Benjamin Netanyahu and the Politics of Self-Preservation
Now that the government’s failures have become impossible to ignore, even for many of Netanyahu’s staunchest supporters, some are beginning to see the end of the Netanyahu era in Israeli politics. This has prompted a growing number of voices to begin taking stock of his political career and considering his historical legacy.
One argument that has emerged is that 2016 should be regarded as a watershed in Benjamin Netanyahu’s public career. According to this view, until the investigations against him began, Netanyahu conducted himself as a statesman and acted in accordance with the national interest. From 2016 onward, however, he changed course: extricating himself from his legal troubles became the central concern of his political activity, and every decision was weighed according to its potential contribution to his personal position and his survival in power, even when that came into clear conflict with the national interest.
I believe this interpretation is overly simplistic and fundamentally flawed. A closer examination of Netanyahu’s political career suggests that he has followed essentially the same path from the very beginning – a path characterized by a clear preference for personal and partisan interests over the broader national interest, thereby weakening Israel both domestically and internationally.
The first indication of this approach can be found in the days following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The shock and anger that swept through Israeli society raised fears on the right that the public backlash would be directed at it and would translate into defeat in the approaching elections. Some figures on the far right responded by promoting a conspiracy theory alleging that the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, had been behind the assassination.
Netanyahu himself helped amplify this claim. Journalists Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman recount in their book Shadow Wars that two days after the assassination Netanyahu telephoned several journalists and tried to persuade them that there was a connection between the Shin Bet and the assassination. He pointed out that several years earlier Yigal Amir had been sent to Russia by Nativ, an organization associated with Israeli intelligence, and suggested that Amir might therefore have remained connected to the intelligence establishment after his mission.
The journalists were not quick to accept the claim, which they regarded as tainted by personal political interests. Yet this episode is significant because it reveals an approach that would remain characteristic of Netanyahu’s politics. It is also notable that, decades later, Netanyahu did not publicly distance himself from remarks by Bezalel Smotrich that explicitly alluded to the same conspiracy theory in a speech marking the anniversary of Rabin’s assassination in November 2022.
The political logic was clear: in an effort to prevent an electoral defeat and consolidate the right under his leadership, Netanyahu was prepared even to amplify a false claim and undermine the credibility of Israel’s own security service in the eyes of the public.
A second expression of this approach concerns the erosion of Israel’s social cohesion. Two slogans in particular acquired a significance far beyond the circumstances in which they were uttered and came to symbolize much of Netanyahu’s political method.
The first was his 1996 campaign slogan, “Netanyahu is good for the Jews.” The second was the statement, reportedly made almost casually to Rabbi Yitzhak Kadouri shortly after Netanyahu first became prime minister: “The left has forgotten how to be Jewish.”
These statements were not merely spontaneous political rhetoric. They formed part of a calculated effort to deepen Israel’s social divisions by portraying political opponents as fundamentally other – as somehow less Jewish – and framing them as enemies.
Netanyahu’s supporters are often quick to accuse their opponents in the media of “psychological manipulation.” Yet the roots of this kind of political manipulation can be found in Netanyahu’s 1996 election campaign, which was managed by the American political consultant Arthur Finkelstein. Drawing on the traditions of Edward Bernays and Ernest Dichter, pioneers of modern public relations and mass persuasion, Finkelstein transformed the character of Israeli election campaigns, shifting them from positive messaging toward negative campaigning and searching for social fault lines that could be exploited politically.
Those fault lines were found in Israel’s religious and ethnic tensions. Finkelstein understood that deepening the divide between “Jew” and “Israeli,” and between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, could help secure Netanyahu’s election – even though Netanyahu himself represented, more than almost anyone else, the secular, Ashkenazi Israeli establishment.
With remarkable political instinct, Finkelstein established the template of what Israelis would later call “the base”: reliance on a loyal political constituency at the expense of appealing to the country as a whole.
In other words, the 1996 campaign established an equation that would become increasingly refined over the following decades: electoral victory and the preservation of political power require the delegitimization of the secular, liberal Israeli, alongside the intensification of social and ethnic divisions.
A third expression of this approach can be found in the damage to Israel’s relations with the American government and with American Jewry during Netanyahu’s years in power.
Public memory is short, and the confrontation between Netanyahu and President Barack Obama is sometimes remembered as an isolated episode, supposedly motivated entirely by the desire to save Israel from the Iranian nuclear threat. But that is not the whole story. Netanyahu’s actions that contributed to the growing distance between Israel, the Democratic Party, and liberal American Jews began during his very first term.
Significantly, this estrangement did not initially arise from disagreements over the implementation of the Oslo Accords or the Y Memorandum. It also emerged from Netanyahu’s interference in American politics. The Clinton administration viewed with serious concern Netanyahu’s conspicuous courtship of the president’s political opponents, most notably the evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell, who advocated religious legislation and opposed LGBTQ rights and was regarded as a prominent adversary of the Democratic Party.
This was the same pastor who claimed that the September 11 attacks were divine punishment for America’s liberal attitude toward homosexuality – and whom Netanyahu nevertheless regarded as a valuable friend of Israel.
The next stage in the unraveling of Israel’s relationship with the Democratic Party did not begin with Netanyahu’s 2015 speech to Congress, delivered against President Obama’s wishes. It was already evident in Netanyahu’s open support for Mitt Romney, who challenged a sitting president in the 2012 election.
The political choice to rely so heavily on the religious right and evangelical Christians also came at a time when liberalism was gaining strength among younger Americans, a demographic that includes a substantial proportion of American Jews.
Another factor that deepened the rift with the Democratic Party emerged during Netanyahu’s current term. Following criticism from the Biden administration of his proposed judicial overhaul, voices within Netanyahu’s government publicly attacked President Biden. Iddo Netanyahu went even further, raising questions about the president’s mental fitness in a July article in Haaretz.
In effect, advancing the judicial overhaul while dismissing the Biden administration’s opposition to it came at the cost of personally attacking the American president, whose support for Israel has long been a cornerstone of Israel’s national security.
The widening rift between Israel and the Democratic Party and liberal American public opinion has also contributed to the growing distance between Israel and the Reform and Conservative movements of American Judaism.
There are many reasons for the gradual estrangement of American Jews from Israel. Yet Netanyahu’s first government made a significant contribution to this process. In early 1997, his government introduced a proposed conversion law intended to extend the Orthodox approach prevailing in Israel to the wider Jewish world. In his book From Truman to Obama, Abraham Ben-Zvi writes that the initiative increased friction and resentment between American Jewry and Israel’s political and religious establishment, contributing to growing alienation and a reduction in donations to Israel.
The same approach was evident in the Western Wall compromise. The original agreement would have provided a designated area for egalitarian prayer by the liberal Jewish movements. Under pressure from the religious parties in his government, however, Netanyahu abandoned the compromise, deepening the sense of alienation felt by liberal American Jews toward Israel.
In other words, in order to satisfy his political base, Netanyahu was willing to damage Israel’s relationship with American Jewry – a community whose political influence and advocacy for Israel in Washington have long been of enormous importance.
Many have drawn parallels between the failures surrounding the 1973 Yom Kippur War and those surrounding October 2023. Golda Meir’s public legacy has, to a considerable extent, been overshadowed by the failures of the Yom Kippur War. The social legislation she advanced as minister of labor and the relationships she cultivated with countries in the developing world as foreign minister have largely faded from public memory.
A similar historical reckoning will eventually be necessary with Netanyahu’s years in power. The failure of October 2023 will almost certainly become inseparable from Netanyahu’s historical legacy. But future historians should not look only to October 7, 2023. They should also search for the deeper roots of that failure – and trace them back to Netanyahu’s earliest years as prime minister.
