The Ordeal and Triumph of Mr. Netanyahu › American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson
Ordeal
After the October 7 massacres, the obituaries of the long political career of Benjamin Netanyahu, published both in Israel and in the West, became orthodox. He was considered as politically inert as Donald Trump once was after January 6, 2021.
The conventional wisdom speculated not if, but only when he would be forced out of office.
Western leaders and the Israeli left, and indeed even the Israeli non-left, as well as American and European pundits, claimed that the laxity of the Netanyahu government was entirely to blame for the grotesque massacre of October 7.
Indeed, last fall, there arose almost a competition of critics to assert all the ways in which Netanyahu was played by Hamas.
Accordingly, Netanyahu’s sweeping Supreme Court reforms had supposedly needlessly split the country, demoralizing the military and eroding Israeli deterrence in the eyes of Palestinian terrorists. Or his purported strategy of playing off the more lethal and toxic Hamas against the Palestinian Authority was supposedly proof of his reckless naivete.
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https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/28/the-ordeal-and-triumph-of-mr-netanyahu/
