All Fired Up: Bibi’s Hatchet

What do these four Israeli politicians – Mordechai, Yaalon, Lieberman, Gallant – uniquely share in common? Yes, they all served as Defense Ministers (DMs) over the past few decades, but so did some others. Their special common denominator: all were fired (or resigned under duress) from their Defense Ministry position by Prime Minister Netanyahu. I don’t think the Guinness Book of World Records keeps resigning Defense MInisters on its list but surely this is a world record. What does such recurring behavior say about PM Bibi? A lot – but first the background of each case.

In 1999, PM Netanyahu fired DM Yitzhak Mordechai; the latter accused him of numerous lies and “endangering everything for his own political needs.” In the subsequent election debate between the two, Mordechai demanded of Bibi to “look me in the eyes” – which the PM was unable to do. He lost the election to Ehud Barak.

Then in 2016, DM Yaalon resigned from his ministry because he discovered that behind Yaalon’s back Bibi promised Avigdor Lieberman (Bibi’s former Chief of Staff) to replace him, a politician without any significant national security experience. Why did the PM want Yaalon out? Because he had defended the army and especially Vice Chief of Staff Yair Golan who warned that certain extremist right-wing elements in the West Bank (who were indiscriminately attacking Palestinians) were doing things that resembled what the Nazis had done to the Jews.

However, getting rid of Yaalon backfired on the PM: within two years DM Lieberman resigned, accusing Netanyahu of “giving in to [Hamas] terror… by buying quiet for the short term at the expense of national security over the long term.” The issue was enabling Qatar to send fuel and money to Hamas unimpeded – this after a decade during which the Israeli security authorities worked tirelessly to stop such under-the-table financing. As we know from Oct. 7, the “short term quiet” ended with a huge bang – precisely as Lieberman warned in his resignation letter to the PM.
The reason for the PM’s “strange” policy? By keeping Hamas afloat, he was able to continue claiming that Israel had “no partner” for any peace negotiations. Indeed, a Hamas on life support also served as a counterwight to the PLA (Fatah-led) government in the West Bank, thereby ensuring that it too could not speak for all Palestinians – all this while Israel’s own national security agencies (especially the SHABAK and the IDF) continued their close security coordination with the PLA! Bibi was “playing both sides of the coin” with a vengenace.

More than anything else, this is the future danger to Bibi’s continued rule. It is now clear to all concerned that his directive to enable funding of Hamas led directly to last year’s catastrophe – something that a future National Commission of Inquiry will lay out fully for public consumption. Unless…

There’s a problematic clause in the Basic Law regarding the establishment of such a Commission of Inquiry. Although the President of the Supreme Court decides on the other two members of the Commission – thus ensuring objective non-partisanship – it is the government itself that sets the contours for the investigation. Put simply, the present government could decide that the Commission will investigate the immediate, tactical mistakes prior to Oct. 7 (i.e., problems regarding the IDF’s lack of preparedness and very slow response), and not the earlier, strategic policy errors that enabled such an attack in the first place.

Bibi’s “solution”? To keep the war going endlessly, thus claiming that Israel cannot afford the confusion of a Commission of Inquiry while the war is ongoing. He has declared that only “total victory” will end the war in Gaza – but already several months ago the army removed most of its units from there, so that “total victory” (if ever) will take a lot longer to attain.

Now former DM Gallant has called Bibi’s bluff, stating unequivocally that the IDF has little more to do or to attain in Gaza; the time has come to end that war and return all the hostages. For Bibi, that’s tantamount to political suicide with a Commission being set up immediately thereafter. His solution: fire the DM who is basically crying out loud “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”

Beyond all this, it is worth noting that Netanyahu has not only been a political executioner of Defense Ministers. The number of other high level ministers from his own party who have left Bibi’s government over the years probably deserves its own Guinness record: Ariel Sharon, Dan Meridor, Tzipi Livni, Benny Begin (former PM Menachem Begin’s son!), Gideon Saar and numerous others. In many such cases, for a similar reason: they were too popular (a threat to his leadership position) or wouldn’t toe every policy line that Bibi pushed (a threat to his authority).

During his failed election campaign in 1999, Netanyahu used the following (now infamous) slogan: “They are Afraid!” (Heym Me’fakhadim). Based on the past 25 years of his continual political executions, it’s clear that “it takes one to know one”…