestically and internationally. Netanyahu should stop his manipulative attempts to rally his fanatic but dwindling band of supporters.
I am not anti-Bibi in principle: I have repeatedly saluted Netanyahu for defying former US president Joe Biden and helping Israel weaken Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran. Having achieved those aims, now working with a friendlier administration, Netanyahu should call elections, retire, and let the debate rage over his legacy and culpability.
In order to shame him and to model the self-sacrificing leadership Israel deserves, and to reject their old stale protest playbook, every opposition leader should resign.
Go Home Gantz, Lapid, and Golan. Advise Ehud Barak and Bogie Ya’alon and the other hysterics to stop talking. Anyone who was part of the security establishment and trusted our hi-tech Gaza border should teach Bibi and the Shin Bet’s Ronen Bar how to retire gracefully – from public debate, too. Anyone who has so futilely divided Israel for so long should let others lead constructively.
The search for new leaders shouldn’t stop with everyone’s favorite fantasy group, the reservists. It’s time to diversify ethnically and geographically. I remember the look of disgust people from Sderot, Netivot, Kiryat Shmona, Metulah, and elsewhere had for months after October 7, 2023, whenever we discussed Netanyahu and his government’s botches, especially the failure to gracefully and generously support many of those displaced. Let’s find opposition leaders from among them, not just from the Kaplanists.
And let’s change the tune. Claiming democracy has “died” as demonstrators assert their democratic right to protest, instinctively cheering the opposite of whatever Bibi says, and being so blinded by anti-Bibi rage, doesn’t change anything, but does further fragment. Articulate a positive, unifying vision around shared values and our shared fate.
Let’s stop threatening not to serve, pay tax, or be patriotic – that undermines the justified critique of ultra-Orthodox draft-dodgers. And stop shrieking – it brings out the crazies and the craziness.
Instead, how about organizing non-partisan moments of silence midday, simply demanding elections, stopping everything briefly, asserting power, commanding attention, minimizing harm. Then hosting salons transcending Left-Right, religious-secular, and ethnic divides, articulating a common Zionist and Israeli political agenda for a new age – with new leaders.
On a brighter note, Passover prep has begun. The cleanser commercials and antacid ads remind us that the Jewish calendar keeps saving us – injecting moments of joy and reassurance during these difficult times.
Passover warns against Pharaohs who bring plagues upon their people and yet blame everyone else for the troubles. We honor leaders like Moses: humble enough to know he’s not indispensable but great enough to articulate a compelling vision of freedom from today’s problems – and give way to his successors when he knows his time is up.
Our stuck leaders, Left and Right, should quit, freeing us from their poison, so we can renew and rebuild our Promised Land – together.
The writer is a senior fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), the Global ThinkTank of the Jewish People, and is an American presidential historian. His latest books are To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath.