‘Bibi fatigue’ may affect election outcome
Netanyahu’s unpopularity leaves door open for opposition in election
Israeli national security does not lend itself easily to sketch comedy, but in a much-discussed campaign ad for the governing Likud party that launched last month, a couple getting dressed for a night out open the door to their babysitter, only to find a smiling middle-aged man calling himself the Bibisitter.
The husband awkwardly salutes. The wife is dumbfounded. Here is Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, the iron-fisted ex-commando prime minister who rains hellfire on Hamas in Gaza, stares down Iran’s nuclear mullahs, guards his borders against violence all around, defies the world to expand West Bank settlements and embodies the most militaristic aspects of modern Israel. And now he wants to watch the kids.
“Look, it’s either me or Tzipi and Bougie,” Netanyahu says, setting up a paternalistic comparison to his main leftist challengers.
The ad, which ends with a corny joke about the peace process, played on Netanyahu’s political brand as a benevolent warrior king, a possibly over-protective father to his people. In Likud’s spin, he is an adult as his rivals are children, a message made equally explicit in another Likud ad set in a daycare.
In another time, the Israeli public may have appreciated such a message, reflecting their resolve to stand firm, even to smile, in the face of constant and implacable threats to their country’s safety and very existence. But this year it has fallen flat and been ridiculed as a low point of a campaign that has turned into a referendum not just on Netanyahu — his judgment, his record, his fate — but on the view of the state of Israel he has come to represent.
To grasp such a shift in his fortunes, it is necessary to see that Netanyahu is, as Gil Troy, professor of history at McGill University, describes him, “the defining character of this phase of Israel’s history, the post-founders generation.”
The first Israeli prime minister born in modern Israel after its creation in 1948, Netanyahu served in the special forces, then as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, and rose through politics during the tumultuous years that followed the collapse of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.
Israel’s national security is bred in his bone. His older brother, Yonatan, was killed in Uganda in 1976 during Operation Entebbe, a daring Israeli raid to free hostages from a hijacked airplane. Their father was an influential Zionist scholar.
In power as the most hawkish prime minister in memory, however, progress toward sustained and secure peace has eluded him, even into his third mandate. In Israel, Bibi fatigue has set in.
His poll numbers have fallen since December, when he boldly called for an election after the collapse of his plan to formally designate Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people.” Netanyahu’s key ally in that plan, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, has seen his own electoral prospects collapse in scandal and ridicule, weakening hopes of a strong coalition between them.
Their troubles have created an opportunity for the left-wing opposition, led by Isaac (Bougie) Herzog and Tzipi Livni, who would prefer to campaign mainly on economic issues, and have put their hopes in the quiet competence of Herzog, a lawyer who comes from a distinguished family of Zionist pioneers and Israeli politicians.
“I have received many calls to also make funny videos,” Herzog says in his own ad. “But the truth is that the situation in Israel is not funny.”
The alliance of his Labor party with Livni’s Hatnuah — known as the Zionist Union — is now polling slightly ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud, with the balance of power potentially resting with a united slate of Arab parties.
With voter turnout in decline in traditional Likud strongholds such as Sderot, near the Gaza border, Netanyahu has been forced into a defensive campaign, seeking to energize his base rather than expand it.
Netanyahu’s message has skewed heavily toward security, the threat of Islamist terrorism and a nuclear Iran, all delivered in a tone that
has verged on paranoia and desperation. Lately, he has added a squinty-eyed sense that the West is not only weakening in its support for his government but actively plotting against it.
“There is a huge worldwide effort to bring down the Likud government,” Netanyahu told members of his party, according to a report by Israel’s Army Radio.
McGill’s Troy calls this kind of message a “play to Israeli paranoia, the dark parts of the Israeli soul, the Jewish Holocaust-scarred soul. It’s a mark of desperation.”
Even a former Mossad spy chief, Meir Dagan, has spoken out against the fearmongering tone and content of Netanyahu’s campaign messages, at one point muttering that his ominous warnings about Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “bulls---.”
As peace-seeking warrior kings go, Netanyahu has weaknesses. He is not as fearsome as the biblical David, who slew Goliath and claimed Jerusalem, nor as well regarded as David Ben-Gurion, who founded the modern state of Israel, nor Menachem Begin, who made historic peace with Egypt,
nor Yitzhak Rabin, whose peacemaking cost him his life.
“In the age of Netanyahu, we haven’t had a leader we really love and trust. Even if he wins, he’s going to get in on the skin of his teeth. This has been a very bruising campaign for him,” Troy said.
Oded Haklai, associate professor of politics at Queen’s University, identified two trends at play in the electorate. One is a shift to the right among Israeli voters, which is why Netanyahu called for an early election, he said. The other is dissatisfaction with Netanyahu himself.
“These trends by and large cancel each other out, which means that the outcome is highly unpredictable,” he said.
With high numbers of undecided voters, much will hang on the coalition-building that follows every Israeli vote, given the large number of parties and the highly splintered vote in its proportional representation system.
The outcome may be uncertain, but as Netanyahu enters the final days of what is likely his greatest political challenge, there is little doubt about what will be front of mind for Israelis on Tuesday.