Alan Zendell, April 13, 2024

For decades, most politicians subscribed to the myth that being Jewish was equivalent to unwaveringly supporting Israel. That’s true to some extent – I don’t know any Jews who want to see Israel destroyed. As an 81-year-old Jew, I have a lot of experience observing angry relatives and friends gesticulating and screaming at each other no matter what the topic was. Put ten Jews in a room, and you have ten different opinions, a lot of noise, and very little interest in compromise.

I also understand antisemitism. I got my first real job while an undergraduate at Columbia in 1960, at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Laboratory, their leading-edge solid state physics research facility. On day one, I was informed that since I was Jewish, the only place I could work was the stockroom (until I got my PhD in physics.) Almost all the senior researchers at the lab were Jewish.

Antisemitism, and conspiracy theories about Jews infiltrating governments and financial institutions have been around for thousands of years. But it took the Nazi’s systematic extermination of six million Jews to trigger enough world guilt, that even the British, no friends to Jews prior to World War II, concluded that surviving Jews deserved a homeland of their own. They dusted off the Balfour Declaration and pushed the creation of Israel through the United Nations.

In one of the most bafflingly stupid decisions ever made, the fledgling UN created Israel in a desert with almost no natural resources surrounded by enemies that have screamed “Death to Israel” ever since. No need to catalog all the wars Israel has had to fight or the constant state of war that exists along Israel’s borders with Hamas-controlled Gaza, Hezbolah-controlled southern Lebanon, and Syria. Over the span of Israel’s existence, innocent Israeli civilians have been besieged by constant, unprovoked rocket attacks. The common denominator in all that is Iran which has spread terrorism through the Middle East for decades.

While many Israelis would prefer to live in peace with their neighbors, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scuttled every attempt to create a Palestinian state and a lasting peace. As a young boy and a teenager, Netanyahu lived in Philadelphia, and later, graduated from MIT and worked for a Boston Consulting group. Sounding like a Jew from New York, he became the darling of American Jews and was instrumental in garnering and preserving American support for Israel.

America’s seventy-five-year long commitment to Israel built Netanyahu’s popularity in Israel and the United States. But over time, he grew more extreme and nationalistic and became a ruthless, power-obsessed politician. Once a champion of Israel’s growth and prosperity, he is now extremely unpopular at home, and has been indicted on felony charges by Israeli courts for corrupt business practices. It’s no coincidence that he and Donald Trump are political allies.

When Iran-backed Hamas murdered, wounded, raped, and kidnapped thousands of Israeli civilians last October 7th, everyone including Hamas and Iran knew exactly what Israel’s, that is, Netanyahu’s response would be. He formed an emergency war cabinet that controlled the government and protected him from criminal prosecution. On October 7th and every day since, Netanyahu vowed that Israel will not end its invasion of Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.

At first, that goal seemed both reasonable and justified, but Netanyahu’s callous disregard of the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza has eroded American and European support for his war of revenge. It has also eroded support for Israel among American politicians. Netanyahu strained his relationship with the United States, and created a tinderbox that could explode the Middle East. The final straw was an attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Netanyahu has demonstrated he has no limits or filters, and that he cannot be relied upon as a stable, rational ally.

Last month, Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz. Last week, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid came to Washington to meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and SC Senator Lindsey Graham. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall during those meetings.

Netanyahu is now a threat to the existence of Israel, the entire Middle East, and American interests. He believes that millennia of antisemitism and attempted genocide justify actions that risk plunging the world into nuclear war. He thinks he is the Judean God who destroys cities and floods the planet when he deems his enemies deserving of death. By provoking Iran and placing military and intelligence officers in every western country on guard against attack, he believes he can blackmail President Biden and our Congress into continuing to arm his war on Hamas. He’s wrong!

It’s a dilemma for Biden, but politics must take a backseat to pragmatic reality. Biden must re-affirm his full support for Israel and its people, but inform Netanyahu’s war cabinet that as long as Netanyahu continues as Prime Minister, there will be no further arms shipments to Israel. Our government claims it never gets involved in foreign regime changes, but that’s nonsense. The time has come to force Netanyahu’s ouster, for the good of Israel and the world.