Make Netanyahu the next pope

Following the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday yesterday, the position of Pope is currently open. While 15 impressive candidates have emerged as likely successors, I would like to nominate a 16^th: Benjamin Netanyahu. While Pope Francis was criticized for his soft approach to social issues, and inter alia for being “bent on turning the Church into a vaguely spiritually flavored NGO,” Netanyahu would restore the papacy to its hardline former glory. I have in mind not the hardline theological approach of Benedict XVI, nor the politically hardline approach of Pius XI, but what Machiavelli calls a “spirited pope,” like Sixtus IV (Prince xi).

While Pope Francis was known for his personal interactions with freed Israeli hostages and his comforting calls to Christians under fire in Gaza, Sixtus IV was known for his crusade against the Ottomans in Smyrna and his (unsuccessful) calls for unity with the Greek Church. In his Florentine Histories, Machiavelli calls Sixtus IV, “a man of very base and vile condition” and “the first who began to show how much a pontiff could do and how many things formerly called errors could be hidden under pontifical authority” (vii, 23, Banfield-Mansfield trans.).

Machiavelli describes how Sixtus IV was dedicated to promoting his sons, though calling them “more decent names,” and working with the powerful factions that dominated 15th-century Rome. In Prince xi, Machiavelli laments how popes generally have no more than ten years in power, which is not enough to completely settle factional disputes. Netanyahu has been in power in various positions for much longer than ten years – enough to establish his dominance over Israeli factions, to speak in the name of religious and political unity, and to begin an endless military crusade. Yaḥad Nenaṣṣeaḥ.

Aside from his personal qualifications, Netanyahu also has doctrinal distinctions at the pontifical level. First, he is infallible. Guilt for the October 7^th massacre and the other series of disasters of his long rule falls on anyone but him. This is the reason we will never have a National Commission of Inquiry into the events of October 7, since the court, in the view of the Coalition, is more to blame, and the army and Shin Bet already had their own inquiries.

Just yesterday, we learned that although he slept through the morning hours of October 7^th (apparently, the only one in Israel to do so), had the security apparatus managed to wake him, “the massacre would have been avoided.” Netanyahu did not elaborate on this point, and I wonder if he would have driven down to the Gaza Envelope in his Toyota Yaris to find and rescue people under attack while fighting off terrorists in army boots borrowed from his son. Perhaps, though, he meant that the entire military apparatus simply could not function without him. This brings us to his next qualification:

Papal Supremacy. According to Lumen Gentium, the pope has “power of primacy over all.” This means that bishops, priests, monks, and laity all answer to him, and that he has the power to call or disband at will the college of the entire Church. Netanyahu already holds a similar power in the Knesset, where coalition members almost never vote against him, and he openly seeks such power over the Court, the army, the Attorney General, the Mossad, the police, and the Shin Bet. As became clear yesterday , Netanyahu is interested in using the Shin Bet to ensure that the laity of Israel all “practice the truth in love” and without protest.

True papal primacy will be established when the shallow statesman overcomes the deep state.

On second thought, never mind. There is no need to make Netanyahu the pope. Soon enough, he will enjoy all the same powers at home in Israel.