Naftali Bennett, the once and future Prime Minister of Israel, was the keynote speaker at American Experiment’s Annual Dinner earlier this month. I was privileged to spend some time with Bennett, and found him deeply impressive. I will be surprised if he is not Israel’s Prime Minister within the next two years.
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bennett has an op-ed titled “The U.S. and Israel’s Common Fight.” Nothing in it will be new to readers of this web site, but it makes some fundamental points, very well:
Elections come and go. Leaders change. But the values Israel and the U.S. represent are eternal. The death cult of Hamas is the antithesis of life and liberty. Nothing could be more alien to the American way than using women and children as human shields, hospitals to hide hostages, schools to launch rockets and a music festival as the target for a massacre.
It is sad that some Americans have lost sight of those basic truths.
It isn’t too late to bring the hostages home without returning Gaza to Yahya Sinwar. Only extreme pressure on Mr. Sinwar himself has forced Hamas to release hostages, and sustained military pressure now is the best way to ensure that Oct. 7 never happens again.
Not just the best way, but the only way. Hamas must be destroyed, as the National Socialist Party was destroyed in 1945. No ambiguity, no resurgence.
This is a critical point:
Beirut and Tehran must also be held to account. Iran is the head of this octopus of terror. Its tentacles wreak havoc across the region. Israelis are no more interested in a regional war than they were in fighting in Gaza, but a status quo in which 80,000 Israelis can’t return to their homes in the north is untenable.
That is correct. Something has to give, either Hezbollah or the Israelis’ ability to live in the northern portion of their country. Not a hard choice.
Across the Middle East, the ayatollah and his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps decide who fights and when. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Lebanese, Yemenis and Iranians on their hands and millions more in their sights. It is well past time to change this, and nobody would benefit more than the people of Iran.
Bennett made this point strongly in his speech to our organization, and thereafter in response to my questions. He is confident that Iran’s brutal regime can be brought down, without firing a shot, with the same methods that Ronald Reagan used to destroy the U.S.S.R.
And finally:
In this battle of values and competing visions for the future, Israel’s fight is America’s fight. The fate of the hostages, the rehabilitation of Gaza and the hope of a free and peaceful Middle East all rest on the continued alliance of our two peoples. This alliance is worth investing in, now more than ever.
Israel needs friends, and, as Bennett said during our event, America is the only real friend that Israel has. But America needs friends too. Our fight for the future of Western civilization needs all the allies we can muster.
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