David Cameron's return as foreign minister was treated by the British media as a shock, coming seven years after he resigned as prime minister because the voters defied him and chose to ditch the European Union. His gamble on a Brexit referendum backfired and within hours he walked away, looking somewhat glum but with his head held high.
In Israel, people used the occasion to contrast the dignified Brit to their own ever-scheming Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been ignoring a growing clamor for his resignation over the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, the biggest disaster in Israel's history. The difference stems in part from the contrast in political traditions; no Knesset member ever referred to a rival as a "right honourable gentleman." But Netanyahu takes things to another level.
Israel has seen leaders who did resign because of public pressure (Golda Meir in 1974 after the Yom Kippur War), an ethical breach (Yitzhak Rabin in 1976, over an unreported bank account) or policy fiascos (Menachem Begin in 1983, after the calamitous Lebanon invasion of the year before).
Netanyahu has all three. He is a criminal defendant on trial for bribery. Polls show some three-quarters of Israelis want him to step down. And he has presided over a failure that is almost inexplicable, even taking into account mistakes, incompetence, and venality.
Upon returning to power in a fluke election a year ago (the opposition handed him the victory through idiotic splits that caused 6 percent of the vote to be thrown away), he embarked upon a plan to Putinize the country. His coalition's campaign to eviscerate checks on executive power kicked up the biggest protest movement Israel ever knew, creating a schism that security chiefs warned in vain was weakening national security by projecting vulnerability and invited attack.
Basing his government on Jewish ultranationalists and religious fanatics, Netanyahu let settler extremists run riot in the West Bank, creating tensions that had the military severely distracted on the morning of Oct. 7. The Gaza frontier was mostly unguarded as thousands of Hamas terrorists busted through the border fence.
Moreover, Netanyahu was the main proponent of an idea that backfired as few in history ever have: allow a bloodthirsty jihadi mafia to rule Gaza in order to divide Palestinians and weaken the moderate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, easing pressure on Israel for a two-state accommodation.
Netanyahu's odd bedfellows turned out to be mass rapists and baby killers who dismembered and burned to death entire families in their homes, kidnapped infants and Holocaust survivors by the hundreds to tunnels and basements in Gaza, and left an apocalyptic death toll of 1,200 in their wake. Somehow it took the military most of a day to even show up on the scene; Netanyahu was not heard from till nightfall.
It was the most murderous day for Jews since the Holocaust and by far the most colossal breakdown of strategy and execution in the history of Zionism. The images of charred babies, the naked bodies of violated women, the narratives of cruelty that emerged from audio and video recordings, terrified screams of children followed by gunshots and then eerie quiet—these will never be forgotten by Israelis.
It may seem odd to Americans, whose system is different and whose last president tried to hang on even after losing an election, but leaders in parliamentary systems are not supposed to survive this level of a debacle. They hang up their spurs—as most Israelis are basically beseeching him to do.
Yet it has become increasingly clear that Netanyahu would rather chew his arm off and claw his eyes out than forego the position that allows him to roam Western capitals at taxpayer expense—with his wife usually in tow—on artificially extended official visits-cum-shopping expeditions. A mass conversion to Judaism by the leadership of Hamas is more likely.
At the few news conferences that Netanyahu has braved, he has avoided insistent questions about his culpability with baritone contortions. At one point he caused the national heart to skip a beat when he said he bore "responsibility" – only to add "for the future of the country."
His lackeys explain that because of Israel's military operation to remove Hamas from power in Gaza—which might last a year or more, they add—Netanyahu must stay, because war trumps politics. The result has been memes such as "you don't return a spoiled meal before finishing it" and "you don't leave an abusive husband before he's finished beating you."
The more serious commentariat bristles with schemes to compel Netanyahu's allies to dump him in parliament and put the country out of its misery.
Many recall Netanyahu's 2009 admonition that then-PM Ehud Olmert resign because of a mere police inquiry. "A prime minister up to his neck in police investigations," he intoned then, "has no moral and public mandate to determine critical things for Israel, since there is a not unfounded concern that he will decide based on his personal interest, for his political survival, and not in the national interest."
I'd like to hand poor Netanyahu a ladder. Having conversed with him numerous times over the years, and having read several of his books, I know him to be an intellectual of sorts. As such, I'd like to offer him the philosophical foundations for doing his people's bidding by calling it a day.
To begin with, I have great concern that Netanyahu, like so many, including the Nazis, has misread Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of "will to power." It is not, in fact, about never-ending domination over others but rather involves a constant striving to achieve self-overcoming and self-mastery. There would be some of that in a graceful exit, to be sure.
Indeed, reading the major philosophical works leaves a person with the clear impression that when national leaders fail cataclysmically in the execution of their duties, resignation becomes a moral and ethical necessity, an act of accountability and responsibility. At such times resignation is not merely a political formality but a moral imperative rooted in ethical principles articulated by the greats.
Thomas Hobbes's social contract theory, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's call for humility, Friedrich Hayek's insights on the limitations of centralization, Emanuel Kant's emphasis on the concept of moral duty and the importance of acting in accordance with universal values—all this thought leadership points in the direction of a well-earned rest for the leader who has royally screwed up.
Kant put it well: "It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honorably." But since Netanyahu is a Jewish nationalist, perhaps the best advice to give him would be that of the sage Hillel: "In the place where there is no humanity, be a human being."
Dan Perry is managing partner of the New York-based communications firm Thunder11. He is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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