Netanyahu’s absolute commitment to saving himself is harming Israel
Israelis want him out but the PM is misguided by his own self-belief. By Donald Macintyre
Joe Biden has referred in private to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, as an “asshole”. Chuck Schumer, the (Jewish and fiercely pro-Israel) US Senate Majority leader, has urged him to stand down to stop his nation becoming a “pariah”.
At home, Netanyahu has yet to achieve either of the – incompatible, many believe – objectives that he set for a devastating war on Gaza he seems intent on prolonging: the destruction of Hamas and the return of the estimated 134 hostages still held in Gaza.
A poll – taken after Israel’s 1 April bombing of a building in Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria, but before Iran launched its drone and missile strikes on Israel – found that 71 per cent of Israelis wanted Netanyahu out of office immediately or after the war.
While the war still enjoys strong support, polls show that more Israelis think Netanyahu is acting in his personal interests than in those of the country.
Netanyahu could hardly seem more isolated. He is on trial for three corruption charges (which he denies) and is widely blamed for the colossal failures of policy, intelligence and military preparedness that enabled Hamas to commit mass murders on 7 October, failures for which he has refused to take responsibility.
Yet his working days suggest he is undaunted. The Haaretz journalist Uri Misgav claims that “before the massacre and after it, he set out for work late, mostly after having his hair and facial make-up done”.
His office sends out a stream of press releases complete with pictures and the texts of his many speeches – chairing a regular war cabinet here, visiting an air force base or giving a pep talk to military recruits there, meeting a foreign leader – yesterday it was the Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron – one day, US Congress representatives the next.
And that’s without the political plotting needed to keep his coalition together; his 2023 calendar reportedly shows 26 private meetings with Ron Dermer, his closest ally among cabinet ministers – and just three with defence minister Yoav Gallant, one of which was to sack him. (He was forced to reinstate Gallant a fortnight later.)
So how does Israel’s longestserving prime minister keep going? The political answer is easier to find than the psychological one: Machiavellian skills – from his legendary ability to play for time to the intimidating abuse he allows his supporters to spew out on social media, delegitimising those who dare to oppose him as “leftists” and “traitors”. And now picking a direct fight with Iran.
It has distracted attention from Gaza, where Palestinians stricken by an unprecedented reported death toll of more than 33,000 now face famine. What’s more, it has forced his allies, for all their frustration, to unite to defend Israel against Iran’s counter-attack.
All of that requires nerve. Of his two predecessors who departed after military crises, Golda Meir was often beset by anxiety, made all the greater by the intelligence failures that preceded the Yom Kippur War, while Menachem Begin fell into a deep depression after Israel’s 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon. It’s hard to imagine anything similar of Netanyahu.
For that there are at least two explanations. One is that he is so determined to stay in office and out of jail – at least until there is some electorally exploitable sign of the “total victory”, or a more sympathetic Donald Trump is re-elected as US president – that he is blinkered against the costs to which he is exposing his country.
As former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert puts it: “There is only one thing which is of consequence as far as Netanyahu is concerned: himself, his career.”
Another may be a hefty dose – indeed overdose – of self-belief. Netanyahu is widely thought to have something of a Churchill complex, although Aluf Benn, the editorin-chief of Haaretz, has suggested another role model – Howard Roark, the iconoclastic architect hero of The Fountainhead, a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand, the posthumous guru for the American right whose books Netanyahu read in his youth.
Benn said: “[Roark] was the smartest and all the others were trying to please each other and not daring to do anything… He has a superior quality as a person and therefore he is allowed to do stuff that is illegal or unethical.”
Benn suggests that the fictional Roark may even have been why Netanyahu took his first degree in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Aviv Bushinsky, a Netanyahu spokesman in his first premiership (1996-99), remembers meeting him later in a Tel Aviv office with a panoramic view of the city’s skyscrapers and him saying proudly: “Before I was in power you didn’t see anything like that.”
Bushinsky said: “I said to myself… is he bullshitting me? But he really believes it’s only because of him.”
Netanyahu’s determination to stay in power becomes easier to maintain if coupled with the conviction – despite all evidence to the contrary – that he alone knows what is good for Israel.
It’s just that such a conviction makes the determination even more dangerous.
There is only one thing which is of consequence as far as Netanyahu is concerned: him, his career
Donald Macintyre presents ‘The State of Netanyahu’, a three-part Tortoise Media podcast