Netanyahu clings to power and sacrificed Israel. What would Donald Trump do?
MODIIN, Israel – After Hamas terrorists launched their brutal surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, many observers tried to contextualize the event as Israel’s 9/11. It’s a bad comparison.
For one thing, as President Joe Biden noted in Tel Aviv last week, the death toll of Israelis – more than 1,400 – represents a far larger proportion of Israel’s population of 9 million than the 9/11 attacks did in the United States, where nearly 3,000 were killed in 2001. An equivalent U.S. attack would mean about 50,000 deaths.
But the real flaw in the comparison is that a successful Hamas infiltration of Israel from Gaza was the exact scenario for which Israel was supposed to be prepared – not some unpredictable event. While Hamas bears sole blame for its ruthless attack, Israel’s failure to anticipate it or respond adequately during that day while terrorists massacred Israeli civilians virtually unimpeded constitutes a catastrophic, systemic failure of Israel’s government, intelligence and military.
It’s hard not to fault Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who, as Israel’s prime minister for most of the past 15 years, has empowered extremists, degraded Israel’s democratic institutions, formed a government marked by dysfunction and incompetence, and stoked internecine conflict.
There’s a warning here for what could happen in America. Former President Donald Trump checks each one of those boxes, too.
Sacrificing Israel to stay in power
The Netanyahu government’s ineptitude extended to its mistaken assessment that Hamas wasn’t interested in confrontation with Israel right now and Netanyahu’s longtime doctrine of letting Hamas stay in charge of Gaza so he could avoid making any concessions to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank – on the grounds that the P.A. does not represent all Palestinians.
Things in Israel got really bad when Netanyahu, in order to retake the premiership last December following a hiatus in the opposition, invited far-right parties into his coalition and appointed their leaders to key positions.
Israel’s security minister, far-right Jewish Power Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a hooligan who as a young man threatened Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shortly before his 1995 assassination and has a habit of whipping out his handgun and threatening to shoot Israeli Arabs or Palestinians.
The man in charge of Jewish settlement policy in the West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in March called for Israel to wipe out the West Bank Palestinian city of Huwara following a Palestinian terrorist attack.
As violence from the West Bank escalated throughout this year, with Palestinian terrorists perpetrating shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis, the Netanyahu government moved army forces away from Gaza and into the West Bank while turning a blind eye to retaliatory attacks by Jewish settlers against West Bank Palestinians.
In parliament, the government spent the year pushing through a controversial judicial reform package limiting the power of the Supreme Court, which set off the largest protest movement in Israel’s history. Border patrol police usually focused on Palestinians redeployed to protests in Tel Aviv.
Economists warned of grave danger to Israel’s economy, the shekel’s value eroded and several technology companies announced they were leaving the country.
Amid these flashing warning signs, Netanyahu seemed content to let Israel slide into the abyss. Extremists dictated government policy, Netanyahu refused to compromise on judicial reform and inexperienced political cronies took over government ministries.
Buffeted by multiple corruption trials, Netanyahu was determined to cling to power at all costs. It represented his best shot for staying out of prison.
A familiar script
Does any of this sound familiar? If this were a Hollywood script, Trump would be suing for copyright infringement.
Here’s the lesson for America: In Israel, Netanyahu kept chipping away until the country finally broke. He mismanaged the Hamas threat, and now southern Israel is a war zone. The country’s homicide rate is at record levels, and some Arab municipalities say they essentially are ruled by powerful criminal gangs. Many Israelis say they have lost faith in the state. America, too, is spiraling into an abyss, and if things keep going in this direction its reckoning may come, too.
Americans cannot agree on basic facts, such as who was responsible for the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Nearly 70% of Republicans say the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The Republican Party has become a cult of personality, where fidelity to Trump outweighs any core principle and senior elected officials must perpetuate populist falsehoods to hold office. In state legislatures and in the courts, extremists are trying to curb voter rights.
In this context, the unchecked flooding of America with military-style assault weapons threatens disaster even greater than those that already have turned American schools, movie theaters and entertainment venues into killing fields.
It does not require great leaps of imagination to envision the explosion of this powder keg. Too many politicians obtain or maintain power by stoking fear, division and falsehood. The ingredients for catastrophe are present.
Hopefully, the disaster of Oct. 7 will serve as a wake-up call in which Israelis, soldiers included, save their country from the internal rot their leaders have sown.
Americans, too, should wake up and save their country before it’s too late.
Uriel Heilman, a native of New Rochelle, New York, who now lives in Israel, is a journalist for The Jewish Telegraphic Agency.