Here’s a paradox. One of Israel’s most articulate and prominent public defenders since October 7 is also emerging as one of the most persistent and personal critics of Israel’s prime minister. And no, I don’t mean Senator Schumer.

One ex-president of the Harvard, Lawrence Summers, took to X on January 30 to urge the university invite to talk at Harvard “speakers like Dennis Ross or Bret Stephens who take pro-Israel positions.” Harvard wound up hosting Mr. Stephens twice; first at an event that took place on Passover and then at a Harvard Hillel event that took place after the school year was over.

If you missed those, you can catch him at an event on July 30 as part of a Martha’s Vineyard Chabad lecture series. Yet in two New York Times columns — one in April, and another in July — Mr. Stephens has turned sharply against Netanyahu. 

The April one likened Mr. Netanyahu to the late British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who, shrinking from war, negotiated the Munich agreement that excluded Czechoslovakia but ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The most recent column concludes that “Israel’s crises will abate when it gets” a new prime minister.

That’s fantasy thinking. Israel has had non-Netanyahu prime ministers. They’ve all been faced with crises. Nor is the identity of the Israeli prime minister the sole, or even the primary, variable in determining whether Israel faces crises.

Israel can do things to shape its short-term, medium-term, and long-term strategic environment, but even Israel, with all its might, has constraints when it comes to reversing decades of ingrained anti-Israel hate in Arab and Muslim culture, not to mention in some European cities and American universities. 

Neither of Mr. Stephens’ two recent anti-Netanyahu columns includes the name of Mr. Stephens’ proposed replacement for Netanyahu. As President Biden, another democratically elected leader that the elites want to oust, likes to say, don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.

“Any leader who isn’t Bibi would be an improvement in my view,” Mr. Stephens told the Havard Hillel audience, naming Naftali Bennett, Yoav Gallant, and Yair Lapid. Mr. Stephens’s recent column says, “A better Israeli prime minister would not be planning to deliver a speech to Congress when the war in Lebanon could erupt at any moment.”

This is a classic double standard. Mr. Stephens didn’t criticize President Zelensky for addressing Congress. The eve of a war with Lebanon is as good a time as any to explain the stakes to America. Certainly, if Israel is planning to invade Lebanon, it makes sense to marshal the maximum support in Washington in advance, rather than waiting until afterward.

If Mr. Stephens thinks a speech to Congress in the middle of a war is too risky for Mr. Netanyahu, how would a full-scale election campaign of the sort Mr. Stephens proposes be any less risky or disruptive to Israel’s war effort? 

Mr. Netanyahu has a four-year term that began in December 2022. Israel’s coalition parliamentary system has featured frequent elections, including five in the four years between 2018 and 2022; Mr. Netanyahu emerged as prime minister after four of the past five. Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents want an election quickly before the prime minister achieves a victory against Hamas or the return of more hostages, which would strengthen him politically. 

Some wisdom on all this is, effectively, this: “Peace with the Palestinians is impossible — in the short term. …any successor to Netanyahu will have to pursue essentially identical policies — policies whose chief art will consist in fending off false promises of salvation. There’s a long Jewish history of this. For all of his flaws, few have done it as well as Bibi, which is why he has endured, and will probably continue to do so.”

That is from a 2018 column by Mr. Stephens headlined “Don’t Count Bibi Out — Yet.” 

If Mr. Netanyahu leaves now, he’ll be remembered for the fact that the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust happened on his watch. If he sticks around longer, he has a chance to go down in history as the prime minister who defeated Hamas and Hezbollah, rescued the hostages, eliminated the Iranian nuclear threat, and expanded the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

Eventually it’ll be time for Mr. Netanyahu to pass the torch. Let him, and Israel, first win the war.