AJA CEO Robert Gregory writes in this month’s leading Christian newspaper ‘Israel & Christians today”
Benjamin Netanyahu is the Churchill of our times
A lesson from both the Holocaust and October 7 is that when someone tells you he plans to kill you, you believe him. When that someone is building nuclear weapons, you doubly believe him.
In a world of weakness, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrated that he is a lone leader of strength. He is the only leader who isn’t afraid to fight radical Islam head on while others surrender their countries.
Tiny Israel is David who took on the Iranian Goliath, which is 80 times its size, with 10 times its population.
Another lesson from the Holocaust is that what starts with the Jews never ends there. In the 1930s the world ignored the rise of Hitler and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. Instead of acting early, cowardly leaders ensured that World War 2 became the largest loss of life in history. It is the same story with radical Islam. World leaders lectured Israel as Muslim suicide bombers exploded in Tel Aviv’s buses and Jerusalem’s cafes. Eventually the West was hit too. In Paris, London, Madrid, New York, and Bali, Muslim extremists brought death.
Israel’s precision strikes destroyed the military leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They severely damaged its nuclear program. The courage shown by Israel, inspired President Trump to join in and finish the job, ensuring that the Islamic Republic can no longer menace the world with its evil nuclear threats.
The Iranian response indiscriminately targeted civilians in Israel. Thankfully, unlike the Islamic world, Israel protects its citizens and invests in bomb shelters, warning sirens and rockets to shoot down missiles. Nevertheless, there were casualties in Israel. Refugees from Ukraine were killed along with Arabs and Jews. Young children and the elderly. Each of these murders is a war crime but don’t expect jokes like the UN or international courts to get involved.
The Islamic Republic of Iran must pay for the destruction they have caused.
The Bible says, “To everything there is a season… a time for war, and a time for peace.” Bibi is a man who knows how to make peace and has made more peace deals with Arab countries than any Israeli leader in history. But he also knows when it is a time for war, a vanishingly rare quality in leaders these days. Can anyone seriously imagine Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, faced with a threat to Australia’s national security, rising to the challenge in this way? For that matter it’s hard to picture the leaders of once great empires, Britain or France protecting their nations like this.
Netanyahu’s son’s wedding was scheduled for just days after Israel’s strikes. He could have postponed for a week to allow his family a rare celebration but that’s not the man that he is.
While some in Israel have disagreements with aspects of Netanyahu’s domestic politics, the country united behind him as he sought to remove the nuclear ‘Sword of Damocles’ which the Islamic Republic of Iran has hung over it.
It’s not tiny Israel’s responsibility to free the people of Iran. They must seize the opportunity themselves and end the extremist Islamic dictatorship that hangs innocents and murders women for not wearing headscarves. They may never get a chance like this again.
The world stood by and issued statements and sanctions while North Korea developed nuclear weapons. Fanatical Ayatollahs with nukes would make North Korea look like child’s play.
In a sea of mediocrity, Netanyahu stands out among world leaders. He can quote from the Bible, debate economic theory, devise military plans which are informed by his many years of army service and draw upon lessons in history gleaned from his renowned historian father. He is a man who knows the tragedy of war firsthand, with his brother Yoni, giving his life as a hero in the Entebbe Operation.
No Israeli politician has been written off more times than Bibi. When his first term as Prime Minister concluded in 1999, few gave him much of a shot of coming back. After a hiatus, he was leading the Likud again, trying in vain to halt the disastrous ‘disengagement’ from Gaza.
No Israeli Prime Minister has been as despised by a succession of US Presidents. From Clinton to Obama to Biden, they all intervened to try and stymie him. It was not until President Trump’s first term that there was an ally in the White House to work with. And work together they did, securing major accomplishments like the recognition of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and the relocation of the US embassy to Israel’s Capital. Evangelical Christians played a major role in these successes.
But like his US counterpart, Prime Minister Netanyahu causes a severe mental issue in some of his opponents, an Israeli version of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). This Bibi Derangement Syndrome caused his opponents to try and blame Netanyahu for the killing of Yitzchak Rabin. More recently, it has forced the Prime Minister to spend the past few years under multiple investigations on spurious charges related to receiving cigars, champagne and a Bugs Bunny doll. President Trump was shocked to find out that while there was an opportunity to make major deals to bring peace to the Middle East, left-wing Israeli judges were refusing to give the Prime Minister a break from his taxing court schedule.
Netanyahu is wanted in the Hague on fabricated war crimes charges but it’s to Oslo where he should be summoned and presented with a Nobel Peace Prize. No man has singularly reshaped the Middle East in modern times, crushing terrorist groups and leading to the overthrow of brutal dictatorships.
If there had been an Israel and a Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1930s and 1940s, there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust.
Netanyahu keeps a bust of Winston Churchill in his office. There are many parallels between the two men. For decades now, Netanyahu has been a powerful, often lone voice in calling out the dangers of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He went into the lion’s den like no Israeli leader before him and appeared before Congress to challenge the then-sitting President Barack Obama and his Iran capitulation deal. Churchill was often pilloried for his continued warnings about the rising Nazi danger. Feckless leaders of the West, then as in now, were exhausted from past wars and desperate to avoid a new war at all costs. In the 1930s, they allowed the Nazis to threaten the world and murder millions. Netanyahu has just ensured that whatever happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will not do the same.
The world owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Prime Minister Netanyahu. I don’t expect them to thank him but the least they can do is be quiet and get out of the way.
