Last week before the US Congress, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed comparisons with Winston Churchill; next week on Election Day he may want to dodge them. The witty Winston said that, “After a time, civil servants tend to become no longer servants and no longer civil.” More ominously, while confidently expecting re-election in 1945, Churchill lost.
Reviewing the final volume of the majestic Winston Churchill biography written by Sir Martin Gilbert, the great British historian and Zionist activist who died recently, historian Paul Addison explained Churchill’s loss in words that should spook Netanyahu: “His strident anti-socialist rhetoric disguised the lack of a coherent alternative, and he did what he could to prevent constructive policy-making.” Gilbert quoted Churchill as saying, in retrospect, “There was something pent up in the British people after 20 years which required relief.”
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