Pulitzer Prize Winner Bret Stephens: Netanyahu Must Go

Photos By : Haim Zach / GPO

Bret Stephens, a prominent American Jewish conservative political commentator, has now joined the growing chorus of people who are calling on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign. In doing so, Stephens also joined a large segment of the Israeli population that holds Netanyahu responsible for the failure to prevent the barbaric massacre enacted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists on October 7, 2023, and what, in their opinion, has become a “quagmire” in Gaza.

The winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary made the call in an editorial in the New York Times.

Bret Stephens opened his editorial by acknowledging that “Israel must destroy Hamas as a military and political force” in Gaza, free the 134 Israelis still held hostage there and push the Hezbollah terrorist organization out of southern Lebanon. But for Israel to do so, he declared, “Benjamin Netanyahu must go.”

“Netanyahu’s disastrous engagement with Hamas before it carried out the Oct. 7 massacre and his conduct of the war since” wrote Stephens, have made his departure “vital.”

He also wrote about how Benjamin Netanyahu and his government was so clueless as to what was happening in Gaza that they continued to negotiate the transfer of hundreds of millions of Dollars from Qatar to Hamas in Gaza.

And Stephens was critical of Israel’s conduct in the “Iron Swords” War in Gaza too.

“Where does Israel find itself after six months of war?” asked Bret Stephens. “Not in a good place. Netanyahu and his generals keep insisting, Westmoreland-like, that victory in Gaza is around the corner while providing tallies of Hamas fighters killed.”

Citing a poll that showed 71% of Israelis want Benjamin Netanyahu to go and that % want new elections, Stephens wrote, “It’s dangerous for a country at war to be led by someone the people neither support nor trust.”

In March, the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate Chuck Schumer sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his handling of the war in Gaza in a speech Schumer gave on the Senate floor.

“I believe in his heart, his highest priority is the security of Israel,” Senator Schumer, who is Jewish and represents New York State, said at the time. “However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”

Netanyahu only caring about staying in office and avoiding a conviction in his ongoing corruption trial has been a longstanding critique of the Prime Minister in Israel for a long time. But Benjamin Netanyahu is not going anywhere for now, not unless his government falls. However, as the current polls in Israel show the opposition winning if new elections are called, it is not likely that coalition partners will be willing to bring down his government even as they threaten to do so.

This is especially true for Israel’s ultra-orthodox parties who know they would be left out of power should the opposition win.

According to his bio with the Tkvah Fund, Bret Stephens is an op-ed columnist at the New York Times, where he writes about foreign policy and domestic politics. Previously, he wrote “Global View,” the Wall Street Journal’s foreign-affairs column, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2013. He was also the paper’s deputy editorial page editor and a member of its editorial board. Before that, he was editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, a position he assumed at age 28.

At the Post, Bret Stephens oversaw the paper’s news, editorial and digital operations and its international editions, and also wrote a weekly column.

Bret Stephens was born in the U.S. and raised in Mexico City. He has an undergraduate degree, with honors, from the University of Chicago, and a Master’s from the London School of Economics. He lives in New York City with his wife Corinna, a music critic, and their three children.