Bibi’s hubris

This time, Netanyahu flew too close to the sun.

My new book, Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto, is now available at Amazon via Wicked Son Books and the Z3 Project.

From the moment the Iran War started, I was worried. Despite believing for decades that the Iranian regime had to be, at some point, destroyed, the moment of combat came with numerous trepidations: there seemed to be no clear endgame, regime change is impossible from the air and boots on the ground were out of the question, and my loved ones in Israel were under constant rocket fire. I knew that if any were hurt, God forbid, none of it would have been worth it. Citing Orwell, I wondered if revenge was, in the end, sour.

Today, revenge seems sourer than ever. If media reports of the Trump administration’s interim deal with Iran are accurate, and the contours of a potential final deal set in stone, then the war has ended horrendously. Iran’s genocidally antisemitic regime remains intact, perhaps more radical than ever. The US seems to have agreed to all its terms, gaining almost nothing in return. The ceasefire between the US and Iran has been catastrophically linked to a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Worse still, Israel has little room to maneuver. Under the current government, at least, there is no choice but to obey President Donald Trump’s dictates. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long since gone all-in on Trump, basing much of his appeal on his relationship with “my friend” the president. In addition, he has completely alienated even non-antisemitic—increasingly rare—elements in the Democratic Party and many Republicans as well. It is not necessarily an exaggeration to say that Trump is all Netanyahu has left in terms of Israel’s relationship with the US, and now Netanyahu appears to have been betrayed.

Netanyahu is, of course, trying to spin all this as a victory, as he always does, especially when facing an election, but his protestations ring distinctly hollow.

There have been some gains, of course. Israel seriously damaged the regime leadership, along with Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capacities. It demonstrated its total dominance over Iran’s military capacities. It suffered thankfully minimal casualties as a result of the shower of Iranian missiles. It also showed its occulted Arab allies that it is willing to take the fight to Iran if necessary.

Nonetheless, I believe this war will go down as Netanyahu’s greatest failure and perhaps his end. The opposition has made its position on the matter clear, berating the prime minister for leading Israel to what they regard as a complete defeat, and I imagine even many in Netanyahu’s camp agree—especially given the situation in Lebanon. This raises the question, then, of precisely what went wrong.

The wildly controversial British politician Enoch Powell once said, “All political lives end in failure.” There is a great deal of truth in this. At the very least, almost all political lives end in tragedy, and this has almost always held true of Israel’s prime ministers: David Ben-Gurion was forced out of office by his own party, Golda Meir was laid low by the failures of the Yom Kippur War, Menachem Begin suffered a complete nervous breakdown, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, Ariel Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke before he could see the disastrous results of his withdrawal from Gaza, and so on. Some of these failures were inflicted by outside forces, but just as many were self-inflicted, the result of miscalculation and hubris.

I imagine both are at work in Netanyahu’s case. It is likely that, surrounded by his “yes men,” Netanyahu badly underestimated the fanatical resilience of evil in the form of the Iranian regime. It seems to have never occurred to him that the regime would not crumble even in the face of military defeat and would use the Strait of Hormuz as a formidable strategic weapon. Nor did he consider, despite all evidence of American resistance to regime change and boots on the ground, that Trump would eventually simply give up, hand the Iranians whatever they wanted, declare victory, and leave. For a politician revered for his Machiavellian brilliance, all this is a stunning and indeed surprising dereliction on Netanyahu’s part.

Together with this, and behind it all, lies hubris, as it often does with politicians. Perhaps because of Israel’s success against Iran in the previous war; perhaps because of his desire to complete his “life’s work” and secure his legacy; perhaps out of electoral considerations; perhaps because of all of the above and more, Netanyahu chose to become an Icarus. Convinced of his own genius, he flew too close to the sun and found himself not in triumph but falling into the sea.

Does this mean that Netanyahu’s political life will now end in failure? We simply do not know at the moment. It depends on the will of Israeli voters. Nonetheless, it is difficult to see how the prime minister recovers. He already has the failures of October 7 on his account, and now he has, in some ways, a deeper and more existential failure to deal with. He is carrying an enormous amount of baggage into what may be an epochally fateful election.

If Netanyahu loses, we will be left to contemplate a long legacy that, as Powell predicted, did indeed end in failure, and in this case, a remarkably ignominious failure, especially for a man of such obvious skill and talents. Such is the fate, unfortunately, of those who fly too close to the sun. Sadly, Israel will pay the price for Netanyahu’s hubris, and it may well be a heavy one.