The one thing Hollywood excels at is dead Jews, which seemingly defies its blatant bias against Israel. The nonstop movies and incredible TV series on Netflix, Hulu, and Max of Jews being gassed, shot, and strangled are impressive.
What Hollywood really hates is the fighting Jew. Hence, the last positive movie about an IDF soldier was Paul Newman in Exodus in 1960.
Last month, my family and I were out West for a Jewish wedding. It was great to finally have something to celebrate. We met many Israeli tourists at America’s gorgeous national parks. We spoke to them all. Understandably and justifiably, their main concern was the hostages. Their second concern is how much they hate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Many said that Bibi is more responsible for October 7 than Hamas Hitler Yahya Sinwar.
Have these Israelis taken leave of their senses? Of course not. Many are brave IDF veterans themselves, as are three of my children.
Rather, they are simply victims of “Fighter-Jew-Derangement-Syndrome.” They have imbibed a self-view of Jews from CNN, the BBC, and The New York Times. Jews should fight, sure. And here is the most sickening line of all, from The New York Times: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Thank you, Oh Old Great Lady, oracle of the news media. Without your permission, we would have gladly allowed ourselves to be pushed into the gas chambers.
Jews can fight back. But only so much. The Palestinians are allowed to fight for a full century, lose every time, steal all the international aid, and slaughter and persecute their own people. And the world will respect the fighting Arab.
But Bibi? When he declares that he absolutely seeks to free all the hostages but must also ensure the total evisceration of Hamas? Warmonger! Genocidaire! Nazi! Terrorist.
AT THE Casablanca Conference of January 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt, arguably the greatest American president of the 20th century, declared to the press that the United States would demand of the Germans and Japanese “unconditional surrender.”
He did so without consulting his partners in the war, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. Churchill thought Roosevelt had lost his mind. Why Franklin, you’ve just obligated every German to fight till the last man. Do you know how many unnecessary casualties you’ve just inflicted on Allied troops?
Churchill’s prophecy was right. Not only did the Germans fight till their last bullet for their fuhrer, but they even continued the war a week after Hitler blew his disgusting brains out all over a Berlin bunker.
In the end, of course, Roosevelt’s vision triumphed. The demand that the Allies fight until the Nazis were completely defeated guaranteed that there would be no Nazi party resurrection even decades after the war.
So many historical fools say that Israel cannot destroy Hamas because you can’t destroy an ideology. How stupid. You’re not trying to destroy an ideology. You’re trying to destroy an ideology’s ability to organize into a robust mass movement that can murder. And that has never happened again with the Nazis.
Why? Because the military defeat against them was so savage and ruthless that no one is dumb enough to think that Germany will not be pulverized if they ever try that crap again.
When I first hosted Netanyahu at Oxford in 1989, he asked me to take him to a bookstore where he bought a first-edition book by Churchill. He told me what a fan he is of Churchill. In truth, however, Bibi is an ideological disciple of Roosevelt, who understood that only the total extinction of a genocidal enemy can guarantee a nation’s continued survival.
For the past year, I have watched Bibi be defamed and libeled, with an effort that few Jews in history have faced, as he has slowly become the most hated man alive.
Is he perfect? Far from it. As his former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, said of him, Bibi is a larger-than-life, almost biblical, figure – and he has biblically-proportioned shortcomings.
But he is also one of the greatest Jews in Jewish history and easily Israel’s greatest prime minister, with Levi Eshkol, perhaps, a close second.
Why Eshkol? Hasn’t everyone forgotten that uncharismatic Jew? And it’s not because Eshkol oversaw Israel’s greatest military triumph in 1967 in the Six-Day War. When President Lyndon B. Johnson repeatedly warned Eshkol, “You won’t be alone unless you go it alone,” this seemingly pliable Ukrainian-born immigrant to the Holy Land could neither be pushed nor blackmailed.
Seeing Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s closure of the Straits of Tiran in May 1967 for what it was – an act of war – he utterly disregarded LBJ’s threat and launched a decisive first strike against Egypt’s air force in early June, decimating their capacity to wage war.
How does the closure of the Straits of Tiran compare to the savagery and Holocaust-level attack by Hamas on October 7? Who is really dumb enough not to understand that Netanyahu has no choice but to completely destroy Hamas as the Allies did the Nazis? Does anyone really believe that without their total military annihilation, we won’t be facing another October 7 attack in a year or two?
And what about the hostages? We must bring them back. There is no question about that. But to believe that Hamas can be trusted with any deal whatsoever is to believe the catastrophic “conceptzia” of Israel before October 7 – that Hamas is more interested in their survival than in murdering Jews.
Israelis seem to have forgotten that Bibi’s beloved older brother and Israel’s most celebrated military martyr, Yoni Netanyahu, died during a successful rescue of hostages at Entebbe in 1981. The demonization of Bibi, who has given his life and his sibling to the State of Israel, by saying that he couldn’t care less for the hostages, and only for his political survival, is why we’re seeing the insanity of people speaking about him as though he is worse than Sinwar.
You can hate Bibi all you want. You can hate his right-wing coalition. You can hate his policies. You can hate his coalition’s attempt at judicial reform. But to call him a traitor to Israel is disgusting, vile, and unforgivable. The same would be true if anyone were to say that of Benny Gantz, Naftali Bennett, or Yair Lapid.
Demonize Hamas, not Netanyahu
THROUGHOUT MY life, I have learned the lesson of how much the world hates the fighting Jew. The biblical Samson, the greatest Jewish fighter of all time, was exiled by his fellow Jews and had to live among the Philistines. He devoted his life to destroying Israel’s enemies, and his reward was to die abandoned by the Jews in a Philistine temple. But since he took most of the murderous Philistines with him, they were not likely to forget that it was a mistake to mess with the Jews.
I had the great honor of being mentored by the late, great Elie Wiesel, whose name Jews must ensure remains a household term even eight years after his passing. But who among us today can remember, let alone spell, the name of Mordechai Anielewicz, father of modern Jewish resistance and commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who blew himself up with grenades, along with his 700 immortal fighters (the resemblance to Masada 2000 years earlier is uncanny) in May 1943? No, Anielewicz is being forgotten because the fighting Jew is never fully celebrated.
Last week, Donald Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition that without him as president, Israel would be annihilated. Trump gave his remarks from New York and did not bother to travel to Las Vegas for the conference, as the RJC becomes increasingly irrelevant.
Historical fact, as well as gratitude, compels me to once again affirm that Trump was the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. But that does excuse his words. The whole idea of an independent Jewish state is that we no longer have to rely on foreign princes or presidents to protect us. We no longer have to run to popes, Hapsburg emperors, or British regents for mercy. We defend ourselves.
Netanyahu, alone among Israel’s current leaders, seems to get that. It’s what makes him – however much he is detested by the rest of the world – the perfect Israeli leader to destroy Hamas and, by doing so, rescue the hostages as well as ensure that Israel will never again have to negotiate the release of Jews from the Nazis on Israel’s borders.
The writer is the international best-selling author of the newly published guide to fighting back for Israel, The Israel Warrior. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley