Bret Stephens, Swinging Behind Schumer, Blames Netanyahu

Since the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Bret Stephens of the Times has been one of the most eloquent columnists articulating the pro-Israel case. All the more stunning to see a column from Mr. Stephens headlined “Netanyahu Must Go.” It asserts that “wishing Netanyahu gone is the most mainstream position possible — and one sincere friends of Israel should never be afraid to express.”Grotesquely, the column likens Prime Minister Netanyahu to the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who, shrinking from war, negotiated the Munich agreement that ceded Czechoslovakia to Hitler. I went over the Stephens column to try to understand his case for ousting Mr. Netanyahu. It was not convincing.Three paragraphs of Mr. Stephens’s case are about an appearance by an Israeli minister, Nir Barkat, on MSNBC, where Mr. Stephens used to be a paid on-air contributor. Stephens writes that Barkat “got destroyed” by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. I watched the program and don’t think anyone was destroyed.If anything Mr. Scarborough came off as a pompous cable news blowhard of the sort that Mr. Stephens denounces when their shows are on Fox News. Even if Mr. Barkat did get “destroyed,” so what? The prime minister of Israel needs to step down because of one suboptimal, non-primetime cable-television appearance by some other Israeli politician?Stephens then moves to complaining that, “after six months,” the war isn’t going well for Israel. Plenty of wars take longer than six months to completely win. Israel’s war so far has achieved considerable gains. The rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel have almost entirely ceased, which Mr. Stephens fails to mention. Israeli casualties and Palestinian civilian casualties have been remarkably low relative to what Israel says are the 13,000 terrorists that have been killed. Mr. Stephens complains that “only a handful of hostages have been rescued,” but he ignores that 109 hostages were released by Hamas because of Israeli military pressure. That is more than “a handful.”As a sign that the war is not going well, Mr. Stephens notes that “Israeli soldiers have been forced to recapture the same places — like Gaza City’s Al Shifa hospital — that were supposed to have been cleared of terrorists months ago.” Yet the second Israeli operation at Shifa resulted in killing 200 terrorists and capturing another 500. That is a big enough success that at least some observers figure Israel intentionally allowed the terrorists to regather there as a trap.Mr. Stephens goes on to say that Mr. Netanyahu bears the “ultimate” blame for the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers and “for everything that led to Oct. 7.” He sounds like the Harvard student groups who on October 7 immediately declared that they held Israel’s government “entirely responsible,” and that it “is the only one to blame.” What about Hamas? What about Iran?Tehran is sending Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad $100 million a year, according to the New York Times. Iran has those funds available in part because of the Iran nuclear deal and other sanctions relief that Presidents Obama and Biden provided with the Times’ encouragement and over Mr. Netanyahu’s emphatic objections.Mr. Stephens, following Mr. Scarborough, now faults Mr. Netanyahu for allowing Hamas to remain in power in Gaza for so long. Yet had the Israeli military invaded Gaza preemptively before October 7, targeting the various hospitals, mosques, and UN schools where Hamas was headquartered, the condemnation would have been intense, and the civilian toll would have been immense. Such an invasion did not take place under either of the recent non-Netanyahu prime ministers, Naftali Bennett or Yair Lapid. If there was a flurry of Times columns by Mr. Stephens or anyone else advising such an approach, I must have somehow missed it.As for the World Central Kitchen tragedy, an Israeli military spokesman said, “There were in fact a number of armed gunmen who boarded and left some of the vehicles.” Once Hamas is fully defeated, the danger of innocents getting killed accidentally will diminish. Until then, the terrorist group’s interference with food distribution is an unavoidable part of the issue in Gaza.Mr. Stephens cites Israeli opinion polls that he says show that “Seventy-one percent of Israelis want Netanyahu booted from office… and 66 percent want elections called early.” That description of the data misleads Times readers. There are two polls in the article he linked. Both have small sample sizes and large margins of error.A Kan poll found 42 percent wanting Netanyahu to resign immediately, 29 percent wanting him gone after the war, and 21 percent saying he needn’t resign. That’s a plurality wanting Mr. Netanyahu to stay in office until the war is over. The same poll found 44 percent wanting elections “within a few months,” with a total of 48 percent favoring either October 2026 or “sometime over the coming year.”The Channel 12 poll found 50 percent in favor of early elections, but didn’t specify when they would be held. Israelis last voted in November 2022. It was the fifth national election in less than four years. Mr. Netanyahu emerged as prime minister in four out of five of those elections. Most Israelis reasonably think the key task at the moment is defeating Hamas and finding the hostages, not having another election.Mr. Stephens dismisses as “self-serving” the argument that Mr. Netanyahu should stay until the war concludes, but just as self-serving is the argument by Mr. Netanyahu’s political rivals and longtime critics that an election should be held before the war is won.Even for those Israelis and friends of Israel who think Mr. Netanyahu isn’t the right leader for Israel at the moment, the precedent of allowing Senator Schumer, President Biden, and a Times columnist to oust an elected government from Jerusalem is itself devastating to the core Zionist idea: self-determination by the Jewish people in its own land.

Bret Stephens, Swinging Behind Schumer, Blames Netanyahu

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