Depart and Let Us Have Done With You, Netanyahu! | Opinion

Benjamin Netanyahu must go. Now. Before he wreaks further havoc.

Israel's prime minister has become a veritable albatross around his country's neck. And the oft-heard argument that it is unwise to change leaders in the middle of a war is utter rubbish.

Sticking with a failed political or military leader in wartime just so that said leader can continue to enjoy the perks of power is nonsensical at best and potentially disastrous.

It's worth noting that David Lloyd George replaced Herbert Asquith as Britain's prime minister in 1916, right in the middle of World War I, and France changed its prime minister four times during that same war. Both countries ended up on the winning side in that conflict.

On May 7, 1940, eight months after the outbreak of World War II, Conservative backbencher Leo Amery called for the ouster of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government. "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing," Amery declared in the House of Commons, paraphrasing Oliver Cromwell. "Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

This was shortly after Germany had launched its invasion of Norway, with German warships able to enter Norwegian ports unopposed. Three days later, Chamberlain was out and Winston Churchill became prime minister . . . in the middle of a war.

"Wars are won," Amery said in the same speech, "not by explanations after the event but by foresight . . . . We were told by the prime minister on 2nd May that all except a relatively small advance guard of the Expeditionary Force which was earmarked for Finland had gone elsewhere and that the ships had been taken for employment for other purposes. Even the small, inadequate nucleus that was kept in being had no transports except warships. Why was this done? For months we had been aware that the Germans had been accumulating troops and transports and practicing embarkation and disembarkation against somebody."

Amery's words have resonated ominously with many of us over the course of the past nine weeks, but especially so in light of Friday's explosive front page New York Times revelation that Israeli military and intelligence officials had had in their possession for more than a year a detailed blueprint of the devastating attack that Hamas was able to execute on Oct. 7.

Still, whatever else one can say about Chamberlain, he did not recklessly allow Nazi SS squads to storm across the channel and murder 1,200— or even a single—British civilians, or violently kidnap over 230—or even a single—British citizens as hostages. He also never moved British troops from strategic positions to, say, Scotland.

Netanyahu and his motley crew, on the other hand, diverted three military battalions from the Gaza border to the West Bank prior to Oct.7, ostensibly to protect the Jewish settlers there but in reality to placate and curry favor with extremist, far-right members of his government.

In February 2001, one day after the hawkish Ariel Sharon decisively defeated then Prime Minister Ehud Barak in a national election for Israel's political leadership, Netanyahu wrote in The New York Times that the outgoing "Barak government failed to fulfill its primary duty to protect and defend the lives of Israel's citizens." It will not be lost on anyone with an IQ in the triple digits that on Oct. 7, the Netanyahu government "failed to fulfill its primary duty to protect and defend the lives of Israel's citizens" in spectacular fashion.

Netanyahu continued: "Mr. Barak has lost this election not merely because of personal failings but because of failed policies." By Netanyahu's own standards, he should have resigned or been forced to resign in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 since that day's carnage was a direct consequence of both his "personal failings" and his "failed policies."

By personal failings I'm not just referring to his multiple criminal indictments which in and of themselves should have ended his political career long ago. I, for one, am far more turned off by his desperate need to hang on to that power at any cost, including by casting his lot with racist ultranationalist extremists in an attempt to scuttle Israel's independent judiciary so as to prevent it from forcing him out of office if he were to be convicted at trial.

No need to elaborate on his failed policies. Despite occasional nods to a theoretical diplomatic outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including signing the Wye River Memorandum at the White House together with Palestinian Authority head Yasser Arafat (during Netanyahu's first term as prime minister) and a 2009 speech in which he expressed conditional support for a "demilitarized Palestinian state" existing alongside Israel, Netanyahu has always been hostile to any Palestinian national aspirations.

His coldblooded calculation ever since he became prime minister for the second time in 2009 has been that a long-term hostile coexistence with the fundamentalist Hamas in Gaza—which he erroneously believed could last indefinitely, or at least as long as he was prime minister—was preferable to having to negotiate with, and make territorial concessions to, the equally nationalist but politically far more moderate Palestinian Authority on the West Bank.

While he has consistently sought to weaken the Palestinian Authority as much as he possibly could, he turned a blind eye to Hamas receiving hundreds of millions of dollars into Gaza from Qatar and, as described by historian Adam Raz, he agreed "to the import of a broad array of goods, construction materials in particular, with the knowledge that much of the material will be designated for terrorism and not for building civilian infrastructure." This in turn enabled Hamas to enhance its military (read terrorist) capabilities and prepare undisturbed for Oct. 7.

Why did Netanyahu do all this? Because he and Hamas were—and, for that matter, still are—on the same page in rejecting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict: Netanyahu opposes Palestinian statehood under any circumstances, and Hamas' very reason for existing is its refusal to accept the existence of the State of Israel, again under any circumstances.

In a nutshell, for all but one of the past 14 years when Netanyahu was out of power, he and Hamas have looked on one another as "useful idiots," as it were, except that Netanyahu miscalculated appallingly while Hamas played Netanyahu like a Stradivarius.

Miscalculations have consequences. Extreme miscalculations have extreme consequences.

Netanyahu made the extreme miscalculation that Hamas had no short-term or even mid-term intentions of engaging in any large-scale armed operation against Israel, limiting itself instead to occasional rocket attacks or isolated acts of terrorism.

In a radio interview a mere six days before Oct. 7, Netanyahu's hapless National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi said, "Since the round of fighting in May two years ago, there is a decision by Hamas leadership to display unprecedented restraint and forbearance. For over two years there hasn't been a single rocket fired under Hamas initiative from Gaza. Hamas is very, very restrained and understands the consequences of further defiance."

Oh, really?

Just about every Israeli official in relevant positions of authority has publicly accepted responsibility for their respective roles in allowing Oct. 7 to occur on their watch, including the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, the defense minister, the military intelligence chief, and the director of the Shin Bet intelligence agency. Just about everyone, that is, other than Netanyahu who flails about shamelessly seeking to cast blame and aspersions on anyone and everyone except himself.

If Netanyahu still had his nation's confidence, even after a military debacle, he might be able to carry on. But he doesn't. To say that his approval numbers have plummeted since Oct. 7 is the functional equivalent of referring to hurricanes Katrina and Sandy as minor wind gusts. According to one reputable poll conducted by researchers at Bar Ilan University in mid-November, less than four percent of Israelis trust Netanyahu to tell them the truth about anything. Pinocchio and your average charlatan television psychic have greater credibility.

All of which explains why Netanyahu is way, way past his sell-by date. To reiterate Leo Amery's words and sentiments unequivocally, "Depart and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

Menachem Z. Rosensaft teaches about the law of genocide at the law schools of Cornell and Columbia Universities. He is the author of Poems Born in Bergen-Belsen (Kelsay Books, 2021)

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.