Daniel Pomerantz
Algemeiner, July 23, 2025
“… was Netanyahu’s approach wrong? Perhaps. Was there any viable alternative? No. Did any other Israeli leader perform differently? Definitely no.”
The New York Times recently published an article by Patrick Kingsley, Ronen Bergman, and Natan Odenheimer entitled, “How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power” sparking a public debate between the publication and the Israeli Prime Minister.
Though the article reads like a critique of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is in reality a furious objection to certain Israeli policies that are not only vital to Israel’s safety, but are also supported by the broad consensus of Israeli society.
Kingsley, Bergman, and Odenheimer accomplish their article’s dubious agenda by taking a few kernels of truth, lifting them out of context, distorting them beyond all recognition, and finally, by adding a healthy smattering of outright factual errors.
We must start with a certain piece of context — perhaps the only fact that truly matters in a democracy: Netanyahu’s Likud party currently leads in Israeli polls. Moreover, Likud has led in Israeli polls for most of the past 20 months (during Israel’s war against the Hamas terror organization, Iran, and its various other proxies).
At times, some polls have put Likud slightly behind a theoretical party that might be formed by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, yet this is not a realistic comparison: the “Bennett party” does not yet exist, and it may never exist. Furthermore, theoretical parties typically have elevated polling numbers because they have not yet adopted real positions on real issues. The most popular party after Likud that actually exists in the real world (Yair Lapid’s “Yesh Atid” party) has roughly half the support that Likud does.. …..SOURCE