A friend of mine, who is Israeli, expressed his amazement at how long the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been able to stay in power.
I responded with my own impressions of how “Bibi” has accomplished that, along with my regrets about his having been Israel’s leader all these years, and with my hopes that Netanyahu may now be reaching the end of his trail, as Israel prepares for yet another election — the fourth in a couple of years — coming up in March.
(I’ve been following Israeli politics reasonably seriously for years. But I also recognize that my knowledge of the people and forces at work in the Israeli political scene falls short of genuine expertise. So I offer the following thoughts on the basis of “for what it’s worth...” But I do think I know enough to have Bibi’s number.)
I wrote:
Netanyahu is an extraordinarily clever politician who is unencumbered by moral considerations.
He is highly intelligent, and he knows how to maneuver from where he is through a complex world and get to where he wants to go.
Unfortunately, with that intellectual giftedness he combines a willingness to betray those who have been important allies, a willingness to stir up racial/ethnic hostilities, and a willingness to inflict injustice on a whole people, dealing with them with "the back of his hand," at least in part because it works well for him politically.
That combination of high strategic ability with lack of regard for most of the important human values (an amorality that expands greatly the range of strategies that can be employed) is a good recipe for a politician: that combination has enabled Bibi to maintain himself in power so long that he has now broken the record for longest tenure (set by David Ben Gurion, who — to my mind — gave the world’s only Jewish state a much finer face).
But it could be that the bill for Netanyahu’s defects is coming due, that enough chickens have come to roost from his corruption, and from his long tenure in office having created such a division in the nation that thousands of good Israelis have been taking to the streets virtually non-stop for months to express their unhappiness at Netanyahu — a man under indictment — being the nation’s Prime Minister.
Although it remains entirely possible that Netanyahu will be Prime minister again after the elections, I also sense a growing possibility that Bibi will soon be at a moment like Richard III’s, whose fate closed in on him despite is crying, futilely, “My horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse!” (It was not so long ago that a Prime Minister of Israel — Ehud Olmert — ended up doing some real prison time for crimes committed.)
Just maybe -- between his trial and what the Israeli people have already seen him doing (much like Trump) to place himself “above the law” -- and despite Netanyahu’s having done an outstanding job of advancing Israel's interests in the world (quite unlike Trump), playing the Israeli hand in the world as effectively as he played his own hand in his quest for power in Israeli politics -- the power might get handed to someone else.
In any event, it seems pretty certain that the Israeli right will continue to be dominant force in the Israeli power system.
I’ve been bewildered why the left can’t come up with some more capable and charismatic leader.
But a big factor in the decline of the left seems to be that generations of Israeli experience — with regard to their basic security — has led a majority of Israelis to come to beliefs mostly aligned with the thinking of the hardliners on the right: i.e. having concluded that it’s not possible to make a real peace with the Palestinians, it seems that a majority of Israelis believe that security is to be had from dominating them.
“Look what happened when we gave back Gaza.” And “Look at how Arafat walked out of Camp David when Israel put a surprisingly serious and plausible offer on the table.” It seemed that Arafat’s behavior in 2000 basically killed the dovish faction — “Peace Now” -- in Israel. (To which I’d always been sympathetic.)
And then there is the effect on a people’s psyche from being continually embattled like no other nation on the planet since the moment it came into being. (Perpetual fear does not make people more whole.)
I would respect Netanyahu’s toughness toward the Palestinians, if only he used his toughness toward the ultimate goal of getting the Palestinian Arabs and the Israeli Jews ultimately to the best possible future footing. That should always be the goal — regardless of how difficult it might be to move toward a more harmonious and just future, regardless of the current attitudes of those on the other side.
But Netanyahu is clearly not behaving toward the Palestinians in a way that works toward that better path. He keeps things broken, it has long appeared to me, because that brokenness serves his own needs—like many another semi-fascist ruler who feeds the flames of hatred between races or religious groups or ethnicities.
Something better is at least conceivable, coming out of the elections in March. It’s possible — if a leader of that power-of-the-right is not Netanyahu but someone with greater moral character. (I.e. if the power can be handed to someone who cares as much about values beyond himself as the right-wing PM Menachem Begin did — back in the time of that breakthrough with Sadat.)
If the realism of the right can be combined with a genuinely moral value system — on that seeks a world where peoples can live together in harmony and good will— then maybe something welcome might yet come from a ruling coalition in which the Israeli right predominated.
Or so I like to hope.
Maybe, just as the United States attempts to return to being ruled by the better angels of its nature, the time will soon be at hand when the Israelis, too, might move in a better direction.
But in the meanwhile, I don’t feel good to have Bibi Netanyahu be the face of the world’s only Jewish state.