Bibi Netanyahu is not a leader

George W. Bush left an unfortunate model of “leadership” by which American conservatives today judge leaders. That model consists of talking tough, shooting without asking questions, and denying you did anything wrong when criticized. Of course, Bush was kinder to himself. For example, at the very end of the second presidential debate in 2004, Bush was asked by the moderator if he thought he had made any mistakes in his first term. This was his answer:

I have made a lot of decisions, and some of them little, like appointments to boards you never heard of, and some of them big.

And in a war, there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have made that decision. And I’ll take responsibility for them. I’m human.

But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I’ll stand by those decisions, because I think they’re right.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, as long as you get the big picture right. I suppose that’s one way to lead, assuming you get the strategy right. (He didn’t.)

Bibi Netanyahu has embodied the exact opposite of Bush’s verbal philosophy of leadership: he focuses obsessively on tactics and punts strategic decisions. As I have said before, this resembles Yasser Arafat’s approach to leadership. This is not a model of leadership really, but a model of immediate political survival.

Netanyahu’s defenders — of which there seem to be more in America than in Israel — have so completely bought into Bibi’s tactics-only approach that they have even redefined what leadership means. Take FrumForum’s Peter Worthington, who commended Bibi for “electrifying” resolve in the face of a terrorist attack last week:

Can there be anyone in the civilized world who didn’t feel a surge of empathy with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he responded to the death of seven Israelis at the hands of terrorists from Gaza?

Most elected leaders would go on the air at such an obscenity and attempt to reassure their people. But not all are Netanyahu.

George Bush did it after 9/11, and he was persuasive. Barack Obama has done it when occasion demands (the assassination of Osama bin Laden), but he is not Netanyahu.

What Netanyahu said was clear, simple and stirring: “The people who gave the order to murder our people and hid in Gaza are no longer among the living. I set a principle: When someone harms the citizens of Israel, we react immediately and with force.”

He then went on to note that it was a well-organized terrorist attack launched from the Sinai, aimed at three separate buses and private vehicles. Some 40 people were wounded, and some of the attackers were killed by Egyptian soldiers.

The electrifying news was that Israeli jets immediately attacked the headquarters and homes in Gaza, of leaders from a group calling itself the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), killing its leader, the deputy leader, and a number of others. [snip]

Canada is alarmingly blasé about citizens in trouble in different lands – and I’m not thinking of criminals or drug dealers who break the law, but of innocent people trapped in a mesh abroad that’s not their doing.

Canada is perfectly prepared to negotiate economic deals with China when Canadian citizens, who have committed no offense, are imprisoned in China.

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper – or U.S. President Barack Obama – displayed a smidgin of Netanyahu’s resolve in similar circumstances, they’d both be leading a parade of approval.

This is absurd on several levels. First, it is the nation of Israel that could use sympathy, not their prime minister.

Second. Netanyahu’s response was exactly what every prime minister of Israel has ever done after a terror attack. Ehud Olmert invaded the Gaza Strip after continuous rocket fire. Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield after the Passover Massacre. Ehud Barak launched airstrikes against PA targets after the lynch in Ramallah. Shimon Peres shelled Hizballah targets in Lebanon in 1996. And so on.

Nor were Bibi’s words expressive of any unusual determination. Here’s a sampling of what other Israeli leaders have said after terrorist attacks:

• “The Government of Israel has the duty to protect its citizens and is prepared to take any action it deems necessary.” — Shimon Peres
• “We have stated at every turn the fact that we have no interest in continuing in the use of arms, but given no other choice, we owe it to our homes, to our children and to our people.” — Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
• “The IDF will continue to act with appropriate force against those responsible for the attacks, and will not be deterred from measures that will make it clear to the other side that Israel will react strongly against anyone who harms Israeli citizens and IDF soldiers.” — Ehud Barak
• “[We] respond[ed] to the situation created by the Palestinian Authority, and … convey[ed] a sharp message that Israel, as a sovereign state, cannot and will not react with self-restraint in the face of such a blatant and humiliating act against its citizens and soldiers.” — Shlomo Ben-Ami
  
• “The State of Israel has not stopped, and will not stop, in its war against murderous terrorism that is perpetrated against us.” — Ariel Sharon

Every Israeli politician knows when they run for office that this is the kind of thing they have to do. Netanyahu is no better or worse than any of them at it.

Third, the suggestion that Netanyahu treats his citizens differently that other world leaders undermines Israel’s case for counterterrorism. Israeli leaders insist over and over again that they only do exactly what every other leader would do under similar circumstances. (And they are right.) What that means is that Netanyahu is not special. He is run-of-the-mill, as a Haaretz op-ed explains:

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu excels at presenting what is self-evident as the peak of wisdom. The decision to make do with a series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip following the terror attack north of Eilat a week and a half ago, was celebrated as tremendous brilliance. By extension of this logic, a minister who will suddenly announce that two and two equals four would expect the Nobel Prize in Mathematics ‏(and being turned down will be explained as anti-Semitism‏).

But enough about tactics. Far more important is Netanyahu’s catastrophic handling of Israel’s future. In fact, Israel is probably in a deeper strategic quandary than at any point in the last 50 years. Rather than seizing the moment, Netanyahu prefers to leave Israel waiting in anguish. Rather than determining Israel’s own future, Bibi is putting his country on the mercy of outside forces more powerful and fickle than he seems to understand. Bibi Netanyahu’s Israel is catatonic.

Daniel Levy has pointed out how Netanyahu, for all of his tough talk, has never started a war. He’s also never executed a major agreement with the Palestinians; the one agreement he negotiated, the Wye River Accord, he ended up running away from. At at time when Israel needs help, its leader is turning the country into an object.