Netanyahu’s retreat will be like Napoleon’s from Russia

Retreat stinks. Looking ahead, the retreater sees his destination melt like ice in the sun; looking back, the road that seemed so short when it led to the battlefield now seems to him as long as a continent; looking sideways, he imagines snipers, land mines and disease; and looking inwards, he sniffs disloyalty, despair and defeat.

This is not to say that all retreats end badly. The British retreat from Dunkirk was a success, having retrieved a large corpus from a war zone with minimum casualties, and thus salvaged much of the army that would later move to the offensive and win.

Such was also George Washington’s retreat from Long Island through Brooklyn and New Jersey to Pennsylvania, a maneuver which surprised the British invaders, and in due course enabled the Continental Army to turn the war’s tide.

The common denominator among such retreats is that their commanders did not start the wars they won. Someone else waged war, and retreat was merely the defender’s response before counterattacking, the way Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov did in the face of Napoleon’s assault.

Such are the glorious retreats of the defenders. The attackers’ retreats, by contrast, are inglorious, as they underscore machismo’s debacle, fantasy’s futility, and the frivolity of the choice to go to war. That is what happened, for instance, with Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in 1812, with Nasser’s retreat from Sinai in 1967, and with the Argentine junta’s retreat from the Falkland Islands in 1982.

Now, what those fiascoes constituted militarily awaits Benjamin Netanyahu politically as his retreat from the biggest political mistake of his career begins to unfold.

Netanyahu's retreat begins

YES, THE coalition’s decision on Monday to temporarily shrink the judicial overhaul was a political nonstarter and a publicity ploy.

The decision, to make do for now with the government’s appointment of two Supreme Court justices and delay the rest of the legislative package for later, created none of the impression its authors hoped to create – namely, that they are retreating.

It took no Sherlock Holmes to detect the deceit. Even one justice’s appointment by the ruling coalition is one too many, let alone the appointment of the court’s president. The whole idea is to prevent such political tinkering, as our system lacks the constitution and bicameral legislature that form other democracies’ checks and balances.

Evidently, the man behind this mock retreat still thinks the people are the same idiots he habitually fooled over the years with ease and impunity and can thus be fooled again. That is why the stubbornness and lying with which he and his operation responded to the protest movement are still intact.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich thus repeated on Tuesday the lie that under the current system, “the judges appoint each other.” As explained here previously, the Judges Selection Committee includes three judges, four politicians and two lawyers, meaning the judges are a minority, and that’s beside the fact that a Supreme Court justice’s appointment requires the approval of seven of the committee’s nine members.

The same spirit of deceit inspired Netanyahu’s televised demand on Sunday, before the cabinet’s weekly meeting: “I expect the Chief of General Staff and the heads of the security forces to fight firmly the [service] refusal [of reservist fighter pilots].” Netanyahu thus conveniently ignored the fact that these pilots are volunteers who give the Air Force one day of their working week, year after year. Instead, just like he and his felonious police minister dare call the protesters “anarchists,” Netanyahu now made it sound as if the reservist pilots are enlisted servicemen evading service.

And so, while ignoring the pilots’ grievance – namely, his threat to Israeli democracy – Netanyahu made it seem as if the problem the airmen pose is not political but disciplinary, and thus not his business but IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi’s. Talk about shifting blame.

Well, despite the judicial revolutionaries’ continued lying and hoodwinking, this week’s events mean that Netanyahu now understands what he has uncorked and is desperately seeking a way to undo what he has done. Yes, he thought he could return the genie to the bottle by faking a retreat, but what he has just begun is a real retreat, an inglorious retreat from a Napoleonic misadventure’s inevitable collapse.

Netanyahu miscalculated Middle Israel's patriotism and sense of abuse

ALL INGLORIOUS retreats begin with miscalculation. Napoleon miscalculated the Russian winter, Nasser miscalculated Israel’s resolve to survive, and Argentina’s generalissimos miscalculated Britain’s will to fight. Netanyahu miscalculated Middle Israel’s patriotism, bellicosity and sense of abuse.

As this column warned him a month before the judiciary revolution’s announcement (“The Middle Israeli revolt,” December 9, 2022), Netanyahu emerged from his electoral victory intoxicated, convinced he and his allies’ abuse of Middle Israel can be redoubled at no cost, not realizing they are provoking its revolt. Now, faced with multitudes flooding the streets; staring at the blue-and-white forestations that the flags they carry form; and hearing the rebukes of entrepreneurs, economists, industrialists, rabbis, literati, former heads of the Mossad, Shin Bet, Rafael, the Atomic Energy Committee and a battery of retired generals including ten air-force commanders, from Amikam Norkin, 56, to Dan Tolkowsky, 102, Bibi knows that the revolt is here.

And as happened in other inglorious retreats, the failing offensive’s ranks are beginning to fray. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant threatens to resign; Economy Minister Nir Barkat vows to obey the court should it override the reform; and Likud MKs Eli Dallal and David Bitan call to halt the legislation and replace the judicial revolution’s unilateralism with dialogue.

Evidently, when Netanyahu besmirches patriotic pilots who risk their lives behind enemy lines while he is literally and visibly flanked by ultra-Orthodox ministers who did not serve in the army one hour, such Likudniks understand that they have been hijacked, that their leader has lost his cool, judgment and way, and that he and they now face only one choice: retreat.

www.MiddleIsrael.net

The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of the bestselling Mitzad Ha’ivelet Ha’yehudi (The Jewish March of Folly, Yediot Sefarim, 2019), a revisionist history of the Jewish people’s political leadership.