An Open Letter to Netanyahu’s Foreign Fans

I recently retired from the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), having previously served 30 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as a Middle East analyst. While the CIA obliged us to analyze both the positives and the negatives of all governments (save for our own!), AIPAC forbids its employees from criticizing the Israeli government in public and asks them to concentrate exclusively on the organization’s central mission: strengthening the ties between Washington and Jerusalem. This is sensible, since criticism of a specific Israeli government could easily undermine lobbying for military assistance for the Israeli state. The distinction between state-to-state and government-to-government relations would almost certainly be lost on the U.S. Congress, the main focus of AIPAC’s lobbying.

I am now, however, free of those shackles and can address a crucial issue: why do so many center-right supporters of Israel in the diaspora believe that both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are irreplaceable and that there is no adequate alternative to their governments?

President Trump’s case is simpler: the toxic anti-Israelism that has seized the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party makes it an unreliable ally for pro-Israel forces. Even President Biden (a self-avowed Zionist!) buckled under pressure from his own party to mark rhetorical and real distance from Israel after his initial unreserved support for Jerusalem after 10/7. Many who reject Trump’s election denialism and defense of the 1/6 rioters, and who doubt his suitability to be Commander-in-Chief, have nevertheless concluded that, for now at least, there is no alternative if one wants to strengthen U.S.- Israel ties. Yes, there are isolationist and anti-Israel elements in the GOP, but their weight in Republican politics is much less than the influence of anti-Israel “progressives” among Democrats.

Bibi’s case is different, and more complex. Many diaspora commentators do not merely support Bibi; they regard him as an irreplaceable strategic genius responsible for the numerous successes of the Israeli military since 10/7, while deferring judgement on his responsibility for that disaster. Most of these analysts either ignore or brush aside as secondary Bibi’s domestic politics, especially those followed by his “full right” government formed in December 2022. I offer an admittedly unscientific example from the reactions to my own very modest “X” account, which addresses, inter alia, Israeli foreign and domestic matters and is primarily followed by center-right friends of Israel in Europe or America. I usually get a fair number of “likes” for X posts that defend the IDF, attack Hamas & Hizballah, and critique those who judge Israel by double standards or reject its right to exist. In contrast, my X followers usually ignore my many posts on the shortcomings of Bibi’s domestic policies, as if they simply had no interest in that aspect of Israeli governance.

Their focus on foreign policy is understandable. Most of these Bibi supporters do not live in Israel and do not see their or their family’s future as directly bound up with the success of the Jewish state. They see Israel as carrying the flag for U.S. and Western values and interests in the Middle East and anchor their unreserved support for the Prime Minister in his strategic and military successes. They seldom question to what extent Bibi, as opposed to the IDF or other Israeli actors, is responsible for these successes or whether a different Israeli government might have duplicated, or even improved, upon them. They almost never explore how Bibi’s need to keep his government afloat has led to profoundly dangerous developments in the country’s internal politics.

I, however, do have skin in the internal Israeli game: two of my children have made Aliyah, served in Gaza and Lebanon, and plan to stay in Israel. My wife and I will likely follow in their footsteps in the near future. Therefore, I am acutely attuned to what kind of Israel I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in. And what I see as the poisonous domestic results of Bibi’s government – which most of my X followers likely view as tangential details – are at the very heart of my judgement on the man and his role in Israel’s history. The “full right” government is perpetuating at least five negative developments.

Undermining democracy: The government’s judicial reform and its multiple run-ins with the Supreme Court and the Attorney General are more than an arcane dispute over how to select judges or what the AG’s precise authorities are. They amount to a struggle between two worldviews: the opposition sees democracy as a complex system of checks and balances designed to maximize individual freedom and restrain authoritarianism. Judicial “reformers” largely see democracy as legitimizing a populist dictatorship in which any government that musters 61 Knesset votes should have near-unlimited authority. Israel’s dilemma is that it lacks the U.S.’s many checks on the executive branch: two independent legislative bodies, robust state and municipal governments, and strong courts, to name only the most important. In Israel, however, only the courts provide any kind of check on an overweening executive. This is why at least half of Israel poured into the streets to protest what many outside the country considered to be a mere brush fire.

Legitimizing racism and hatred: In the 1980s Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir would leave the Knesset when Meir Kahane rose to speak; Netanyahu, in contrast, has mainstreamed what should have remained a marginal element in Israeli politics. He knows that what he is doing repels many of his compatriots; during the 2022 campaign he deliberately avoided sharing a podium with Kahane’s heir, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Now this gangster has commanded the Israel Police and racist talk of forced transfer of Palestinians has become commonplace. Violent West Bank settlers have lost all reluctance to attack Palestinian villages. It is as though the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan simultaneously ran the FBI!

Platforming messianic extremism: Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Smotrich value the West Bank not just for security reasons but because Jewish settlement there advances their long-term governance goals. Smotrich has made clear he wants to destroy the Palestinian Authority as a prelude to annexing the West Bank. What he would do with its Palestinian inhabitants is unclear but probably does not include making them citizens and turning Israel into a binational state. These extremists assume that Israel can blithely ignore international reactions to such a move, especially now that Trump is around to veto any anti-Israel U.N. sanctions modelled after those that brought Apartheid South Africa to its knees in the 1980s. They forget that Obama declined to veto a West Bank-related anti-Israel Security Council resolution in 2016, that the Democrats will one day return to power, and that their anti-Israel wing is likely to grow stronger as Israel becomes an increasingly bitter partisan factor in U.S. politics.

Sabotaging the IDF and start-up nation: Nothing illustrates better the lengths to which the Prime Minister goes to preserve his full-right government than his appeasement of the Haredim regarding military service. While other Israelis are carrying a heavier military burden than ever and the IDF says it needs many thousands of new draftees, Netanyahu still seeks to reduce Haredi enlistment

to a trickle. Worse, this government ignores that Haredi society as currently constituted has become a parasite on the Israeli body, obtaining vastly more in state transfers than it contributes in taxes, productive economic activity, and army service. Simply put, the start-up nation cannot flourish when a growing proportion of its citizens (1 in 4 Jewish 1st graders are already Haredim!) receive an education and life experience ill-suited to the demands of a modern high-tech society.

Deep-sixing responsibility: The nail in the coffin is Netanyahu’s refusal to acknowledge any responsibility for, and to create an official state commission of inquiry to investigate, Israel’s worst-ever military catastrophe. The Supreme Court and the Attorney-General – supported by almost 80% of the population – have mandated such a commission. Bibi continues to prevaricate, apparently concerned that an investigation might point the finger at him. Can one imagine George Bush refusing to set up the 9/11 and Iraqi WMD commissions until the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were over? A similar action should be equally unthinkable in Israel.

But there is no alternative!

Many non-Israeli Netanyahu advocates will privately admit that all or most of these accusations are valid. But they feel – not unreasonably – that, given the seriousness of the external challenges facing Israel, counterterrorism and security policy must come first. Bibi, they argue (again, carefully dancing around the Prime Minister’s responsibility for 10/7) is an irreplaceable leader of great strategic vision and sagacity. Where would Israel be if this redoubtable admiral were not at the helm of the ship of state?

The answer: probably not very far from where she is now. There is little to suggest that Netanyahu’s influence was decisive during the first phase of the Hamas war, from October 2023 through June 2024, when Gantz and Eisenkot left the government. The latter two ex-Generals would likely have followed a similar strategy in Gaza to the one the IDF adopted, with or without Netanyahu’s presence. They left only after the capture of Rafah ended the war’s first phase and differences about how to deal with the hostages became acute. This is not the place to debate here whether the hostage deal that Trump forced on Netanyahu could have been obtained earlier. It is arguable, however, that Netanyahu’s need to placate Smotrich and Ben-Gvir played a key role in delaying the deal and in the government’s steadfast refusal to consider realistic post-war governance scenarios. “Complete victory” is a slogan, not a policy.

Netanyahu’s contribution to defeating Hezbollah was even more marginal. The Mossad and the IDF have long been war gaming how to destroy Hezbollah – the beeper operation, for example, was many years in gestation. Former Defense Minister Gallant has said that everything was ready on 8 October to strike Hezbollah but that Netanyahu refused to launch an all-out attack on the Iranian proxy. At the very least the IDF and the Mossad must receive most of the laurels for last year’s brilliant decapitation of Hezbollah. Bibi determined the timing, but even here it is far from clear that he made the best choice possible.

That leaves Iran. The Prime Minister saw early on that an Iranian bomb was an existential danger to the Jewish state; I recognize his role in raising that awareness worldwide. There are many reasons why now is the perfect time for Jerusalem (ideally in collaboration with Washington) to mount a military strike on the Iranian program. I have detailed them here. But the Prime Minister alone was not responsible for creating the fortunate concatenation of factors that now makes nixing Tehran’s

bomb option a real possibility. Again, the IDF and the Mossad (remember the theft of the nuclear archive?) should receive the bulk of the credit if Israel moves ahead with a kinetic operation.

I close with two questions for foreign admirers of the Prime Minister: 1) Have Bibi’s foreign and security policies since returning to power been the result of his unique genius or the product of an Israeli consensus? Put differently: could a centrist government lead by Bennett or Gantz, without Haredi or Messianic components, have done just as well? 2) Even if you credit Bibi with a string of security accomplishments, are they so great and so unique as to compensate for his many domestic negatives? Put differently: would you want your children to grow up in a free, democratic Israel, with political checks and balances, a growing high-tech sector, and a defense & economic burden shared by all its citizens or would you be satisfied with creeping authoritarianism and theocracy, a struggling economy crippled by a burgeoning and unproductive Haredi population, and growing international isolation as the mantra “the only democracy in the Middle East” begins to ring hollow?