Netanyahu’s Napoleon Moment

Flushed with victories over Hamas and Hezbollah and pressed by his far right allies, Netanyahu may feel emboldened to go for broke in Iran, no matter the risks

Facing pressure from far righists, Benjamin Netanyahu may opt for obliterating Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities in order to stay in power and avoid court. (Reuters/Gali Tibbon) 

HANGING ON THE WALL OF MY HOME OFFIICE IS AN ARAB PROPAGANDA POSTER that I found decades ago in a Gaza souk. The poster, commemorating the Arab military alliance that came together on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war, shows the hugely popular Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser beside a young King Hussein of Jordan. Their appearance together was supposed to project an image of Arab solidarity and the promise of a swift victory over the Zionist enemy. 

Or so the Arab propagandists thought. Over the following six days, Israel handily demolished their two armies, crushed Syria’s forces and seized huge tracts of Arab land. Today, more than a half century later, Israel still controls the Golan Heights, the obliterated Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, home to the al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

I keep the poster as both a souvenir of the 1967 war and a reminder that history is replete with such instances of overreach and their enormous price. There was Napoleon’s invasion of Russia; Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union; and Emperor Hirohito’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor. We, too, reached beyond our grasp in Vietnam, then repeated the same folly in Iraq and Afghanistan. In all these gambles, there were initial signs of triumph. But pride and self-deception—the seeds of overreach—guaranteed their ultimate failure. 

Today, there’s a real danger that a deadly combination of Israeli victories on the battlefield and its government’s nihilist vision of Jewish-Islamic relations now threatens to negate the country’s astounding victories over its enemies as it wages its year-long war against Iranian-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran itself.