Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a press convention in Tel Aviv on July 13, 2024. Picture by Nir Elias / Pool / AFP / Getty Photographs
Columnist
Dan Perry
April 19, 2025
There are moments in a nation’s story when its destiny seems to relaxation within the fingers of a single particular person — when one determine can decide whether or not the nation will rise, stumble, or fall. That’s Israel’s unlucky state of affairs immediately with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s cumulative 18 years in energy make him the longest-serving chief in Israel’s historical past. But to a lot of his personal individuals he’s a menace — a person seen as steering the nation towards ethical collapse, strategic folly and democratic decay. An excellent politician who stays tireless and potent and nonetheless revered amongst his laborious core of followers, Netanyahu, 75, appears satisfied that his rule is important and have to be perpetual. He has change into, to many, a cautionary story — the very embodiment of the corrupting impact of energy, which reworked a unprecedented younger man right into a hardened and heartless authoritarian.
In the midst of interviews with Netanyahu over his a long time at Israel’s political forefront, I’ve witnessed that transformation firsthand.
I first realized of Netanyahu within the mid-Nineteen Eighties after I was a pupil within the U.S., watching ABC’s Nightline with Ted Koppel. Netanyahu, then Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, was an everyday visitor. However his largest declare to fame on the time was his brother, Yoni, the late hero of the extraordinary Entebbe hostage rescue mission. A former commando in his personal proper, Netanyahu projected mind, readability and power.
His English was flawless, virtually unaccented, however with simply the appropriate hint of foreignness to make him appear spectacular as a non-American, regardless of his early years spent dwelling in Philadelphia. I suspected that he was wily sufficient to really feign the delicate semi-foreignness — that’s how manipulative he appeared, even then. He was dogmatic, however approachable; Koppel might simply converse with him. And regardless of a floor harshness, he usually had the hint of a smile — hinting at humor, maybe additionally self-awareness.
Just a few years later, in 1988, I interviewed him for the primary time. I used to be writing for The Jerusalem Publish about demographics and Israel’s occupation of the West Financial institution and Gaza; he had simply returned to Israel. It amazed me that Netanyahu joined the right-wing Likud occasion, and that such a sensible man appeared to assist some Israelis’ aspirations to include the West Financial institution and Gaza.
Once we met, I requested how he might sq. that place with the truth that Israel clearly couldn’t stay each Jewish and democratic whereas absorbing so many tens of millions of Palestinians.
He dismissed the priority with flourish, citing with dazzlingly absurd precision the “interaction of eight variables” together with start, loss of life, immigration, and emigration on each side. He predicted mass Palestinian emigration after financial shifts that will naturally cut back their potential to search out jobs. Historical past has confirmed him unsuitable on each depend, and today the combined territory is half-Arab — however his supply was mesmerizing. It was nonsense — however nonsense that dazzled on the stage of a superpower. I bear in mind considering: Here’s a man who can promote snake oil with conviction. A gifted communicator who may lead a motion — however the place to?
The demagogue emerges
In Might 1996, I used to be working for The Related Press, and Netanyahu had ascended to steer Likud; he was campaigning towards incumbent Prime Minister Shimon Peres. I used to be dispatched to talk to him days earlier than the vote.
Peres had led early within the marketing campaign, using a sympathy wave after the Nov. 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the climax of a vicious incitement marketing campaign led by Netanyahu himself. However a Hamas marketing campaign of bus bombings had led many Israelis to bitter on peace, and Netanyahu was closing the hole.
I requested him what closing standing he would provide the Palestinians as a part of the Oslo Accords — which have been supposed to achieve a closing decision in 1999 — if victorious.
“Younger man,” Netanyahu replied, “I’ll provide them autonomy.”
However the Palestinian Authority already was an “autonomy” authorities, I protested. “They need independence.”
“Younger man,” he repeated, as if to ascertain a comparative maturity — he was 46 — “have you ever heard of the Catalans?” This Iberian tribe, he defined, tolerated dwelling beneath an autonomy association, and even embraced it.
Positive, I stated, however the Catalans have been additionally full and equal residents of Spain who vote for a similar parliament as everybody else. Was this what he would provide the Palestinians — giving them, primarily based on demographics, the flexibility to elect about half of the Knesset?
Netanyahu seemed round, noticed there have been no TV cameras, instructed me “I’ll be again,” and was gone.
Sure, Netanyahu appeared silly to me, as a result of his analogy was laughably inapplicable. However he understood that few listeners would have seen that. His aim was not a professorship in comparative politics, however votes. And his technique of promoting snake oil, then as now, was combining assured eloquence with arguments that sound simply believable sufficient.
This works. It labored in 1996, when he efficiently upset Peres by a whisker and commenced his first three-year time period as Prime Minister. And it’s labored, with some gaps in efficacy, ever since.
The seven sins of Netanyahuism
In our third interview, after I was AP’s Jerusalem bureau chief in 2002, I discovered a darker, angrier Netanyahu. He had been defeated by Ehud Barak within the direct election of 1999, amid persevering with terrorism and normal unhappiness with the lifeless finish on each the Palestinian problem and the persevering with occupation of south Lebanon. By this time Barak, too, was gone, and Netanyahu was languishing as finance minister on the sidelines of Ariel Sharon’s authorities. He was as colorfully articulate as ever — memorably, he known as the Palestinian Authority a “corrupt, backward, primitive regime” — but additionally radiated a brooding suspicion that bordered on the hostile.
A lot to Netanyahu’s dismay, Sharon was proving fashionable. The press was largely towards Netanyahu, and he had taken to returning the favor.
However he used his function within the authorities to do one thing very proper. A dedicated free marketeer, he bravely slashed subsidies that had disproportionately benefited the Haredi sector, in hopes of nudging them into employment. The Netanyahu who took that transfer is nowhere to be discovered immediately. Now, his far-right authorities will depend on the assist of Haredi events, so he’s pursuing the very reverse coverage — which, because the neighborhood shortly grows, will drive the financial system off a cliff.
Hypocrisy is usually assumed of politicians. It’s, in some sense, priced in as a part of the craft. However hardly ever is it displayed at a stage so elegant because it has been all through Netanyahu’s profession.
His perspective towards the Haredim is simply the beginning. In 2009, he demanded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resign due to a police investigation.
“A first-rate minister as much as his neck in police investigations,” he told Israeli TV together with his customary confidence, “has no ethical and public mandate to find out important issues for Israel, since there’s a not unfounded concern that he’ll resolve primarily based on his private curiosity — for his political survival, and never within the nationwide curiosity.”
Now, in fact, Netanyahu himself shouldn’t be merely beneath police investigation; he’s actively on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of belief. And nonetheless he clings to energy, making calls of nationwide consequence whereas beneath essentially the most extreme authorized and moral cloud. There’s a “not unfounded concern” by tens of millions of Israelis that these selections — like resuming the Gaza struggle just a few weeks in the past, as demanded by his far-right allies — purpose to make sure his survival, at any price to his nation.
Certainly, Netanyahu has made lots of the most urgent points Israel faces worse, whereas overseeing a determined erosion of public norms, institutional well being, and social cohesion. Judging by the state of play immediately, these are the core failures — it might be truthful to name them the seven sins — that can outline his legacy when he lastly does depart:
- The approaching binational state: From my 1996 interview with him as much as immediately, Netanyahu by no means stopped denying the plain demographic menace of indefinite occupation. He has performed every part potential to dam Israel from separating itself from the Palestinians. As a substitute, beneath his watch, settlements have expanded within the West Financial institution, with full Israeli annexation a looming menace. And now, the variety of Jews and Arabs within the land between the river and the ocean is nearly equal. There isn’t any Jewish majority for a theoretical nation during which Israel absorbed the West Financial institution and Gaza. Neither is there a plan. Solely a creeping actuality of unequal neighbors, and the lengthy shadow of worldwide condemnation and never-ending sectarian strife.
- Favoring Hamas over the Palestinian Authority: Netanyahu-led Israeli governments have usually undermined the extra reasonable — if dysfunctional — Palestinian Authority, even permitting Qatari money infusions into Hamas-run Gaza. Their aim was clear: Hold Palestinians divided, and thus make peace negotiations inconceivable, permitting Israel to proceed encroaching on the West Financial institution, and Netanyahu to tighten his maintain on energy. The tragedy of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas breached Israel within the worst assault on Jews for the reason that Holocaust, revealed the insufferable price of that technique. And Netanyahu has since resisted requires a fee of inquiry into his function in setting the stage for that horrifying assault, which has been de rigueur in far lesser disasters. For Netanyahu, accountability has at all times been for others.
- The Haredi nationwide suicide pact: Netanyahu is by now fully in league with the aforementioned Haredi events, that are in a large battle with the remainder of society. The Haredi neighborhood, which overwhelmingly refuses to serve within the navy and has low labor participation, is rising explosively, with almost seven children on common per household. They now make up a sixth of the inhabitants, and are doubling as a proportion each era. They refuse to have their youth examine secular core curriculum topics that will make them employable in a contemporary financial system, are depending on welfare, and demand on lengthy years of seminary research at taxpayer expense. Netanyahu, who has no majority with out their political assist, has change into their essential enabler. The result’s a demographic time bomb. Except the dynamics change, there’s a future majority that rejects the values of contemporary Israel.
- The corruption: Netanyahu is on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of belief, and additional scandals loom. The main points are lurid: items of champagne and cigars, soiled offers with media moguls, and unusual enterprise dealings involving cousins and cronies (costs he dismisses as fabrication amid a marketing campaign of vilification towards the police, the prosecution, the courtroom system and the media). His spouse has convicted for misuse of state funds, and been sued repeatedly by employees for verbal abuse. His authorities is rife with scandals. Amongst them: Two of his shut aides are at present beneath investigation for reportedly taking cash from Qatar to besmirch Egypt. It’s a breathtaking panorama of skullduggery and corruption, all of which Netanyahu dismisses as a witch hunt by a so-called “deep state” — a phrase imported from President Donald Trump’s MAGA motion in the US.
- The politics of division: Israel has by no means been so bitterly polarized because it has change into beneath Netanyahu. That’s intentional. Netanyahu’s technique is to not construct consensus, however somewhat to destroy rivals, and to impress disunity, which tends to make his strongman messaging extra interesting. He has incited towards prosecutors, judges, journalists, fellow politicians — and now the safety institution. He has systematically attacked the authorized system with such ferocity that some of its officials required bodyguards; as one instance, on the day his bribery trial opened, he held a press occasion within the courthouse, surrounded by silent lackeys, insisting that the authorized system was a part of a left-wing plot towards him. The injury to nationwide cohesion could also be irreversible.
- The obsession with energy: No precept, no promise, no ally is protected from Netanyahu’s want to remain in energy. He has overtly violated political guarantees, corresponding to when he engineered a approach out of his agreement to rotate the premiership with reasonable Benny Gantz in 2021. He persuaded Haredi rabbis to again out of a important schooling reform they have been about to assist, with a view to deny then-Prime Minister Yair Lapid a hit story. He promised to keep up Likud’s historic refusal to kind governments with the racist far-right, then made them his key companion. Now that he’s on trial, he’s attempting to destroy unbiased judicial oversight with “reforms” that will allow the federal government to manage judicial appointments and provides parliament the appropriate to strike down rulings. He refuses to legitimize rivals who defeat him in elections — together with by repeatedly boycotting, as opposition chief, customary conferences with Lapid. This isn’t ideology. It’s pathology.
- The erosion of democracy: Even past the judicial overhaul, Netanyahu has been attempting to erode liberal democracy for years. A essential characteristic of his efforts are his assaults on the events representing Israel’s 2 million Arab residents. Every election cycle, his Likud Social gathering tries to ban them in Knesset committees, an effort that’s promptly overturned by the Supreme Court docket. In a very shameful episode, on Election Day in 2015 he issued a video warning his supporters that the Arabs have been voting “in droves” — a transparent incitement. He’s obsessive about media criticism and is consistently browbeating the media as his enemy, and attempting to ascertain higher political management over the unbiased press. He’s at present attempting to fireside a sequence of public servants who’ve refused to fall consistent with doubtful maneuvers by his authorities. The general impact: A radical chipping away at Israel’s establishments that can take years to undo.
A disaster approaches the boiling level
The final time I met Netanyahu was in 2018. Then AP’s Cairo-based Center East editor, I received to ask the extremely coveted first query at his annual assembly with the overseas press.
I requested the prime minister whether or not it actually didn’t hassle him that the overwhelming majority of his personal friends — secular, educated Israelis — opposed him with more and more pressing vehemence, and regarded him nothing wanting a menace.
“They not solely oppose you, however they assume you’re main the nation to absolute and irreversible damage,” I continued. I instructed him the toxicity was insufferable, and requested if it was actually potential that this dynamic didn’t hassle him in any respect.
Netanyahu ignored the query and requested me whether or not I needed to change locations — “as a result of it sounds to me as if you wish to be the one who’s on stage.”
Amazingly, Netanyahu remains to be there. He clung to energy by a number of inconclusive elections, was really changed for a 12 months and a half by Naftali Bennet and Lapid, after which scraped by in 2022, because of splits within the opposition that prompted 6% of its vote to go uncounted. His present time period has been a practice wreck, together with his proposed judicial overhaul ripping society aside, after which the Oct. 7 Hamas assault and the devastating struggle that adopted. Another prime minister within the nation’s historical past would have resigned; Netanyahu clings madly to his seat, seemingly detached to the truth that most Israelis now adamantly object to his regime.
In latest weeks, Netanyahu’s authorities has pushed to take away Legal professional Basic Gali Baharav-Miara and Shin Guess chief Ronen Bar — strikes extensively seen as efforts to dam investigations into suspected corruption by Netanyahu and his authorities, together with the alleged funds linked to Qatar. Each Baharav-Miara and Bar have resisted, warning of political interference in nationwide safety.
The firings have sparked a recent wave of protests towards Netanyahu, and are more likely to find yourself earlier than the Supreme Court docket. Former Supreme Court docket chief justice Aharon Barak, an icon of Israeli liberal democracy, recently warned that each one this will likely explode in violence. “The principle problem dealing with Israeli society is … the deep rift amongst Israelis themselves. This divide is worsening, and I concern it will likely be like a practice going off the rails, spiraling into an abyss and resulting in civil struggle,” he stated.
That is all Netanyahu’s doing, and whereas he could by no means acknowledge it, I feel he is aware of. Again in 2018, when he disregarded my query, I observed a delicate however vital change in him. The smile I remembered from his Nightline appearances was gone. The humor had curdled right into a bitter cynicism, as humor usually does, when an individual feels beset by enemies from all sides.
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