Netanyahu: Israel’s Nero

Today’s elections in Israel are the most critical in the Jewish State’s history. Whether incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history, remains in power would have a significant impact on foreign affairs issues such as the conflict with Iran and its proxy terror organizations and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, much to the surprise of outside observers, the main significance of the outcome of the elections is domestic.

It is high time for change. Without it, the very survival of the Zionist dream is questionable.

Over his nineteen years in office (at one point he served for over twelve years consecutively), Netanyahu pulled no punches, polarizing Israeli society, demonizing his opponents and building a personality cult among his followers. In his, his family’s, and many of his supporters’ view, he is Israel’s modern equivalent of King Louis the 14 of France, who declared “l’État, c’est moi.” Indeed, he may have surpassed the French King. In a phone conversation on September 2, 2002, when Ariel Sharon was serving as prime minister, Netanyahu’s wife, Sarah, said of her husband: “Why should he try so hard? We’ll move abroad. Let the country burn. The country won’t survive without Bibi.”

Years of fear-mongering and demonization notwithstanding, Netanyahu’s conduct, either directly or via proxies, after the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, reached new lows.

The examples of Netanyahu’s active polarization of Israeli society and demonization of his opponents are numerous. As opposition leader, Netanyahu led the campaign against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government and the Oslo Accords. On October 5, 1995, he addressed a demonstration in Jerusalem’s Zion Square from a balcony while protesters below displayed images of Rabin in a Nazi uniform and shouted inflammatory slogans. He also participated in a protest in Ra’anana where demonstrators carried a coffin. Rabin was assassinated a month later.

In his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu whispered to Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri that “The people of the left have forgotten what it means to be Jewish.” On a previous election day, Netanyahu released a video in which he warned that his right-wing government was in danger because Arab Israeli voters were going to the polls “in droves,” adding that left-wing organizations were providing transportation.

When a political rival, Benny Gantz, a former Chief of Staff of the IDF, attempted to form a government, Netanyahu described a prospective minority government supported by the Arab Joint List as a “historic terror attack on the State of Israel,” that would be celebrated in Tehran, Ramallah, and Gaza. He portrayed the bringing of criminal charges for corruption and other charges against himself by the Attorney General as an “attempted coup,” and championed the much-contested judicial revolution as a counterthreat to the courts.

Years of fear-mongering and demonization notwithstanding, Netanyahu’s conduct, either directly or via proxies, after the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, reached new lows, including spreading conspiracy theories that the heads of the IDF and Israel’s General Security Service (Israel’s FBI) had known in advance and intentionally did nothing to prevent the massacre to bring down Netanyahu’s government. In a similar vein, in a recent interview, Sarah Netanyahu had this to say about Yair Golan, former Deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF, who rescued civilians on October 7: “When you’re a military man of such high rank, claiming that you fought on October 7, already early in the morning you were there, already dressed and ready at a very, very early hour when others didn’t know, such as the prime minister. Who is the prime minister anyway to know that a war is breaking out? Why let him know?” The implication was that the readiness of Golan, an ardent critic of Netanyahu and the leader of the Democrats party, suggested advance knowledge of the attack, while her husband had been kept uninformed.

Netanyahu’s treatment of bereaved families and hostages’ relatives has too often reflected the divisions of his political world rather than the responsibilities of national leadership. Families critical of his government have described repeated difficulties obtaining meetings, while prominent allies and supportive broadcasters have subjected outspoken relatives to public disparagement and humiliation. His prolonged absence from devastated communities- he waited nearly twenty-one months to visit Nir Oz- deepened the impression of a prime minister reluctant to confront the human consequences of the catastrophe that occurred on his watch.

Netanyahu would often act via proxies such as journalist Yinon Magal who on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2024 compared Netanyahu’s critics to “kappos,” who earlier this month called contributors, many of them former hostages held by Hamas and members of bereaved families, to a book “Mr. Abandonment,” criticizing Netanyahu for electing not to enter agreements for release of hostages due to the political backlash that he would suffer from his supporters’ base, as “despicable people,” and, more recently, calling Netanyahu’s main rival, former Chief of Staff, Gadi Eisenkot, the son of Jews who emigrated from Morrocco, a “monkey.” Even closer to home, Netanyahu’s eldest son, Yair, frequently serves as a loudmouth of deranged conspiracy theories, vile name-calling, and baseless accusations against his father’s opponents (accusations for which he has been ordered, on several occasions, to pay damages in defamation cases brought against him).

Israeli society needs healing.

There are substantial differences between Netanyahu and his opponents with respect to Israel’s foreign relations. But those pale in comparison to the domestic issues that are at stake. Two loom large.

Over the past four years, including during Israel’s longest war ever, Netanyahu actively promoted policies and bills institutionalizing draft evasion by Haredi Jewish men, a majority of whom are also not working, while, at the same time, siphoning billions of Shekels allocated for Haredi institutions and programs. All this was done to preserve his governing coalition at the expense of the general, productive members of society. Netanyahu and his ministers also made it clear that should he return to power, the judicial revolution will be pushed forward with renewed vigor.

Israeli society needs healing. The chasms wrought by Netanyahu for the past twenty years are too deeply embedded and will not disappear overnight. Netanyahu, a leader who believes that he stands above the state and the public and, for whom, “let the country burn” if he is not in power, has done much to destroy internal societal cohesion. Israel, a geographically and demographically small country that, since October 7, 2023, has been fighting for its life on seven different fronts, cannot afford him staying in power any longer. It is high time for change. Without it, the very survival of the Zionist dream is questionable.