Benjamin Netanyahu, I read your Gaza Flotilla speech you made the other day in Jerusalem. It was a bold speech, defiant. You explained that Israel has had no choice, that it acted in self defence—it always does—and you called on the world, accusing it of hypocrisy. I read it, and it saddened me deeply. Well, you may be right about the hypocrisy, but this is hardly new. Hypocrisy has always been, it will likely remain an integral feature of international relations (and surely we have had a fair share of it too). You tried to assertive, vindicating our nation's rights, but frankly, Benjamin Netanyahu, you were just whining.
Benjamin Netanyahu, you are Prime Minister of Israel, the elected leader of a country founded by people who defied whining and decided to become the authors of their own fate; to rebel against their historic role of perpetual victims and assert their equal membership among the nations; to prefer the narrative of Passover over the mourning of Tisha b'Av. The world was not less hypocritical then than it is today, and surely it was less hospitable for Jews. But these people, my grandparents among them, a loosely organized collective of refugees, with no army, no navy and no commando units, no first rate high-tech and no advanced economy to support their collective pursuits, were able to change the course of history and build a country that for some time was, and in some respects still is, a model of inspiration, a light unto the nations.
No simple theory can explain how that was made possible. But importantly these people had leaders who knew that whining and grouching is not a political program. They knew that the world might be hypocritical, that anti-Semitism was not hard to come by, but for them this was only a call for action. They realised that being sovereign and free means being not only responsible for one's successes but also accountable for one's mistakes, and while they knew the world cannot be fully trusted to solve their problem, their self-determination required the world's support. They knew that prevailing in a non-perfect world requires wisdom and foresight, courage to dare and imagination. But above all they knew that they were defending a just cause; that their strong moral claim not only unites their own people, it also resonates with people of good conscience throughout the world, and that even in a hypocritical world, a just cause is not only a moral imperative, it is a forceful pragmatic tool, defining common interests and helps forging crucial alliances. And they prevailed.
Benjamin Netanyahu, I'm sure that you are truly convinced that you are fighting for the noblest of causes. You genuinely believe that the only reason why many of your friends seem less supportive lately and some have turned away is their own failure to see that your victory today will prevent them from fighting similar wars tomorrow. You may be correct. But if it is possible that you possess some truth that your friends fail to see, it must be just as likely that many of them see some things that you are blind of. It must be possible that these are not your friends who abandoned you, or succumbed to malignant hypocrisy, but that it is your country, our country, that relaxed its commitment to the universal values it shares with its friends. There are still people of good conscience out there, willing to be friends, hoping to become allies. But those people of good conscience watch you and your country keep fighting, and they no longer see what you are really fighting for and whether it is truly necessary. They don't deny your right of self defence, but they dreadfully watch how one burst of lethal force leads to another, always in the name of self-defence, always because there was really no choice, really. At the micro level, this lack of choice sometimes seems plausible, but at the macro level the claim quickly loses its credibility. Your friends still remember a resourceful nation, once famous for creating its own choices, and now all they hear is "what else could we have done?" They see a nation whose entire existence once defied determinism responding reflexively to every provocation, dragged to fight fights it obviously cannot win, while being blind to the suffering it inflicts on others. What they see is a nation that lost its moral compass, and with it its sense of direction.
Be a leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, and listen to your friends. They sometimes see things that you cannot. Listen to your own citizens who refuse to suppress their doubts. Try listening to your enemies too; some day some of them may actually become allies. Talk to the refugees in Gaza and elsewhere, you have a lot in common. Some of them still carry keys to houses they will never be able to open. Borrow those keys; they might open their and our hearts and minds. Let them all help you find our nation's lost moral compass.
If you can't, step down. But please, please stop whining.
