Benjamin Netanyahu has many skills that have allowed him to survive so long as Israel’s prime minister, defying domestic rivals and international critics. But one skill in particular makes him indispensable: his ability to stand up to bad American policies.
Right now, that bad policy is a Palestinian state.
Giving the Palestinians a state after the Palestinian terrorist group known as Hamas carried out the biggest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust would reward terror and create terrible incentives.
The Biden administration continues to peddle the idea that “the overwhelming majority of people in Gaza had nothing to do with the attacks of October 7th,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken. True, only a minority are Hamas terrorists, but a majority of Gazans approved of Hamas in polls taken mid-war. And many Israeli survivors of the October 7 attack, and freed hostages, report that Palestinian civilians joined in the looting, torture, and abductions. Dissenting voices are hard to find.
That does not mean everyone in Gaza deserves to suffer — but it also does not mean Palestinians must be rewarded, especially when there is every reason to believe they would simply abuse another opportunity for self-government to plan attacks on Israel.
What Biden does not understand, or chooses to ignore, is the fact that nearly two-thirds of Israelis now oppose a Palestinian state — a complete reversal from a decade ago, when nearly two-thirds supported one. Rockets, and terror, have changed their minds.
That is why Israelis are suddenly rallying around Netanyahu, who is recovering in polls after dropping to abysmal levels in the wake of October 7.
Biden’s effort to impose a Palestinian state has unified Israelis, left and right, against him — and behind Bibi.
Even some left-wing Israelis, who marched for months against Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, will admit privately that they are glad that he and other right-wing leaders are there, so that the war continues until victory, and so that someone opposes Biden.
Biden hates Netanyahu, which is why he refused to meet with him for months after Bibi won the 2022 Israeli elections, and why he reportedly curses him in private. President Barack Obama felt the same way, infamously dissing him on a hot mic in 2011.
Obama’s big idea was the Iran nuclear deal, a complete sham that allowed the Iranian regime to emerge as a nuclear power after a decade or so, and that gave it potentially hundreds of billions of dollars that it could use to fund its terror operations worldwide.
Netanyahu had the audacity to oppose the nuclear deal. Israel was supposed to stay quiet, like Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938, another small democratic nation cut out from the high-level diplomatic maneuverings that would ultimately determine its fate.
With that history in mind, Netanyahu spoke out against the Iran deal from every available platform, even delivering a speech in Congress against Obama’s proposal. He was not opposed to any deal, but rejected one that put his own people in grave danger.
Netanyahu could do that because he is, in a sense, American: he went to high school in Pennsylvania, studied at MIT, and speaks English fluently, without an accent, albeit with a deep Israeli baritone. He knows how to appeal directly to the American people.
True, Netanyahu failed to stop President Bill Clinton from toppling him in his first term in the 1990s. But that was when Israel was experimenting with direct elections for prime minister, which made Netanyahu more vulnerable to pressure and criticism.
Netanyahu has held onto power because he has convinced a broad coalition of right-wing parties, who together represent the majority of Israeli citizens, that he is the only person capable of governing when Israel faces pressure from its strongest ally.
And the world needs him. Because he is right about a Palestinian state — as he was right about the Iran deal, and many other mistakes. Rewarding terror would make us all more unsafe. Ironically, the more Biden attacks him, the more powerful he is.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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