We Choose Life! Netanyahu, are you listening?

Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish Year 5786 starts tomorrow at sundown. We, the people of Israel, want desperately to greet the New Year with hope. Yet our annual Rosh Hashanah greetings seem like cruel and ironic sarcasm: “May you have a sweet New Year”, “A healthy and happy New Year”, “May you have a New Year of Peace.” Even the simplest, most common greeting, “Shana Tova” – Have a good year – seems like the epitome of irony. How can we wish for a good year when we are trapped in an endless downward spiral of violence?

We, the people of Israel, want peace. We choose life. Yet we are being dragged further and further into isolation and an infinite pit of senseless death and despair. We are a people of hope, a people of resilience and courage. We have the hearts of lions. But we are being led by a government of sheep with one evil shepherd at the fore. We want peace!

Netanyahu, are you listening? The people of Israel choose peace! The people of Israel want their sons and daughters to come home alive – soldiers, hostages, everyone trapped in Gaza. We do not want our children killing the children of Gaza. We do not want one more soul to perish in your endless, futile war!

The people of Israel choose life! Yet, our leader turns a deaf ear. Yesterday at the weekly rally in Hostage Square, Yotam, the brother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, said: “The government of Israel has chosen death for the umpteenth time. It has also chosen poverty, international isolation, boycotts, and the shattering of Israel’s international relations.”

Choose life! The people of Israel have spoken. Recently, a national  “Day of Stoppage” brought masses of Israelis out to the streets throughout Israel, most taking off work at their own expense in the unauthorized national strike. Over 2 million Israelis marched throughout the country to protest the war and declare their urgent desire to save the hostages. Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square was flooded with visitors during the day, which culminated in a mass rally attended by almost half a million people.

Israel’s president was there, among many other political and cultural leaders. One person who was not there was Benjamin Netanyahu. This massive show of the will of the people did not faze Netanyahu in the least. He spent the day in political huddles with his cronies and then, as many of us fasted and prayed for the hostages, Netanyahu went out to dinner. And in the ultimate show of chutzpah, Netanyahu blamed us – the hostage families and supporters for the ongoing war!

82% of the Israeli people have gone on record to say they want this war to end now. None of that matters to Netanyahu. He knows quite well that as soon as this war ends, so too, will come the end of his career. The house of Netanyahu will come crashing down in the fitting climax to his disastrous killing spree.

It does not seem to bother our Prime Minister in the least that the majority of Israelis despise him and want him gone. He sees himself as King David fighting Goliath, or perhaps Bar Kohba, who led the revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 CE. We see him as Ceausescu, or Pinochet, or Mao Zedong. Or better yet: Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned. Okay, Nero didn’t actually play the fiddle. He played the cithara, a kind of lute. And he probably was not playing it while Rome burned. Nevertheless, the comparison is apt. Nero was an evil leader. He was brutal, homicidal, fratricidal, matricidal, and more. He may not have started the fire, but he let Rome burn and then blamed the Christians. And then he built a golden palace on the charred ruins of his city, as his people starved.

In his “Sparta” speech, in his self-serving rantings, and in all of his actions, Netanyahu proves worthy of the comparison to Nero. His aim is to prolong this futile and lethal war for as long as he can. Again and again, Netanyahu proves willing to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers, our hostages, and hundreds of thousands of Gazan civilians in order to delay his political demise.

Inside Bibi’s Brain: Messiah Complex meets Raw Ambition

Like Nero, Benjamin Netanyahu will go down in history as his country’s most lethal and most despised leader. Perhaps he sees himself as a modern messiah. He claims that he, and only he, can save his people. He is the savior of Israel. At least that’s his version. But there’s another, more plausible possibility: Nero Netanyahu is not the Messiah, but rather the same Master Manipulator we’ve come to know and loathe over these past years. In his autobiography, Netanyahu boasts that he ‘devoured Machiavelli’ while in high school. No surprise.

If, in fact, Netanyahu does have a messiah complex and truly believes he is an almighty savior, then he has a diagnosable mental illness. In that case, he should be locked up in a closed ward at one of our country’s excellent mental health facilities.  There may be no chance he could be cured at this late stage, but at least he would be out of office and out of our way. Locking him up where he can do us no more harm would be one way to stop the carnage.

Sadly, the chances of that happening are slim to none. Far more likely, Netanyahu will continue to hold office, against all odds and against all reason. He will continue on his path of destruction. He will continue to drag us down as he pushes forward with his evil agenda, waging a war which cannot be won. The evil shepherd will push on with this war for purely political and egotistical reasons: in order to stay in power.

As Nicolas Kristof wrote recently in the NY Times, “With Netanyahu concerned only with his own career, with the United States adding fuel to the fire, with neither Washington nor Jerusalem showing much concern for what civilians are enduring in Gaza, I’m afraid we should brace ourselves for continued bloodshed and suffering that serve no strategic purpose.”

It is the eve of the Hebrew Year 5786. The people of Israel choose life. The people of Israel want peace. Nero Netanyahu, are you listening?