Prime Minister Netanyahu has made many mistakes over more than a decade in power. However, who among us would not also have made at least that many mistakes or more, although perhaps different ones? We all are ready to be Prime Minister of Israel if called, but the job and the strategic challenges are far more complex than can be understood on the surface. Bibi has sometimes been disappointing and may well be again, but he may also be the greatest hero and best leader the generation could have asked for.

How do you fight Arabs on a million fronts when your “allies” and “best friends” will not let you defend yourself? They talk the talk at Yad Vashem, and they make tearful promises on October 8. Afterward, they plow you down. There is only one way to fight in Gaza: pure, unequivocal destruction, destruction of everything that, in any manner, shape, or form can be used to sustain terrorism.

And that, we have learned, is everything there: including hospitals, mosques, schools, libraries, ambulances, residential apartment buildings. It includes journalists, photographers, UNRWA doctors, and some children.

And yet, how can a Jew rooted in authentic Judaism — not Reform Jews, whose ideology is purely Godless – hurt a child or a civilian, damage a hospital, or wound a medic? We cannot do that. Halakha is not the Crusades of Catholicism, the Inquisitions of Catholicism, the pogroms of the Eastern Orthodox, the Holocausts of German Protestantism, the indifference of Western Protestantism and the Jihad of Islam. Judaism requires us to care, cherish, and respect all life. Nevertheless, when someone comes to kill us, we are permitted to kill them first if that is what survival requires. And that brings us to Gaza, Macron, and too many Ehuds.

Israel has been attacked by Hamas in five wars in less than a score of years. Each time, Netanyahu frustrated the kishkes (intestines) out of millions of us when (due to international threats and pressures) , on the brink of victory, he halted progress and ceased fire, ensuring a new harder war a few years later. His ceasefires gave the Arabs time and opportunity to learn from past mistakes, to assemble rockets. Then, a new ceasefire gave them time to assemble missiles. Then, a new ceasefire gave them time to build tunnels. They learned from each war to prepare better for next time. And, by October 7, 2023, when they launched the Ariel Sharon War, they even had learned to prepare hang gliders and makeshift ambulances and pick-up trucks, and — this time — to aim for hostages in bulk.

Why didn’t Netanyahu and his coterie learn from their mistakes, too, as the Arabs did? Why did it take the Ariel Sharon War finally to fight to win? Partly because Bibi seems not one to win a war. He won encounters. He did not win wars. “Victory” seemed not to be in his vocabulary. Until now.

And give this great man his due: Because he is smarter than most who think they know better than he does, he understood for twenty years that we are a nation that stands alone. Perhaps he lacks the religious sensitivity to ascribe the reality to the Torah, Book of Bamidbar (Numbers) 23:9, but his secular strategic gifts taught him the same. Israel stands alone, now and always. He understood through 20 years that, if the day ever comes when Israel undertakes to finally crush Hamas, even if it takes flattening Gaza, all of Gog and Magog will turn on Israel.

We see that now. Canada, England, and France uniting as one to threaten the most dire of consequences if Israel now proceeds to win. He saw that inevitably coming, and that deterred him for twenty years. His insight and his vision were spot-on. But his execution failed. A Jew who truly knows his Jewish history has to account for the role of G-d. He did not.

G-d did not bring the Jews back to Palestine, which means Israel, after 2,000 years’ exile just to see it fall to Macron, Lammy, and America’s 51st state. They can withhold their trade deals, their arms, their vichyssoise and pate-de-foie-gras, their ice hockey and their fish and chips. They are nothing, and they will disappear in time. Already, Macron now faces a future when the Muslim Brotherhood will overturn France, and even the non-Jews of France will be desperately buying up homes in Israel, distorting the housing market. Canada has to fight off Trump. And the UK? We have met before, and we remain while they are gone.

If needed, there will always be some ally somewhere to protect Israel as G-d’s emissaries on earth. When Israel needed Stalin, there was Stalin. In the 1950’s, when America had Eisenhower, G-d sent de Gaulle and France. Always someone. Nixon hated Jews, but he did his part in 1973 because he could not help himself; it was his fate and destiny to be The One. When Israel needed to build an Iron Dome, Obama was the messenger who helped finance it. That was his role: he denied Israel offensive weapons, so agreed to arm a more robust defense. That was what Israel needed then. Biden did his part, for all his efforts to obstruct. His pier killed 60 American servicemen, and G-d blew Biden’s pier into pieces, twice. But Biden did his part on October 7, and G-d kept him around just long enough to help the unelectable Trump get elected.

Finally, Bibi finally is flattening Gaza, moving toward the final phase. Nothing less is an option because, during the recent ceasefire and hostage releases, we saw that, despite the IDF reporting that Hamas was virtually crushed, they still are very much in charge. It now is clear: Nothing short of absolute razing will eradicate Hamas.

So Israel is doing exactly as she should: Moving Arabs out of the way, down to Rafah until they figure out they better emigrate as Trump wisely recommends. Blowing up and killing everyone in the way of finishing off Hamas. And planning to seize and occupy Gaza from then on.

By G-d’s grace, Israel has eradicated Hezbollah. It could have ended very differently. The stage is being set for Israel to extend complete sovereignty into Judea and Samaria. The secular and Godless do not know it; it will be our secret. But it is happening. Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), age 89, will be dead soon, and Hamas will take over the Arab entity in Judea and Samaria. That will completely confound France, England, and the 51st state.

History is unfolding. Gantz, Liberman, Bennett — all have learned from the Ariel Sharon War that a “Two State Solution” was a pipe dream, and it is permanently off the table. They now understand; October 7 images permeated their thick skulls.

Still, the Fifth Column promenades openly. Ehud Barak openly tells his followers that he will be returning to power as soon as dead Jews start filling the waters. Ehud Olmert travels across the world, telling any foreign TV audience he can reach that Israel basically is perpetrating war crimes. And now, the head of the socialist Marxist union of Meretz and the diminished Labour Party tells the world that Israeli boys leave their homes, wives, children for months and resumed fighting with great gusto and eager joy because killing children is their hobby. The Attorney General unashamedly stymies every move the government makes but does not even call for their interrogation.

In America, we call such people “traitors.” We revile them and eventually lock them up. Netanyahu, amid existential war — a fight to preseve national existence — has to deal with those dirtbags. He always has known that, within the Jews, there always will be such toxins to try taking down the Jewish nation if they cannot be the leaders. They have no honor and no shame. And a country that allows them to pontificate with such blood libels also loses honor for showing no shame.

Amid all this, the never-ending abomination continues where an Arab or more shoots at cars on a highway and murders a pregnant woman traveling to a hospital to give birth. Those Arabs have no idea who are in the cars they are shooting at; they just shoot, hoping to kill someone, anyone. Then, when the government arrests the Arab, the Prime Minister, Defense Minister, and Shabak Deep State spokesman annouce that “the murderer has been brought to justice.” But there has been no justice and never will be for that young mother. No justice at all.

Tze’ela Gez never will return to life in This World. My beloved wife, Ellen of blessed memory, died of glioblastoma, a cancer. In This World, she will not come back. My life, even five years later, is not what it was and never will be again. That loss is permanent. Anyone reading this, who has sustained such a loss, understands — and so many in Israel indeed have. The mere arrest — or even killing — of that Arab does not bring Tze’ela back to life. Does not restore the husband’s wife, the children’s mother. The murderer was killed, but if he were arrested, he would know with the same certainty we all know that, in time, he will be freed in a future hostage exchange, despite the “blood on his hands.” So there is no justice.

There is no restoring the beautiful young couple murdered in cold blood in Washington last night either.

The only justice, pale and lame though it be, would be swift capital punishment, swift and certain, as America used to do. (Lincoln was killed on April 14. Booth was surrounded and shot dead April 26. His convicted cohorts were convicted June 30 and hanged July 7.) The terrorist who murdered Tze'ela Gez was killed by the IDF. That will not bring her back but, if accompanied by burying the corpse with a pig in the grave and the exile of the murderer’s entire extended family (nuclear plus cousins, uncles and aunts, and in-laws) into Gaza, with all their property not blown up but seized as property of Israel with flags on top, then it could deter and save at least some future life. It is not enough to catch them, try them, and sentence them to 300 life sentences.

So I feel for Netanyahu, even as I share the same frustration that millions of us feel for his previous avoidance of victory. It may just be that he is the best we could ask for — and certainly the best that a people who fill Kaplan Square, oppose judicial reform, and tout leaders like Barak, Olmert, and Golan during an existential war deserve. As for the others who believe thay could do better, Bennett had his chance, and he ended up signing a deal with Lapid that resulted in Israel handing her territorial waters and natural gas reserves to Hezbollah, while bringing in the Muslim Brotherhood to be the linchpin of the coalition. Liberman went along with all that. So did Gantz.

Tunnels were being dug on their watch, too. Qatar was sending in money on their watch, too. Can you imagine if October 7 had happened on their watch? They set themselves up to require Mansour Abbas’s support to agree on any plan for responding in Gaza. He could not do so. Bennett, Gantz, and Liberman would have been accomplices in the chaos that would have ensued on October 8, as Abbas would vote no, and new elections would have to occupy the country for the six months immediately after October 7. Amazing that no one ever stops to think about that bullet we dodged.

It is a mess. Golan tells the world that Israelis kill children as a hobby. Olmert calls it genocide. Bennett, via Lapid, both of whom criticize every move Netanyahu makes, gave the natural gas to Hezbollah. Liberman and Gantz went along with it. So did the Supreme Court.

If Bibi is not the best possible prime minister, he certainly is what Israel deserves in a scenario where — with the enormous exception of a nation of brave heroes and their families among the common Israeli population — there is no justice, no peace, no honor, and no shame.

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