Netanyahu warned an attack like Oct. 7 was coming. He forgot his own warning - opinion

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fourth address to a joint session of the US Congress on July 24 reminded me of a book he edited in 1986, lent to me recently by a friend. The volume – based on a 1984 conference convened in Washington by the Jonathan Institute (named after Netanyahu’s late brother, Yonatan Netanyahu, the hero of Israel’s rescue operation in Entebbe on July 3-4, 1976) – is titled Terrorism: How the West Can Win.

It comprises a range of fascinating articles written by, inter alia, Netanyahu himself (he was then Israel’s permanent representative to the UN), his father (historian Prof. Benzion Netanyahu), former American diplomats George P. Shultz and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and former foreign minister Moshe Arens, Netanyahu’s political mentor.

The West must brace itself for the battle against international terrorism, of which it is the principal target, and adopt a variety of means – political, economic, and military – with which to fight it, Netanyahu wrote in the preface, adding: “But underlying them all must be the moral understanding that terrorism, under whatever guide or pretext, is an inexcusable evil, that it obliterates the political and moral distinctions which are the foundations of humane and free life under the rule of law; that the West, in short, must resist terrorism and ultimately defeat it.”

In a chapter titled “Defining Terrorism,” Netanyahu warned that terrorist attacks could now kill and wound hundreds of people at a time, and that the most disconcerting prospect would be the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by the principal terrorist states of the Middle East. “The democracies have, by and large, failed to meet the terrorist challenge,” he asserted.

“They have failed to recognize the far-reaching effects unbridled terrorism will have on their security and have stood divided rather than united. They cannot afford to do so any longer.”

How can the West win the war on terror?

In the title essay, Netanyahu wrote about ways the West can win in the war against terror, urging the US to lead the global battle against terrorism. Here too he was spot-on, particularly when referring to hostage-taking. He was clearly inspired by the memory of his brother Yoni, who was killed while leading the rescue of hostages in Entebbe, becoming what Arens termed “a symbol of resistance to terror, an object lesson that terror can be defeated.”

Netanyahu called hostage-taking the classic terrorist act which places a government in a terrible dilemma: “If it uses force to release the hostages, it might end up with more people killed than if it gives in. If it yields, the terrorists emerge victorious.”

Then he offered this advice: “The terrorists must believe that the authorities are prepared to take forceful action whether or not the hostages have been killed. The mere act of taking hostages warrants such a policy. It is a fundamental error to let the terrorists believe there are instances when they are completely safe from military action. The more terrorists believe that such action is likely, the less prone they will be to continue their siege.”

Is that not the situation Israel faced after October 7? Netanyahu was prophetic in his analysis, predicting mass attacks such as 9/11 in the US. If only he had remembered his own warning, perhaps Israel could have foiled the October 7 massacre, which took place on his watch. Israel’s stated goals in this war are to return the hostages and to crush Hamas. But just as six years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt, Netanyahu told Congress that it should now aspire to the formation of what he called an “Abraham Alliance” against Iran, comprising states in the region that “have made peace with Israel and those that will make peace with Israel.”