Benjamin netanyahu

Despite recent hyperbole, Israel is not on the verge of authoritarianism. The proposed reforms to the country's judicial system, which have attracted so much controversy — usually under the assumption that they will turn Benjamin Netanyahu into an Israeli Viktor Orbán — are lacking in historical context. The Israeli Supreme Court is one of the most activist courts in the world. It has assigned itself more authority and subverted the balance of power between Israel's different branches of government. It has done all this while at the same time lacking any kind of serious accountability to the electorate.

He makes an unlikely prophet, winding his way through the tables at an outdoor café in Jerusalem, scruffy baseball cap cupping his head, flashing a 100-watt smile and laughing too nervously and long. But this is the visionary who may have just found a way to ease the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle. Dr. Micah Goodman is an iconoclast. His 2017 book Catch-67 sought to identify pragmatic ways to “shrink the conflict” between Israel and the Palestinians, rather than aim to resolve it. The left accused him of being too right-wing. The right derided him as a leftist. Catch-67 catapulted Goodman to the bestseller list and instant celebrity.

We should pay attention when someone like H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser, says that ‘it’s a possibility’ Israel will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before President Trump leaves office. McMaster was using a television interview to tell a future Biden administration it would be a mistake to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which he said had been ‘a political disaster masquerading as a diplomatic triumph’. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has always argued that the agreement — ‘based on lies’ — gives the ayatollahs cover to build a nuclear bomb.

In these pages last year, I suggested that while the President’s son-in-law may not be a great geo-strategic mind, we should give Jared Kushner a chance to give peace in the Middle East a chance. After all, to paraphrase President Trump’s message to African American voters, what do those suffering Middle Easterners have to lose after close to two decades of failed US military interventions in the area that brought about chaos and bloodshed? Needless to say that I was bombarded with dismissive messages from pals who are proud members of Washington’s ‘foreign policy community’. They thought I was out of my mind and/or trying to land a job in the Trump administration.

In a time when the weakness of democratic governance is everywhere on display, Israel dwells alone and displays the dangers of strength. After an unprecedented three elections in less than a year, and coalition negotiations that placed a pandemic second to horse-trading, Benjamin Netanyahu remains in the saddle. This time he is supported by Benny Gantz, whose Blue & White coalition was formed for the sole purpose of unseating him.Like Doron Kabilio in Fauda, Netanyahu survives by short-term maneuvers and deceptions. Crosses are doubled and friends are lost, but the star survives for yet another season. Stability is supposed to be the elixir of good government in multi-party systems with proportional representation.

What a relief it is turn away from the maelstrom of American politics, and the endless speculation over whether Donald Trump asked for a quid pro quo in the hope of generating negative coverage about Joe Biden, to the placid backwater of Israeli politics, and the endless speculation over whether Benjamin Netanyahu asked for a quid pro quo in the hope of generating positive coverage about himself. How refreshing it is to stop wondering whether the Ukraine-impeachment circus is merely an attempt to reverse the voters’ decision and spin the 2020 election by replacing democracy with judicial process, and to start wondering whether the Netanyahu-indictment circus is merely an attempt to reverse the voters’ decision and spin the 2020 election by replacing democracy with judicial theater.

There’s a lot going on in Israel. Due to indiscriminate rocket fire from Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, schools in many Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, were closed on Tuesday. Some have already been closed for Wednesday. The rockets target anyone and anything, and give everyone, young or old, the same amount of time, usually under one minute, to seek cover. Thanks to the shelters and Iron Dome, an air defense system which today had an interception success rate of 90 percent per the IDF, these rockets typically result in few Israeli deaths. But the collective psychological trauma of constantly being under fire is impossible to measure.

Benjamin Netanyahu is to tight corners as Harry Houdini was to handcuffs. Only a fool or an expert foreign analyst would write off Netanyahu simply because Likud didn’t come first in Tuesday’s elections. There’s about as much chance of him throwing in the towel after coming a close second to Blue & White as there is of him ending up in Houdini’s bracelets because of corruption charges. Consider the blue-rinsed Machiavelli’s previous electoral failures. In 2009, Likud won 27 mandates, second to the 28 seats of Tzipi Livni and her new centrist party, Kadima. Netanyahu formed a majority coalition government, Kadima dissolved after the 2015 elections, and Livni, a politician without a public, retired from politics in 2019.

Scene: the beach at Tel Aviv. Jews disport themselves in the waves, soundtracked by a Yiddish-absurdist tinkling reminiscent of Curb Your Enthusiasm. ‘Attention all swimmers! Attention all swimmers!’ the lifeguard shouts into the megaphone. ‘Stay to the right — it’s much safer!’ ‘Bibi?’ Two young men interrupts their game of beach tennis. ‘Mr Prime Minister, what are you doing here?’ ‘Doing what I always do, keeping you safe,’ Netanyahu says. The nation’s lifeguard explains that he’s ‘supposed to start another shift’ on September 17, but it’s up to the two young men. They’re secular, Ashkenazis from Tel Aviv, the kind who despise Netanyahu and Likud’s chauvinism. They ask about the alternatives.

Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar should have been allowed to enter Israel, even if they hate it, and deny its right to exist. Even if they agitate for its destruction which, given the neighborhood, means agitating for the mass murder of Jewish civilians because they are Jewish. Even if, though of course this is simply unthinkable in both cases, they hate Jews in general. And even though, instead of joining last week’s 72-strong bipartisan congressional delegation, which bipartisanned its way optimistically around meetings with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders of various parties, they instead set up their own visit with the globally renowned and seriously named Humpty Dumpty Institute, so they could malign Israel as much as they possibly could.

There’s not much going on in the buzzing new village of Trump Heights. Turning off route 959, which runs from northern Israel to the Golan Heights, it wasn’t quite clear at first why our Israeli guide had taken us to an abandoned farm field. Standing in the middle of some flattened yellow grass, however, we saw it: a big (yuge) green sign with bold gold letters in Hebrew and English, the Israeli and American flags crossed in friendship - ‘TRUMP HEIGHTS’. It must have been 10 feet tall. The latest settlement in the Golan was a gift from Benjamin Netanyahu to the President, as thanks for US recognition that the disputed region is Israeli territory.

On Sunday, Beto O’Rourke claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t ‘represent the true will of the Israeli people.’ Israel is a democracy in which every citizen has the right to vote, a fact of international trivia apparently lost on O’Rourke. Although it’s easy to criticize Bibi for many of his recent remarks — and for his recent decision to welcome the racist Jewish Power party into the mainstream, it’s silly to argue that he doesn’t represent the true will of the Israeli people. The Israeli people have spoken for more than a decade: they like to have Bibi at the helm. It’s possible the Israeli people will have something new to say in their election today.