Hanan Lavy

The barbarism unleashed on Israeli civilians today must be reported in full. The sanitized headline news reports do not capture the horror consuming the country. Executions in the street. Children murdered. Bodies mutilated. Children and elderly kidnapped. Stand with Israel!

If Netanyahu isn’t careful, we will soon look back at his current predicament as an additional chapter in Barbara Tuchman’s classic book "March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.” She highlights how intelligent and informed leaders can persist in pursuing policies contrary to their own interests despite clear evidence of their futility. The historic examples she gives serve as a cautionary tale, urging leaders to act with wisdom and to exercise rational decision-making in the face of complex challenges. In the present case, it is a Prime Minister who, despite having devoted his career to the country’s security and economy, is willing to risk it all to achieve a Pyrrhic victory with the weakening of the judiciary. He will win the battle over the country’s judiciary at the expense of the security and economic might of the country he has led for so many years. Since leaders and governments make mistakes all the time, Tuchman provides three clear criteria to meet the definition of “folly”: 1) it must be seen as a clear mistake at the time and not only in retrospect; 2) there must be a clear alternative path of action, and 3) it must be the mistake of a collective group and not a single person. The current situation fulfills all three criteria. First, the Israeli government is choosing to ignore the assessments of military and legal experts, the warnings of economists and health professionals, and the pleas of investors and business leaders, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens protesting the past 29 weeks. The government also ignores the warnings of the US President and the American Jewish leadership concerning how the legislation will impact their ability to continue supporting and defending Israel from afar. Secondly, there is a clear alternative path in the form of compromise, or simply backing down and continuing to govern within the same constraints all Israeli governments have governed over the last few decades. Sometimes when leaders think their back is against the wall, it is a wall of their own construction that only they can remove. And lastly, this judicial coup was likely never Netanyahu's plan, but that of his Justice Minister and extremist allies. Together they proceed in this Israeli "march of folly." One example in the book is how King Priam of Troy came to see the wooden horse left by the Greeks as a trophy of victory, despite the advice of many. In Israel’s case, Netanyahu dragged a suspicious looking horse (the extremist, messianic right) into his coalition knowing full well what it contained. Poignantly, one of the examples Tuchman provides is the story of Rehoboam, King of Israel, and son of King Solomon. His refusal to accede to the pleas of the ten tribes of the north to ease their labor burden exacerbated the existing tension between the north and south resulting in the splitting of the Kingdom of Israel into two. But perhaps the saddest irony is that Netanyahu is a student of history (he is the son of a historian) and likely read the book, as he most certainly knows the tragic tale of Rehoboam in the Bible.