Duplicitous Demagogues – Bennett, Lapid and others
The cease-fire in the war with Iran has brought out the worst in quite a few people, prominently some of the leaders of Israel’s opposition parties. Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister and currently the most popular among the opposition politicians, according to the polls, launched a particularly empty-headed attack on the government. According to Bennett, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to achieve the goals of the war and made false promises. Bennett somehow manages to see “Hezbollah and Iran … standing on their own two feet.”
It is a pity that Bennett is not running in the Israeli election, due by 27 October this year, against IDF Spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin, who has stated that the Israeli military “met all the goals and objectives set for it, and even exceeded them.” It would have been interesting to see the former Prime Minister debate either Defrin or Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of America’s Central Command, in whose judgement “Iran’s conventional military capability, built over 40 years at the cost of billions of dollars, has been eliminated.” As for Hezbollah, it has lost more than 1,400 men in slightly more than a month, including 15 commanders of rocket units shelling Israeli civilians, as well as the nephew and personal secretary of its current leader. By comparison, the IDF’s present loss of 12 soldiers in southern Lebanon has been light, though keenly felt.
Mr. Bennett might have a chance to debate Mr. Netanyahu, and in preparation for such an occasion, he might wish to read Mr. Netanyahu’s statement of 28 February, the first day of the second war against Iran. In it, the Prime Minister stated that the goal of the war was “to remove the existential threat posed to Israel by the regime of the Ayatollahs,” promised that “this war will lead to peace. A true peace” and also that “we will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to liberate themselves from the chains of tyranny.”
An honest assessment of the statement in light of the facts as they are on 10 April, a mere 41 days later, is that the goal of removing the existential threat has been partially but incompletely achieved. The promises made may be realised, depending on future developments, prominently including a possible return to a high-intensity war against Iran. In summary, Israel and America have made good progress in achieving the prime object of the war, and the promises of a fundamentally better future are capable of being realised.
Mr. Bennett is a duplicitous demagogue, who has nothing to offer but superficial jibes. Not only does he not have a plan superior to that of Mr. Netanyahu, he has no plan at all, and it appears no interest in achieving any objective other than a return to the Prime Minister’s chair.
I remember with sadness that I was one of a distinctly limited number of Israeli voters who voted for Mr. Bennett in four successive elections, at the end of which he became Prime Minister on 13 June 2021. I was looking for an alternative to Mr. Netanyahu, and I obtained it. A vacuous, self-adoring, sloganeering non-entity, not fit to lead a small town, let alone a country fighting for its life. Never again shall I repeat my error, and it is incredible that so many Israelis appear now ready to follow Mr. Bennett’s road to nowhere.
It is yet more surprising that anyone wishes to listen to the shameless Leader of the Opposition, Yair Lapid. This man has labelled the war not less than a “diplomatic disaster on a scale I do not recall ever seeing” and “a strategic debacle.” A debacle in which Iran was not able to kill even a single IDF soldier, while Iran lost its Supreme Leader and one general after another. The hyperbole of Mr. Lapid, who was Mr. Bennett’s Alternate Prime Minister and became caretaker leader of the country once the Bennett-Lapid government ignominiously collapsed on 30 June 2022, is as desperate as it is unworthy.
Of course, the present situation is far from satisfactory. The cease-fire with Iran has served only to expose further the regime’s criminal obduracy. Few vessels are sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, many of them connected to Iran. Compared with the pre-war averages of 107 cargo-carrying ship sailings and 138 total sailings per day, the position is intolerable. Even more repugnant is continuing Iranian rhetoric about the Resistance Axis and its attempts to force by threats a cease-fire in Lebanon in order to save Hezbollah.
The single worst aspect of the continuing crisis is that all too many European politicians have turned into soft putty, if not soft stool. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, attacks Israel, calling its operations in Lebanon “heavy-handed” and “not acceptable.” In substance, she does the work of the Iranian regime when she calls for a cease-fire in Lebanon, in full agreement with the rhetoric of the regime’s representatives. Ms. Kallas finds herself on the same side as Russia, the aggressor state that borders and menaces Estonia.
The demagogic nonsense coming from Europe is especially vile when it is remembered that Europe did nothing when Lebanon’s President-elect Bashir Gemayel was murdered by the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP), a fascist gang in the literal sense of the term, in 1982. When Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was murdered by Hezbollah in 2005, Europe did worse than nothing, helping to set up a Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the Netherlands which convicted only a single member of the terrorist organisation, more than 15 years after the murder. A Lebanese diaspora of between 10 and 15 million people lives abroad, including many Christians forced from their homeland by unceasing terrorism and its handmaiden, European indifference.
Europeans insist on their indifference and impotence. French President Emmanuel Macron also demands a cease-fire in Lebanon. His Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, accuses Israel of undermining the cease-fire with Iran. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz directly casts aspersions on Israel, when he suggests that Israeli, not Iranian, actions could “cause the peace process as a whole to fail.” Britain’s woeful Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, not only joins the Europeans in pressing Israel, not Iran, but also takes the opportunity to besmirch the war fought by America and Israel as an “action without a lawful basis, without a viable, thought-through plan.”
From Bennett to Starmer, all these placemen do not realise that their loose talk will have as its most probable consequence precisely the result they least desire, a return to war. The Iranian regime is speaking, yet again, of its ‘right’ to enrich uranium. President Donald Trump, dealing with Iranian intransigence, has gone from looking forward to closed-door discussions to bluntly reminding Iran’s negotiators that “the only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”
In a world of vapid demagogues, it is overwhelmingly likely that Mr. Trump will have no choice but to return to war. Those who would not have this happen have absolutely nothing to offer, apart from vacuous speeches.
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