Israel’s War Council, which convened late Thursday night, was expected to give its approval for a retaliatory strike on Iran following Tehran’s October 1 ballistic missile attacks on Israel.
“It’s the biggest opportunity in the last fifty years for Israel to change the landscape in the Middle East,” ex-Prime Minister of Israel hardline Naftali Bennett recently exclaimed on social media. “We must act now to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and cripple its terrorist regime.” Close by and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hinted that regime change in Iran may come “sooner than we imagine, thus enabling the Iranian and Israeli people to coexist peacefully.”
“Political Teflon” Netanyahu – But for how long?
If anyone has followed even a little of Netanyahu’s political path in recent years, they have serious reasons to doubt that he is really interested in the peaceful coexistence of the two neighboring peoples. Netanyahu acts as if he is the center of everything in the Middle East. And he is primarily interested in his political survival.
It is a fact that Netanyahu is proving to be a “Teflon politician”. But until when? In Israel’s history, after every major tragedy related to the country’s security, the government fell.
After Israel’s military setbacks in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Golda Meir’s government resigned, as did Menachem Begin’s government after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. In both cases, the resignations of Israeli prime ministers investigations followed to determine what went wrong and what went wrong for Israel.
Netanyahu’s stay in power runs counter to historical precedents in Israel. After the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023, no one in Israel believed that Netanyahu would be in office a year later, notes Foreign Affairs columnist Aluf Ben.
Who is it undermining, how is it overturning the historical data of Israel
But Netanyahu believes that he understands Israel’s defense better than the country’s generals, whom he considers cowardly and clinging to the US bandwagon. It is no coincidence that his main political opponents are former high-ranking officials of the Israeli armed forces, who have been either prime ministers or defense ministers: Ehud Barak, Benny Gantz, Yoav Galand, the current defense minister.
Traditionally, Aluf reminds, liberal Ashkenazi Jews (note the Jews who lived in the Rhine Valley, and who after the Crusades, immigrated to Eastern Europe, Poland, Russia and the Baltic countries), whom Netanyahu is undermining.
They are precisely the portion of the Israeli establishment that spearheaded the months-long militant protests against Netanyahu against the conservative judicial reform he promoted throughout 2023, until the fateful October 7.
By the end of 2023, Netanyahu’s poll numbers had plummeted. Then they recovered. Recently, however, and despite the assassination of the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon, a poll recorded that if elections were held today in Israel, Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which holds 68 seats out of a total of 130, in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, would only win 46 MPs. Netanyahu, who constantly monitors the polls, realizes that Israelis are angry with him and is pursuing a strategy that will help him stay in power.
The chessboard in the Middle East
In view of the possible catastrophic conflict with Iran, the Israeli prime minister should take into account the historical and real facts. As Washington Post columnist Max Booth argues, Israel probably does not have the military capability to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The Israeli air force can certainly deliver major strikes on Iran’s oil facilities. In that case, Tehran would retaliate by possibly hitting oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and closing the Straits of Hormuz, at least for a while. The result will be an even bigger war breaking out in the region, which will hurt the world economy as well as send oil prices skyrocketing internationally.
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