With His Eyes on History, Benjamin Netanyahu Aims for Political Resurrection
In the days following Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, escaped any public admission of responsibility for the failure of colossal security. Above all, he avoided attending commemorative services for the dead. He rarely met the families of the languid Israeli hostages in the tunnels of Gaza.
Under the first Israeli Prime Ministers, flagrant misconduct of intelligence and military strategy were quickly followed by hearings and dramatic results. In October 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian forces took Israel by surprise in the Sinai peninsula and the Golan Heights and, for a few days, put the state in deep endangered. A few weeks following the end of the assault, which became known as the war of Yom Kippour, a commission of inquiry of the State, led by the chief judge of the Supreme Court of Israel, Shimon Agranat, questioned witnesses to the calculation errors and the oversights which led to the crisis. His conclusions contributed to the possible resignation of Prime Minister Golda Meir and the Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan.
On the other hand, even if the main members of the Netanyahu military and defense establishment have resigned or excused for their roles in the tragedy of October 7, he has so far dusted any real accounting, has rejected any investigation. Consequently, for the first year after the attacks, his number of surveys was terrible. Political observers in Israel through the ideological spectrum have spoken of when, not if, Netanyahu finally fell from power and would be replaced by, among others, General Benny Gantz, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, or the former Minister of Finance Avigdor Lieberman. And yet, like Nahum Barnea, a veteran political columnist, said to me at the time in Israel, “I go to the funeral of politicians to make sure they are buried. But the returns are possible.”
And now, the day after Donald Trump’s shelter joined Israel to bomb the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear installations, Netanyahu and his circle are counting on his political resurrection. Regardless of the Gaza disaster, with tens of thousands of deaths and conviction in the world. Regardless of Netanyahu’s political aggressions against democratic standards and institutions. Regardless of its legal movements.
Amit Segal, journalist of Channel 12, is deeply coming from the Prime Minister’s office and considered by a kind of messenger for his reflection. I called Segal on Sunday, less than a day after the American B-2 bombers abandoned their useful expenses on nuclear sites in Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz in what was nicknamed the Midnight Hammer operation.
“During the first twelve months after October 7, it seemed that it was Gallipoli de Netanyahu, a disaster that almost destroyed Churchill’s career,” said Segal. In 1916, as the first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill led the power of the First World War’s understanding to an overwhelming defeat on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey in the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
“It was the most horrible moment in the history of Israel, and it was under the administration of” Mr. Security “,” continued Segal. “It was not only another scandal. It was his raison d’être. Today, after the fall of Hezbollah, Lebanon, and the fall of Assad in Syria, and the fate of Hamas, and now the attack on the nuclear program in Iran, October 7 looks more like Pearl Harbor – a devastating failure which ends a certain time later with total victory. The Israeli-Israeli war will see it.
The Segal spin has only the ring of authenticity only insofar as it seems to echo with precision in obsessions, vanities, thought and even in the inner life of Netanyahu. In his memoirs, Netanyahu makes constant references to Churchill. When I interviewed him during his first mandate, Netanyahu smoked huge cigars and kept a portrait of Churchill in his office. Regarding Tehran, Netanyahu talks about the collection of storms for many years. In 2006, he said: “It was in 1938 and Iran was Germany.” In 2011, he told the British interviewer Piers Morgan: “I admire Winston Churchill because I think he saw the danger for Western civilization and acted in time to alleviate the hemorrhage.”
Segal told me that, in the planning of the military assault against Iran, the establishment of security said that the retaliation strikes would lead between eight hundred and four thousand deaths in Israel. So far, reality has been much lower than these expectations. Some of the Iranian ballistic missiles have slipped through the air defenses of Israel and, according to the Times, At least twenty-nine people were killed and nine hundred injured. Segal also made it possible that, when Netanyahu justified strikes to the public by speaking of the imminence of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, it was, “to be honest, more a literary description than by Segal, had proof that Iran was hidden for the percentages so that weapons have hidden. The conclusion, said Segal, was not: “They could do it tomorrow”. The crucial factor was that Iran was in a weakened state, with a large part of its eliminated air defenses. Consequently, Segal said: “They took what they knew and described it as more dramatic than it was. But Netanyahu was right on the intentions. “
When I relayed Segal’s remarks on Churchill to Amos Harel, defense analyst for HaaretzHarel gleams. “Well, it is Bibi’s account. As the son of a historian” – the father, Benzion Netanyahu, was a right -wing historian of the Spanish Inquisition – “He thinks of this way. What he is trying to do right now, without admitting the blame for October 7 and getting rid of all those who were involved, he already knew that it was planned.
Analysts of Israel told me that it was not yet clear how or when Netanyahu could try to capitalize on the issue of Iran for political purposes. Some say that he will eventually ask for new elections and could even find a way to drop the most reactionary members of his current coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Netanyahu could reach out to his detractors for the good of national unity, or he could use his apparent success against Iran to make his way on the path of greater autocracy. Others even speculate that, after having attacked Iran and Cajolé the United States to join the war, he will, after having been the oldest Prime Minister in Israeli history, will be called. One of his biographers and a writer for The EconomistAnshel Pfeffer, however, doubt this scenario, saying: “Netanyahu has no life at all without this office.”
