Is the Left Ever Right?

This week, Jay Michaelson wrote a trashy piece at The Daily Beast about Benjamin Netanyahu and his brother, Jonathan. By extension, he took a shot at their father, Benzion Netanyahu.

The subtitle to Michaelson’s piece reads: “If Yoni Netanyahu died too young, Bibi Netanyahu seems never to die at all.”

How repulsive.

Michaelson started the piece off by claiming that Yoni Netanyahu was his hero. Before he finished his hit piece on the Netanyahus, he also tossed in some negative analysis of Yoni Netanyahu’s performance during the rescue operation at Entebbe.

Evidently, the new film, “7 Days in Entebbe,” prompted Michaelson to let us all know how he feels about the Netanyahus’ particular brand of Zionism.

He also revealed that he doesn’t know much about his subjects.

Michaelson really stretched reality by imagining how the dynamic has always worked within the Netanyahu family. He even went so far as to write this whopper:

“Yoni was Joe Kennedy Jr.; Bibi was Jack. Yoni was Sonny Corleone; Bibi was Michael.”

This is an example of a writer attempting to be provocative and analytical. I call it embarrassing.

For one thing, unlike the Kennedy and Corleone family, there has never been any sort of “succession plan” for sons in the Netanyahu family to become either a head-of-state, or a crime boss.

Anyone who thinks that Jonathan Netanyahu would have entered politics after his military service needs his head examined. Yoni Netanyahu couldn’t have abided the weeds of politics, with its compromise. Benzion Netanyahu did not have a plan for his oldest son to become prime minister, then have son no. 2 in the bullpen in case something happened to the first-born.

(I also think Jonathan Netanyahu was infinitely smarter than Joe Kennedy Jr.)

As to the second comparison, Yoni was a hothead, undisciplined skirt-chaser, a la Sonny Corleone?

Writing like this only goes to show that Michaelson should go back to J-school and learn how to process information and write for public consumption. If he hates Bibi Netanyahu, why not just say that? Why not just write: “I hate Bibi,” and turn that in to an editor?

Then Michaelson reveals his distaste for both Israeli and American leaders who love their countries:

“Netanyahu’s once-outlandishly-conservative policies, and the ideology of his even more conservative father, Benzion Netanyahu, have prevailed in both Israel and the United States. Progressives like me think this is a calamity for both Israel and Palestine, but even we have to admit that Bibi has won, decisively.

“Not just his ideas, but Bibi’s attitude—gruff, nationalistic, borderline-racist—has won as well. Israel is less democratic and more mean-spirited than ever before. And as far as America, Bibi was Trump before Trump was Trump.”

Guess what? That nationalism has kept us, and the Israelis, safer. If we were still ruled by the milquetoast diplomats and Marxists, both countries would be in greater peril.

Elsewhere, Michaelson has written:

“The Arabs hate us, anti-Zionism is just anti-Semitism, and most importantly, the Intifada is about Jew-hatred, not resistance to the occupation.”

This is his simplistic framing of how Netanyahu thinks. It is also a temper tantrum from a writer who has the luxury of writing nonsense when he feels like it.

I wonder how often Michaelson has talked with the Netanyahus. Did he sit with Benzion Netanyahu, as I have, and listen to the man articulate his worldview?

Michaelson goes to some lengths to revise history regarding Arab hatred of Jews in Palestine and now Israel. Ironically, he calls the Netanyahus revisionists, along with Zionist intellectual Ze’ev Jabotinsky. These men believed, as Michaelson did accurately portray, that the Arabs only understand force and so Israel must act accordingly.

Accordingly means a strong military and security apparatus.

Michaelson does not have an answer when confronted with the historical data that shows us clearly Israeli leaders like Begin and Netanyahu have kept Israel safe.

The freedom that provides allows typists like Michaelson to churn-out the most turgid assessments.

And if Yoni is Sonny and Bibi is Michael, then Michaelson is Fredo.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

 

 

 

 

 

20 Years Ago

It occurred to me the other week that my first trip to Israel was exactly 20 years ago.

So this week I’m reminiscing.

The catalyst for that first trip was my dear friend and late mentor, David Allen Lewis. I loved David and miss him, 11 years after he went home to be with the Lord he loved. An Assemblies of God evangelist, David was truly unique, to use an over-used word.

Based in Springfield, Missouri, David Allen Lewis Ministries sprang from David’s love for the Jewish people. I say that first, before his love for Israel. Because that’s the key. One cannot be genuinely pro Israel without being pro Jew.

Some people try that without the pro Jew ingredient.

Not David. And he also loved Arab people. He was one of the first Christians to broker dialogue between Jews and Arabs. And he began taking tour groups to Israel soon after the Six-Day War.

Anyway, I worked for New Leaf Publishing Group at the time, the publisher of David’s wonderful Bible prophecy books. He was like a force of nature. I was so green when I started as his editor. One day, working with him the first time, I called him for clarification on a few things, including the meaning of a strange term: Eretz Yisrael.

I held the phone out a couple feet as David bellowed, “The LAND of Israel, in the Hebrew!”

Got it.

Quickly, David’s passion for the subject reawakened my interest, which had been dormant since my pro Israel father’s death many years before.

By late 1997, I’d gotten the idea for a new book for David (this would become The Last War). One day, sitting in his living room, I blinked a couple times when he said, “Do you want to go to Israel with me? I need the help in conducting interviews for the book.”

I stammered that of course I would and happily, my boss, Tim Dudley let me go (a lovely guy to this day, a fully independent publisher with a strong moral compass and courage to publish books that need to be published. Tim’s Master Books imprint has carried on the work of the great creationists—such as Henry Morris—now for more than two decades).

By the time my flight departed Chicago, I realized no one had really briefed me on one important thing: how to handle Israeli security at the gate. I was flying the Israeli national airline, El Al, and boy, did I set off some red flags, traveling alone as I was.

After four hours of basically interrogation, they let me on the plane, just ahead of a Jordanian couple that had screamed at each other and threw clothing in the air as their luggage was being examined.

My luggage arrived two days after I did in Tel Aviv.

David and I hit the ground running, along with his driver of decades, Avigdor. We bounced around all over the country, including an afternoon in Bethlehem. I stopped to take a photo of a Yasser Arafat poster and then noticed several PA policeman seated at an outdoor café didn’t take kindly to that, for some reason. They eventually chased me down the street and I literally propelled myself headfirst into the van as David yelled at Avigdor, “Go, go, go!”

I formed many good memories with David on that trip. We ate Beluga caviar at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv while waiting on an Israeli newspaper publisher.

I also learned just how well connected David was, but in a very unusual, clever way. Sure, David knew all the “bigs” (I love the photos of him with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whom David had famously predicted would become prime minister, when the very thought was comical), but he cultivated friendships with the influential people behind the famous people.

So it was that we spent quality time on that trip with David Bar-Illan, the urbane former concert pianist and newspaper editor (The Jerusalem Post) and was now an advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu. I met Bar-Illan a few times after that, and he remains one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. And hands-down the best op-ed writer I’ve ever read.

We also visited with Gershon Salomon, founder of the Temple Mount Faithful Movement. I learned just how connected Jews in Israel really are when word came that then-Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert would meet with us…because Salomon urged him to do so.

The crown jewel of our two weeks in country though came on the evening of March 5, when Ariel Sharon gave us an hour in his Tel Aviv office. In the outer office, where we waited to meet the legendary Israeli general (then Minister of Infrastructures in Netanyahu’s first government), I saw Mossad chief Danny Yatom get on an elevator. He smiled at me as I gulped.

Sharon was a gracious host, and the moment was surreal for me. Entering his office through a side door, Sharon was shorter than I thought he’d be, but his handshake was crushing. He spoke in Hebrew several times with an aid, but gave us his full attention. He mentioned that he remembered David from 15 years before, during the Lebanon War, because the IDF heard of an American preacher running back and forth across the border, broadcasting over the radio!

That was David, larger than life.

Sharon gave me a map of the West Bank that night, which I still have. He invited us to dinner at his farm in the Negev, and I regret to this day that we could not stay in Israel that long—had to get home.

All in all, we conducted many interviews. David was a warhorse, his body already by that time failing him. But on he soldiered, doing it all for Israel. His books, conferences, tapes, and newsletters contributed greatly to American evangelicals’ understanding of the exotic country on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. I treasure those two weeks with David, and know that he is enjoying his rest now.

We will see each other again soon.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com