The report in The Jerusalem Post of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first interview in the Hebrew media since the outbreak of war – where he insinuated that threats by protesters against his government’s judicial reforms to stop serving in the IDF reserves played a part in Hamas’s decision to attack Israel on October 7 – would be funny if his faulty logic were not so tragic for the country.
“The refusal [to serve] is a disaster – and created illusions for our enemies,” he said. Also, during the interview on Channel 14, Netanyahu criticized current protesters for calling for new elections.
There is no question that the nine months of protests against judicial reform in 2023 created divisiveness in the country and certainly made us look weak in the face of our enemies. The prime minister and his right-wing coalition were attempting to push an unpopular set of reforms down the throats of the general public along with an unwillingness to compromise on any aspect of the reform.
Nevertheless, it is specious on his part to point to the threats of some reservists not to serve as a cause for what occurred on October 7, when so much of the divisiveness was his doing in the first place.
Making this jump on the prime minister’s part is tantamount to the definition of chutzpa whereby a son who just murdered his parents asks for mercy from the court because he is an orphan.
But Netanyahu’s remarks are in line with his general behavior as prime minister. He takes the blame for nothing. Everything bad that happens, every challenge to the normal order of life, is someone else’s fault.
THE OCTOBER 7 mega-atrocity by Hamas happened for several reasons: The border was severely understaffed. Data indicates that warnings about the attack were issued regularly in the run-up to October 7 and seem to have been dismissed or ignored. It took almost eight hours for the IDF to get its act together and begin to respond to the attack; as a result, more than 1,200 people were slaughtered, dozens of others were sexually assaulted, and some 250 hostages were taken into Gaza, where 120 remain.
This all should leave everyone appalled at the level of devastation and unpreparedness evident that day, regardless of the reasons behind the attack itself.
Taking responsibility
Who is to blame for that? By definition, it is the leadership of the IDF and the civilian government whose job it was to make good on their contract with the people of Israel to protect us. The most senior people in both of those cohorts bear ultimate responsibility for what happened on October 7 – specifically, the IDF chief of staff and the prime minister of Israel.
Instead of taking responsibility for this, the prime minister blames the protesters who earlier in the year said they would not turn up for reserve duty on behalf of a government that they felt was taking away their freedoms.
In Asian cultures, the leadership would have long ago asked for forgiveness from the citizenry of Israel and resigned. But not here. While some military leaders did admit responsibility and resigned (and for that they should be applauded), nobody in the political wing has done so, nor has anyone even admitted responsibility.
NOW, THE protests have begun again with a push for new elections. The majority understands that this government will not close itself down.
We should all be grateful that there are people still willing to stand up for what they believe and demonstrate in support of those beliefs. There is no other avenue open to the public to make its opinion known other than through protests, whether it is in favor of new elections or in favor of a deal with Hamas that gets the remaining living hostages back.
Yet, the prime minister goes after the protesters now as well. “I say to the protesters – get it together. This is the time for unity, this is the time for greatness,” he said during the interview. “Their goal is to bring down the government, and every time their excuse is different. I do not think that it reflects a majority of the people. I turn to the majority of the people and say – this is the time for unity.”
Actually, he is partially correct. It is the time for unity but the people know that it probably cannot be fully achieved under leadership that fails to take responsibility for its failures as well as its success.
In situations like this, I often quote former US president Harry Truman, probably the last moral occupant of the White House in the last century. In his farewell address to the American people in January 1953 he said: “The president – whomever he is – has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”
Truman understood that, at the end of the day, he was responsible for what did and did not happen under his watch. Israel’s prime minister would do well for once to internalize that principle and stop blaming others for his failures.
The writer, who has lived in Israel for 40 years, is founder and chair of Atid EDI Ltd., an international business development consultancy. He is also the founder and chair of the American State Offices Association, former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, and a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.