Jack Engelhard
Jack EngelhardCourtesy

He doesn’t get enough from the Left, he needs it from the Right?

That’s what we keep reading from various right-wing media scribes, that because Netanyahu is not 99.44/100 percent pure, like Ivory soap, therefore he’s no good.

Never vote for him again, we keep hearing…from Our Own Crowd; your side and my side of the aisle.

Really? Then what you’ll get, again, is a lefty government, filled and brimmed with members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Wasn’t it terrific when, only months ago, they called the shots from within the government?

Even from here, far-off America, the jeers against Netanyahu, from inside his Torah Conservative base, are getting creepy and uncomfortable.

Jews against Jews. Jews against their elected leader because, supposedly, on particulars, he doesn’t come up to snuff.

Thus, the campaign of nitpicking.

Who does this?

We do this, and that is why the Second Temple was destroyed.

Wanna try for a Third?

Our enemies are waiting for something exactly like this to happen…a collapse from within…from baseless hatred, one Jew to another.

It is one thing when the Left goes ballistic against him, just turn the page for the latest headline, but quite something else when it’s Right against Right.

Even in unruly America this does not happen…and back to Israel, our ancestors repeatedly complained. They murmured against Moses.

Like…” We need air conditioning at Kadesh-barnea, and why can’t we get ketchup with the Manna?”

What is it about this trait of ours? From then, up to this moment.

Guys – this is home. You’re out of the Wilderness.

With Moses it wasn’t about cigars. But he also suffered from a Deep State, namely through Korach and his crew, among them the mixed multitudes.

Somehow, Netanyahu keeps weaving and ducking his Deep State, a Leftist media and legal system that keeps going after him with relentless fury.

They are still not done and continue to try him…one, he allegedly twisted arms to get better news coverage, as if no other leader in the world ever does this.

Two, as if no other leader in the world accepts gifts. In his case, those cigars.

That should be the worst.

But it isn’t, if you listen to the murmurings from some on the Right…those who, by virtuous blather, consider themselves more perfect than you, me, or Bibi.

In regard to the recent wave of murders, of course he should do more. There is always more to do when 20 percent of the population stirs as an enemy from within.

The pain is indescribable at the loss of life from their murderous hands.

So…go, expound, suggest…but don’t hound and hate the man. Not unless you walk in his shoes.

Netanyahu walks a tightrope. He’s got a nation to steady on his shoulders amid a world always ready to watch him fall without a net.

He had Obama to wrestle all those years, and he did not buckle. In fact, speaking at Congress, he gave as good as he got, and now more US pressure from the Biden Administration.

He has to take careful steps to keep the ship of state balanced.

So doing, he has managed treaties with a number of Arab countries, a lofty distinction unheard of for millennia.

Equally grand, he has made Israel a player on the world stage.

The world likes him. The world is comfortable with him, and so the nation benefits from reflected success. (As Rashi says, the leader is the nation).

If saying so goes too far, I’ll take my lumps. Somebody has to even the score against his haughty overly righteous detractors. I’ll serve as the sacrifice.

Netanyahu is no Moses. He’s not perfect? “Life,” as we say, here, “is about separating the winners from the losers.”

Netanyahu is a winner. For himself. For Israel. That’ll do.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

Engelhard has written more than 10 books, including the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” Slated next for the movies is his novel “Compulsive,” about a documentarian by day, a gambler by night. He is pro-Israel, but to pay off his massive gambling debts, he may be compelled to make an antisemitic film. His life is on the line to do this. Does he have a way out? Contemporaries have hailed Engelhard as “A writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Contact here: [email protected]


Engelhard books
Engelhard booksJ.Engelhard