Despised by much of the world and many of his countrymen, Israel’s prime minister is nonetheless one of the few truly formidable figures in international politics today.
America’s policy class has been obsessed for decades with presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. That is natural, since they have been the country’s national leaders. But decades from now, they will have been mostly forgotten like the Gilded Age presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and so forth.
The fact is, most of America’s presidents have been little more than competent managers, and our time is little different than in past eras. George W. Bush will be remembered for the tragedy of the Iraq War. And Donald Trump obviously will cut a large figure in history, for better or worse, because he has drastically changed the nature and style of the presidency.
The same goes for the overwhelming majority of European leaders and NATO secretaries-general. Though they command attention among the policy elites, they, too, will be forgotten. Few of them, since Margaret Thatcher, have stood out as believing in anything in particular. They have droned on about international law only because they have had the luxury to do so, having been defended since 1945 largely by American taxpayers. An unstated reason for Europe’s particular animus toward Israel over the decades is that the continent’s leaders secretly resent Israel’s willingness and ability to regularly defend itself through tough military action: something Europe’s elites never had even to countenance, and arguably couldn’t manage.
They rightly condemn many of Israel’s actions in Gaza, brought on by the worst atrocity since the Holocaust. Still, they have virtually forgotten the 650,000 dead in Syria and the many tens of thousands of dead in Sudan in recent civil wars. Antisemitism, among other things, resides in selectivity.
Indeed, there is one man whom many of these European and American leaders truly disdain, who will be remembered for decades onward, and about whom historians will be publishing thick biographies. That man is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Consider that Netanyahu has been Israel’s longest-serving prime minister in its history, serving for a total of 17 years thus far in three different runs. He deals with levels of stress and anxiety on a daily basis that would psychologically immobilize the average Western politician.
He literally decides who to assassinate and who not to. He faces criminal indictments, forcing him to appear in court regularly. He runs a government that is besieged from within by policy differences and from without by political enemies who want to topple him. Israeli politics are among the most ruthless in the democratic world. Netanyahu’s massive security failure on October 7, 2023, will be remembered for decades; as will his prolongation of the Gaza War that has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary civilian deaths (even though Hamas has deliberately taken cover in schools, mosques, and hospitals, magnifying the body count).
But history will also remember Netanyahu’s methodical near-destruction of Hamas, followed by his methodical and thoroughly innovative destruction of Hezbollah; then the destruction of Iran’s air defense system, and a good part of its nuclear complex. He may have done more damage to the Houthis in Yemen than either the US Navy or NATO. And let’s not forget the toppling of the altogether murderous regime in Syria, which came about as a direct result of Israel’s dismantling of Hezbollah next door in Lebanon. It all constitutes the first major Western military victory since the 1991 Gulf War.
Netanyahu did all of these things practically alone in political terms, essentially changing his defense and other security ministers, as well as his top military officers, along the way. Arguably, no one else in Israel could have done it, and could have essentially manipulated President Trump into bombing Iran. Netanyahu has shown that military skill, no matter how extraordinary, is just not enough, unless matched with the same degree of political skill and a willingness to take incredible risks.
And he is not finished. He probably intends to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza in order to get more hostages back. And with that, negotiate a historic treaty bringing Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords. If these things actually do come about, it will mainly be because of the political capital Netanyahu has accrued inside Israel from his military actions in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran.
Netanyahu will at some point end his political career, with the usual horde of journalists and policy elites pointing out all of his many, obvious flaws. He will be condemned the world over. But he will have left a deep mark on the world and Middle East history, especially if, within the foreseeable future, some form of regime change in Iran takes place, given that he has almost single-handedly undermined Iran’s regional terrorist empire.
Politics is ultimately about having a strong character. But the fact is that most politicians in the West don’t. They are slick operators, not leaders. They play it safe, hoping to bask in media praise, and consequently leave no mark. Netanyahu is different. He certainly has blood on his hands, but mainly because politics in the Middle East is literally a life and death struggle: not the Kantian paradise of perpetual peace that has existed in Europe for more than three-quarters of a century until the Ukraine War. The Middle East today is living through the Age of Netanyahu. Like him or not, he is a world-historical figure thrown up by the vast psychological undercurrents of the Nazi Holocaust, further intensified by Israel’s precarious security situation.
Ironically, it is Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who pointed out in reference to Israel’s bombing of Iran, “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.” So finally, after 80 years, there is a European leader who inhabits a world of power, not of legalistic fantasy. Alas, with all of his considerable excesses, Netanyahu is symptomatic of our era: an era of hard and not soft power.
About the Author: Robert Kaplan
Robert D. Kaplan’s most recent book is Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Image: Noamgalai / Shutterstock.com.
