Netanyahu Ordered the War but the Opposition Sold It. Now Israel Will Pay the Price - Opinion
It is the greatest failure of his life, much more egregious than October 7. Benjamin Netanyahu's previous failure had many fathers; he and he alone bears the responsibility for this one. If Netanyahu's life's project was – and it was – the struggle against Iran, the obsession of a single man, this war is his life's fiasco. Israel emerges from this war more scarred than it appears to be, weaker and more ostracized than it went into it. Iran emerges battered but strengthened and rewarded sevenfold.
This is exactly what a failed life's mission looks like. Netanyahu, who took Israel into this war, the prime minister who was compelled on Tuesday to end it without being consulted, the man who thought that this war would put him into the history books as a savior, bears full, sole responsibility for its failure.
It was a terrible failure, the price of which has not yet been paid in full. It began with the megalomaniacal idea that Israel can topple regimes, continued with the delusion that war is the solution to every problem – always the first one adopted, the only one tried – and ended with the failure to attain even one of the war's objectives, not a single one. And we haven't even talked about the costs. A month and a half of terror for Israel's population of 10 million, of destruction and financial hardship, the loss of yet another school year and the vestiges of sanity and the intensification of Israel's international isolation.
On October 7 it was impossible to lay all the blame on Netanyahu's shoulders. Alongside and subordinate to him were a failed military and nonexistent intelligence agencies, a policy of thwarting any diplomatic process – a policy supported by the majority, including the opposition – and a brutal siege that was not imposed by Netanyahu. Similarly, Netanyahu does not bear sole responsibility for the insane war of revenge that Israel waged in the wake of October 7.
Genocide, too, has many fathers. Netanyahu was the first but not the only one. History, and perhaps the world, will settle accounts with all of them, the military commanders, the air force pilots, the soldiers, the Shin Bet security service agents, the destroyers of Gaza, the killers of children, the slaughterers of physicians and journalists, the collaborating Israeli media outlets and all the other accomplices in the crimes of Gaza, which cannot and will never be forgiven.
Netanyahu embarked on this war, making it appear as though the world was behind it. The New York Times described on Wednesday how he charmed U.S. President Donald Trump, deceiving him, as is his wont, dispensing false promises that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called "bullshit."
A particularly unscrupulous salesman, Netanyahu again managed to win over the Trump administration with this bullshit. But this time, he lost. The administration will hold him to account, perhaps soon.
On the other hand, Israel's opposition has no right to criticize him. Anyone who cheered the war at its outset, all the Yair Lapids and Yair Golans who didn't dare say one negative word about joining the war, who lined up in its justification, lost their right to criticize it. You supported it? Be quiet now. All those who saluted the war, some out of cowardice, others out of shortsightedness, most out of both, who proposed bombing and destruction while establishing grotesque "hasbara war rooms," cannot now assail Netanyahu over the war.
We're lucky we have a lord of the world. If not for Trump, Netanyahu would have persisted in Iran toward a more devastating failure. Just as he tried to do in Gaza until Trump stopped him, just as he is now eager to do in Lebanon, on the way to another fiasco. But as the war winds down, there's one thing we can count on: Israel has learned nothing. The Bibi-ists will continue to support their idols, the anyone-but-Bibis will continue to assail their Satan (while worshipping the army that carries out his plans) and Israel will continue to race into the next war with the same blindness and enthusiasm with which it raced into this one.
On Saturday I went down into the public bomb shelter that had hosted us so nicely for almost six weeks, to turn off the lights. When I did so, I knew that they wouldn't remain off.