Benjamin Netanyahu and Potsdam

As Israelis maneuver to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the moment we keep thinking of is Potsdam. That’s the parley at which President Truman, Stalin, and Churchill gathered at a suburb of Berlin in the summer of 1945. It was a moment for all three to parcel out the Allied victory. Then arrived the news that Labour had triumphed in the British election, and Churchill was out, replaced almost instantly by Clement Atlee.The wish is by no means the father of this thought. Yet it’s hard to think of many moments in which a wartime leader was been so abruptly dethroned and so suddenly replaced by a seemingly weak rival. One day Churchill was on top of the world. The next he was headed home in a humiliating defeat just when his country would be setting up, in Atlee, a new leader to plot the future. What might the Israeli — and other — leaders take from the moment?One thing might be a cautionary note against taking the voters for granted. The forging of an alliance between Israeli politicians Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid ahead of elections this fall suggests that Mr. Netanyahu could have a heavyweight fight on his hands as he seeks to hold onto the leadership of the Jewish state. It is early yet to see whether the new bloc will consolidate or fritter away what momentum there might be against the incumbent premier. An anti-Bibi bloc, in any event, is coalescing. It could grow further with the participation of a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Gadi Eisenkot. So far, though, he is hanging back, weighing whether he can mount a winning run on his own. Messrs. Lapid and Bennett in 2021 and 2022 briefly headed a unity government whose animating purpose was to end Mr. Netanyahu’s then-12 year reign. That government lasted a mere 13 months.Mr. Netanyahu has, in the years since he returned to power, confronted the attacks of October 7, 2023, and led Israel’s army in its wars against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. Tel Aviv’s stock market is booming. The shekel is strong. The Jewish state is, after a fashion, a regional power of which Begin and Ben-Gurion could only have dreamed. Never before has Jerusalem projected such power.Rarely, too, has a president been as triumphant as was President George H.W. Bush on March 6, 1991. That is when he addressed a joint session of Congress on the end of the first Gulf War. It was a moment we’ll never forget. The president was received with a titanic ovation from Congress, during which the longtime labor reporter for the Forward, Gus Tyler, leaned over to the future Editor of the Sun and said, “He’s going to lose the election.” Mr. Netanyahu has long admired and identified with Churchill — a decade ago, the journalist Ari Shavit diagnosed the Israeli leader with a “Churchill Complex.” The British historian Andrew Roberts calls him the “Churchill of the Middle East.” Still, the array and complexity of Mr. Netanyahu’s challenges both foreign and domestic, would likely have bedeviled even a Bulldog like Churchill. A passion for cigars is but one thing they hold in common.This is a restive political moment, and not only in Israel. Earlier this month Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán — an ally of both President Trump and Mr. Netanyahu — was ousted in a landslide after 16 years in power. Left wingers have captured New York’s mayoralty and have seen gains on the Continent. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, himself a man of the left, is teetering. Here in America, Democrats could notch important victories in November.Israel, like Britain when it ejected Churchill, has been at war for years. The cause of the Jewish state is no less just than the fight against German fascism, but martial marvels are no guarantee of electoral success. Mr. Netanyahu has served as prime minister for some 16 years over six terms. His achievements — not least among them the liberation of Israel’s economy from the shackles of socialism — are peerless. So too, though, were Churchill’s.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Potsdam

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