Bibi’s war on unity

The prime minister’s propensity for fomenting division threatens Israel itself.

My new book, Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto, is now available at Amazon via Wicked Son Books and the Z3 Project.

Benjamin Netanyahu is perhaps the most adored and most hated prime minister in Israel’s history. While much of the international media concentrates on domestic opposition to Netanyahu, it is important to remember that he enjoys a powerful and fiercely dedicated base of voters who would follow him into hell if he asked them to.

Everyone has a right to love or hate a politician, but I confess that I have never shared either point of view. I have long considered Netanyahu a figure similar to Richard Nixon: a man of extraordinary intelligence and talent, and a brilliant politician and diplomat, who is nonetheless beset by innumerable flaws, particularly a tendency towards paranoia, indifference to political and social norms, and a persecution complex of immense proportions.

Perhaps Netanyahu’s greatest flaw, however, is also one that he shares with Nixon, namely that he is often stunningly unscrupulous about gaining and maintaining himself in power.

When I say unscrupulous, I do not only mean his willingness to take on decidedly problematic coalition partners and then give them more or less everything they want, whatever the cost to Israeli society, as demonstrated now by his indulgence of the far-right’s hatred of the Supreme Court and the Haredi parties’ refusal to acknowledge that their current status does an injustice to other Israelis.

I mean something that goes beyond policy and is, perhaps, more important: Netanyahu has always appeared to be willing to jettison Israel’s national unity in order to serve his own selfish purposes.

Israel’s divisions, of course, long precede Netanyahu’s tenure, and many of them are real and understandable—such as the divide between Ashkenazi and Mizrachi Jews. What is problematic is that not only does Netanyahu make no attempt to heal these divisions, he exacerbates them in order to stay elected. As such, he is not just indifferent to national unity, he actively attacks it.

Over the course of his career, Netanyahu has almost entirely based his campaigns on negative and sometimes defamatory rhetoric, always running against an amorphous “the left”—which currently barely exists in Israel—Israeli Arabs, the Ashkenazi “establishment,” and various institutions like the Supreme Court.

Nor has he shrunk from the most vicious characterizations of his opponents. He has, for example, accused them at various times of being un-Jewish and collaborators with supporters of terrorism. Along with this is his general use of scare tactics, always implying that his opponents are essentially treasonous scoundrels.

As such, Netanyahu has risen to and maintained power by pitting Israelis against each other, which is not only reprehensible, but suicidal.

If Israel needs anything above all, it is unity, especially in our current moment, with the country fighting an onerous multi-front war against genocidal enemies and, indeed, much of a world that despises it. Given this, the damage Netanyahu has done by fomenting division is not just substantial but potentially existential.

The results of Netanyahu’s particular form of divisive politicking are not just emotional, social, or cultural, but empirically verifiable. A shocking recent poll, for example, showed that 25% of Israelis would consider leaving the country if he is reelected.

Most of that 25% would not actually leave, but the number indicates the extent to which Netanyahu’s tactics have damaged Israeli society. Worse still, he must know that many of his coalition partners would celebrate such a mass emigration, as they believe it will rid the country of their leftist, secular, cosmopolitan opponents. The fact that the last thing Israel needs is fewer Jews appears not to occur to them, or to Netanyahu.

Moreover, Netanyahu’s proclivities stand in the way of Israel’s future. He has not only, through his indulgence of his coalition partners, set Israel up for a military and economic crisis, but has also made mass Aliyah by Diaspora Jews, many of whom are of liberal sympathies—especially in the US—far less likely, leaving Israel without what could be a massive demographic boon.

Netanyahu and his supporters would no doubt argue that none of this is the prime minister’s fault. He is, they would likely say, simply reacting to the establishment’s relentless hatred of him and pointing out its corrupt and self-destructive ideology of self-delusion and surrender.

There is something in this argument, as there is no doubt that some of the hatred of Netanyahu is as fanatical as support for him, but I do not accept that this exonerates him.

Like it or not, Netanyahu has the greater responsibility, because he is the one in power and has been in power for over a decade. As prime minister, it is his responsibility to preserve one of Israel’s greatest potential weapons—its capacity for unity—in spite of his opponents’ own tendencies towards divisiveness. His refusal to do this represents, it must be said, a terrible dereliction of duty.

It is also deeply ironic, because Netanyahu has always sold himself as the best man to preserve Israel’s strength and security. Yet, in the end, he has weakened Israeli society, and in doing so, placed the very state he genuinely cherishes in danger. This is, perhaps, much like Nixon, the tragedy of the man, inherent in his character along with his talents. But we must hope that it will not prove to be Israel’s tragedy as well.