Netanyahu’s Existential Threat to Israel

The past six months have revealed vast inconsistencies in US foreign policy toward Israel and the failures of maximalist security guarantees against terrorism.

In its fight against terrorism — a fight that is justified, although our methods differ — Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his war cabinet of right-wing extremists have endangered Israel’s existence as a state.

The security failures of October 7 alone, with Netanyahu’s choice to station IDF forces in the West Bank, rather than at the Gaza Strip, reveal extensive security failures.

Israelis have not been dealt an easy task. However, Netanyahu’s response was one of the worst imaginable. It has destabilized the Middle East, halted normalization talks, destroyed Gaza, warranted Putin’s criticism of the US, turned public opinion widely against Israel, and now, resulted in skirmishes with Iran after targeting an embassy in Damascus– another violation of international law.

The perplexity here is that Israel does have legitimate security concerns. In my view, Israel does have a right to exist. Jews were displaced from the region thousands of years ago, under Roman occupation, and then to varying extents under different historical events, including the Crusades and under Ottoman rule. This is to say nothing of the systematic killing of Jews — and global indignance to it as it was happing — during the Second World War. I have been a teaching assistant on Holocaust history across two semesters, so I am…