Eliot Kaufman
WSJ, Dec. 20, 2024
“From the air, you can mow the lawn. You can’t pull out the weeds. We’re here to uproot Hamas—not to deliver deterrent blows, but to destroy it.”
“Hello?” Benjamin Netanyahu begins over the phone. “I’m going to give you a précis of everything that happened because we stand now at a crossroads of history. The campaign that we carried out changed the Middle East.”
I’m fine, thank you, but Israel’s prime minister has no time for pleasantries. He has to testify six hours a day, three days a week, at his trial. Prosecutors allege he was bribed with positive news coverage, a novel theory, and employ the kind of vague breach-of-trust and fraud statutes that U.S. federal courts no longer allow.
Mr. Netanyahu maintains his innocence. Most of all, he maintains that he has a war to run—and that Israel is winning big. He poses the question: “How did it happen?” From the darkness of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has roared back to crush Hamas and defang Hezbollah, leaving the Assad regime in Syria to crumble and all their masters in Iran to fret, without air defenses, over Mr. Netanyahu’s next move. How did it happen? …SOURCE