Dereliction of Duty

The term dereliction of duty most obviously comes to mind in the context of a nation’s military.  In fact I have two close family members who have served and are serving in the military, and they have been involved with issues of dereliction of duty–one in a prosecutorial role; the other in calling in military lawyers for advice on issues related to dereliction of duty and separation of service members from the military.

One short, potent definition of the term is “the shameful failure to fulfill one’s obligations.”  Benjamin Netanyahu is the poster PM for this definition.  As Prime Minister of Israel for what seems like forever, he has failed in every meaningful sense to fulfill his obligations to serve his nation.  Instead, he has turned service into self-service, and into cynical, corrupt self-dealing which, in Bibi’s case, and to invoke a more elaborated definition of the term, “…implies a serious breach of expected conduct, leading to negative consequences or harm.”

Let’s use the short list of consequences and harm:  releasing 1,000+ Palestinian prisoners in exchange for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.  Included in that number, Yahya Sinwar, released against the strong advice of a doctor who’d spent significant time with the prisoner and deemed him too dangerous to release.

One can draw a bright line from that move to the horrors of October 7th, a genocidal attack made possible not only by Sinwar’s presence in Gaza, but by bales of cash provided by Qatar to Hamas, with Bibi’s encouragement and approval.

Let’s stop here, for the moment.  If a Prime Minister has core duties to serve as leader of and protect those living within the borders of a given nation, then Benjamin Netanyahu fully embodies the worst kind of dereliction of duty.  He proactively put Israelis in danger.  This was not ignorance.  This was not “whoops, I didn’t know.”  This was I, BENJAMIN NETANYAHU KNOW BETTER, KNOW BEST.  Release a genocidal maniac back to Gaza.  Check.  Ensure that Hamas has boatloads of cash with which to build a terrorist infrastructure. Check. Embrace the worst of all possible ministerial allies to advance his agenda–here’s looking at you, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, et al.  Check. And brick by brick dismantle democracy and smear as traitors those fighting valiantly through the courts and in the streets to save it.  Check and check again.

Not satisfied with the catastrophic damage already done on his watch, through his stunning dereliction of Prime Ministerial duty, Bibi had to up the ante, to make the price others paid even higher.  To the great credit of actual Israeli patriots who returned home by the tens of thousands to respond to a massive military call-up after October 7th, they stepped forward to fight a necessary war in Gaza, to punish Hamas for its ghastly attack on Israel, and hopefully to find and free some of the hundreds taken hostage by Hamas back to Gaza.

But that necessary war has morphed into Bibi’s endless war, the one designed–perhaps even from the outset–to have no actual end, so that Bibi can outrun the electoral clock and avoid prosecution and possible imprisonment for his many acts of corruption while in office.

Nothing moves this man-monster.  Not the deaths in Gaza of a son and nephew of Gadi Eisenkot, who sat with Bibi in his so-called War Cabinet.  Not the cries of mothers of fallen soldiers, of murdered hostages, of hostages still held, and now cruelly paraded before the world via video in their Holocaust-like hollowed-out bodies and faces.  Never mind mothers and children in Gaza, who never mattered to Bibi, and never will.

The man who found time to tour devastated kibbutzim with Elon Musk, but never found time for even a word of consolation for the families of the murdered, the kidnapped, the grief-deranged, the emotionally-drained, the spiritually hollowed out, is beyond even the definition of dereliction of duty.  He has crossed over to dereliction of what it ought to mean to be human.

Bibi is not an animal.  But he is a monster.  The most terrifying kind.  He comes before television cameras with his sneer-smile, never bothered by the carnage he has unleashed, by the pain and loss he has caused, by the price nearly every Israeli family save the equally self-centered Haredim have paid for his callousness, for his corruption, for his cruelty.  Nothing moves him.  There is no heart.  There is nothing human(e) that flows anywhere through him.  He is entirely id.  Nothing to check it, slow it, steer it elsewhere.  And no superego.  No guardrails, nothing that in his psyche, in his soul, tells him to stop, turn, step back from the abyss.

I see good people on both sides of the ocean pleading for the war in Gaza to end, for the hostages to come home, for the destruction in Gaza to halt.  But as I’ve said since shortly after October 7, 2023–and even while plastering hostage posters all over Manhattan to call attention to the plight of the kidnapped–that’s meaningless, in the end.  The only hope for the hostages lies in the Knesset.  With Bibi.  And he just doesn’t give a damn.  Perhaps a UN Security Council declaration of a Palestinian State will cause some shift.  It’s a ridiculous, unjust reward for Hamas, but if it might cause Ben Gvir’s head to explode, there’d be some small upside.  But on a serious note, there is only one thing that could end the war, topple Bibi’s government, and maybe even get the hostages home to Israel:

MASSIVE REFUSAL OF THE IDF TO SERVE.  SOLDIERS TURNING THEIR TANKS, SUPPORT VEHICLES AND EVERY OTHER TOOL OF WAR AROUND AND LEAVING GAZA.  FULL STOP.  MASSIVE ANTI-DERELICTION OF DUTY.  A MORAL RESPONSE TO IMMORAL ORDERS, TO WHAT HAS CLEARLY BECOME A POINTLESS, UNJUST WAR.

Unless and until that kind of leverage is exercised, nothing will change for the better, and Bibi will drag Israel closer and closer to the abyss.  He might hold onto power and avoid jail.  But the price will be:  the murder of Israel as a democratic, pluralistic society; and the murder of Israel as a nation setting enviable standards for ethics in warfare and broader human(e) and humanitarian activities both within and outside its borders.  Add to that the staggering harm caused to soldiers wounded in body and spirit, to their families, to their communities, to their friends and lovers, to the medical professionals who tried valiantly to save them. To those left behind in the aftermath of their service-caused suicides.  The number of concentric circles of harm caused and sustained by this evil government is beyond counting.  It boggles the mind and sears the soul.

My eldest read the words of Deuteronomy before Robinson’s Arch in Jerusalem, in the summer of 2006, during his bar mitzvah service.  “Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof.”  Justice, justice, you shall seek.  There will be no justice for Israel, or in Israel, unless the only people left with any real leverage demand it.  To the incomparably brave and cynically used and abused soldiers of the IDF, my plea is: “RESIST. RESIST. REFUSE.”  And let us say, “Amen.”