Anshel Pfeffer and Ben Caspit are two of the most respected Israeli journalists: very well-informed, articulate and strongly opinionated. They are the authors of the two existing and extensive biographies of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They also share a deep antipathy – even antagonism – towards him.

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A few weeks ago, Netanyahu began a public campaign to induce the new Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, to immediately start administering a third dose of the COVID vaccine to elderly Israelis. He minced no words: "There is no other way to save lives and leave the economy open. … We have already paid for [another two million doses]; this is what we did before the new government took power, and they must be delivered now."

Already last March, Netanyahu had stated that "we are working on bringing a further 36 million vaccines for the citizens of Israel. … The vaccines we have, no one knows how long they last … We need to prepare for the worst scenario. The worst scenario is that we have to vaccinate every half year."  Nevertheless, but not surprisingly, both journalist-biographers saw only selfish and depraved motives behind Netanyahu's persistent calls for the urgent vaccine booster.

In an article on July 26, Pfeffer characterized Netanyahu's warnings as a "scare campaign," "part of his Churchill complex" and "an irresponsible act of desperation by a former prime minister who is anxious to remain relevant and to keep being associated with the vaccines."

He conceded that "Israel may well decide to administer a third dose of the vaccine in the coming weeks and months" – something that the Bennett government indeed decided to do a mere three days later.

In a report on July 28, Caspit claimed that Netanyahu was "urgently pushing for a third booster dose after it was recently discovered that his coronavirus antibody level had decreased," and that "Netanyahu's [recommendation] was directly motivated by his testing."

The very next day, the government authorized the booster to all Israelis over the age of 60.

Even Netanyahu's adversaries have praised him in the past for purchasing millions of vaccines ahead of almost every other world leader. Effectively, what he had accomplished was even more significant than that.

In order to secure the necessary doses in 2020, he managed single-handedly to convince Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla that Israel would be the ideal country to showcase the effectiveness of the novel vaccine.  In so doing, he all but forged a strategic alliance with Pfizer, such that the giant pharmaceutical simply cannot allow Israel to fail, or else its whole mRNA vaccination enterprise may fail.

As a result of this alliance, it is extremely likely that Pfizer will always provide Israel with enough doses of the vaccine as soon as needed. Moreover, Israel will almost certainly be the first country in the world to receive a new mRNA vaccine if and when a highly resistant variant develops.

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One could reasonably speculate that Netanyahu made his urgent recommendation because Pfizer shared with him internal data demonstrating a considerable drop, six months after the second dose, in the average neutralizing antibody titer of the thousands of volunteers who had participated in its Phase 3 trial.

This drop was taking place while the highly contagious Delta variant required far greater titers for its neutralization than the heretofore prevailing variants. Netanyahu himself admitted that he had recently spoken to the CEOs of both Pfizer and Moderna, and it is also conceivable that the latter confirmed the former's data and conclusions.

All world governments made mistakes in the management of the pandemic – some more than others. That is most certainly true of Western democracies. The Netanyahu government is no exception, but it succeeded in accomplishing something that practically no other did: It almost eliminated the disease as it existed in the country until the arrival of the Delta variant. It did so by securing the necessary vaccine doses and rapidly implementing an efficient vaccination program.

By doubling down on the vaccination approach for the population at least over the age of 12, it is possible, though by no means certain, that the Delta surge will be defeated. For the sake of all Israelis, and indeed of all humankind, let us hope that the Netanyahu-Pfizer strategic alliance continues to bear fruit as before.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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In a recent opinion piece in which he offered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backhanded praise for the UAE-Israel deal, former four-time Israeli minister Yossi Beilin made reference to the "insane idea of annexation." The potential advantages and disadvantages of extending sovereignty to 30 percent of Judea and Samaria have already been exhaustively debated in the media, including by Beilin himself. But his use of the word "insane" brings to mind the fact that he has been instrumental in leading Israel – and many worldwide – down the path of insanity over the past three decades.

Because of its support for Iraq in the first Gulf War, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was diplomatically isolated and financially bankrupt in 1992. Yasser Arafat and his fellow terrorists were politically marginalized in Tunis.

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At that point, Beilin and Norwegian sociologist Terje Rod-Larsen came up with the absurd notion that Arafat's PLO could be trusted to radically reform itself; fulfill the terms of a signed agreement, despite having failed to do so countless times since its establishment; foreswear terrorism; disarm and dismantle the violent Islamist Palestinian organizations; and, once and for all, abandon its proudly proclaimed "Plan of Phases," according to which the PLO would acquire territory by negotiation and then use it as a base for pursuing the destruction of Israel.

The then Labor Party-led Israeli government bought into this delusion and convinced the people, if not itself, that "if they're bad boys, we'll just go and take it back." Tragically, Beilin's "insane" idea of resuscitating, empowering, funding and arming Arafat resulted in the death and mutilation of thousands of Israelis. And, of course, when the time came, nothing was taken back.

Beilin went on to successfully sell the proposition that the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – as the indispensable first step in order to bring peace and stability to the entire Middle East – was for Israel to withdraw to the 1949 Armistice lines (with minor swaps of "equivalent land") and agree to both the establishment of a "non-militarized" Palestinian state and the division of Jerusalem. He termed these "the recognized principles of the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the parameters of both the plan proposed by President [Bill] Clinton in 2000 and [his own] Geneva Initiative of 2003)."

In accordance with this paradigm, Beilin's dangerous and painful proposed concessions, with minor incremental variations, have been put on the table again and again by different Israeli governments without ever eliciting a positive response or any reciprocal concession from the Palestinians. To this day, Beilin urges Israel and the international community to keep doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results – as if this were not Einstein's very definition of insanity.

President Donald Trump and the leaders of several so-called "moderate Sunni countries" have finally understood three crucial points that Netanyahu had been emphasizing for a long time. The first is that the only way the Palestinians might ever agree to an end of the conflict is if they internalize that time will bring them progressively diminishing concessions.

The second is that since the United States is now energy-independent and Americans will not support new wars in the Middle East, Arab countries threatened by Iran and Muslim extremists will benefit from strengthening security cooperation with Israel. And the third is that for Israel to take unnecessary risks by returning to less defensible borders will only further the interests of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamists.

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That realization explains the Arab world's reaction (or lack thereof) to Trump's initiatives pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict, including his "Peace to Prosperity" plan, the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the declaration that Israeli settlements are not illegal. It also explains the UAE-Israel agreement and the Arab world's reaction to it, including the failure of the Arab League to condemn the UAE, and Saudi Arabia's and Bahrain's permission of Israeli overflights. Sanity is beginning to prevail in the Middle East.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Your friendship and "profound attachment to the State of Israel" are undoubted and highly appreciated. It is a sad fact of life, however, that great prime ministers like you come and go and, as one of your predecessors put it with brutal frankness, "[n]ations do not have permanent friends or enemies, only interests." A brief review of the ebb and flow of the United Kingdom's support for the Jewish state over the past century proves his point.

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Thus, while the UK "favour[ed] the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" in the Balfour Declaration (1917), less than four years later, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill detached from Palestine the territory east of the Jordan River and bestowed it to Emir Abdullah—in violation of the San Remo Resolution, to which the UK was a signatory.

Shortly thereafter, the UK accepted from the League of Nations the "Mandate for [the remainder of] Palestine" and undertook to "facilitate … close settlement by Jews on the land." But instead of implementing this mandate, the UK issued White Papers in 1930 and 1939 that severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine with tragic consequences for millions of Jews forced to remain in Europe.

In 1956, after Egypt blockaded Israel's port of Eilat (an act of war), the UK rallied to Israel's side. But in 1973, after Egypt (and Syria) attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, the UK not only imposed an embargo on arms transfers to Israel, it refused to provide landing rights for US aircraft to refuel on their way to supplying the Israeli military with much-needed supplies.

After the Six-Day War, the UK enshrined Israel's right to "secure and recognized boundaries" when it drafted and submitted UN Security Council Resolution 242 calling for the "withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." According to George Brown, foreign secretary at the time, "[Resolution 242] does not call for Israeli withdrawal from 'the' territories recently occupied, nor does it use the word 'all,'" and UN Ambassador Lord Caradon explained that "[i]t would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial." Sadly, the UK reversed this position in 2016 when it voted for UN Security Council Resolution 2334, all but sanctifying the June 4, 1967 lines as Israel's border.

No peace-loving person can disagree with your statement that "we must … strive to hammer out a solution [to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict]." The question is how. The Palestinians have repeatedly rejected all proposals that have been put on the table. Israeli and other world leaders share part of the blame, as every time a Palestinian leader said "no," they received a better offer.

The major contribution of US President Donald Trump's "Peace to Prosperity" plan is the message it sends to the Palestinians that time is no longer on their side. The reward of better offers with every "no" is henceforth replaced by diminishing returns with every rejection. Is it still your position that the Trump plan contains "serious proposals for peace?" Will your government give the new paradigm a fair chance or insist on the same unsuccessful approach of the past?

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In closing, Honorable Prime Minister, there are many factors that Israel should weigh when considering whether to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria, as contemplated by the "Peace to Prosperity" plan. The notion that "the UK has always stood by Israel and its right to live as any nation should be able to, in peace and security," unfortunately, is not one of them.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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