T. Belman. The author was remiss in not mentioning Churchill as another example. Churchill, after saving England from destruction at the hands of Hitler, was dispatched as Prime Minister right after he won the war
Reality Check: All political lives end in failure
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a cabinet meeting, December 2019.
After more than 10 consecutive years in power and 13 years overall as the country’s leader, it’s understandable that many in the Likud think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is irreplaceable.
Nevertheless, they are wrong. If they want to see a Likud victory next March, they should put sentiment to one side and vote for Gideon Sa’ar in Thursday’s Likud leadership election. No one in politics is indestructible. As a British politician once noted: All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
The career of legendary British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is a case in point. In her decade in power, Thatcher changed the face of the United Kingdom. She truly deregulated the British economy in ways Netanyahu can only dream of, and she destroyed the power of the trades union movement to hold the country to ransom.
Thatcher also launched – and convincingly won – a war in the faraway Falklands Islands, which cemented her status as the “Iron Lady.” Thatcher would never have settled for the stalemate, spattered by regular rocket fire on Israeli towns, which marks Israel’s relations with Hamas after the 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza led by Netanyahu.
But none of her many accomplishments could prevent the inevitable erosion in Thatcher’s political standing after so many years in the office. By the time of her third administration, following internal Conservative arguments over Europe and street riots due to proposed changes in property taxes, Britain’s first woman prime minister’s popularity plummeted.
The Conservatives were ruthless. With no looking back, they unceremoniously deposed her as leader, putting the mild-mannered John Major in her place. Major was a nondescript type of politician, certainly lacking the aura of Thatcher. But, and this is the important lesson for Likud voters on Thursday, Major bought the Conservative Party five more years in power, winning a fourth consecutive Conservative election victory, before it inevitably ran out of governing steam, to be replaced by Tony Blair’s New Labour.
UNLIKE PRESIDENTIAL systems, with fixed term limits such as a maximum two four-year terms for an American president or two consecutive five-year terms for a French president, parliamentary democracies have no set boundaries. Perhaps there should be. Back in 1997, in the early days of his first term as prime minister, Netanyahu himself suggested that “a prime minister cannot serve for more than two terms.”
With more than two terms behind him, it is only natural that the 70-year-old veteran prime minister now sees things differently, but Likud members should not allow themselves to be blinded to the cold political facts. As Sa’ar repeatedly and rightly points out, Netanyahu has lost the last two elections, failing to form a government after the polls in April and September.
Although Sa’ar was too respectful to say so, having Netanyahu lead the Likud one more time in March neatly encapsulates the much-quoted definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Instead, Sa’ar restricts himself to noting that Netanyahu’s candidacy is what drives Blue and White voters to the polling booth.
In fact, Netanyahu’s candidacy is what defines Blue and White’s whole existence – to be the anti-Netanyahu vote. One faction of Blue and White, Telem, really belongs inside the Likud. Its leader, Moshe Ya’alon, was a Likud defense minister under Netanyahu. Its Knesset members include Zvi Hauser, who once served as Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary, and Yoaz Hendel, a former director of communications and public diplomacy for the prime minister. Were it not for Netanyahu’s character failings, they would still be Likud supporters and a natural ally of Sa’ar, who describes himself as to the Right of the prime minister.
By deposing Netanyahu on Thursday, Likud members can not only refresh a jaded brand with an untarnished new leader, but they can also severely undermine Blue and White’s foundations. Without the anti-Netanyahu glue binding them, there is little in common between Telem members and Yesh Atid Knesset member Ofer Shelah’s support for an eventual two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
And then, of course, there’s the elephant in the room: the fact that Netanyahu is the first-ever prime minister to be charged, while still in office, with criminal conduct including bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Likud members rallied around Netanyahu in 2008 when he called on Ehud Olmert to step down, arguing then that a “prime minister who is neck-deep in investigations has no public or moral mandate to make crucial decisions.”
It’s now time for those same Likud members to tell Netanyahu the same thing and send him packing, for the good of both the Likud and the country. Without Netanyahu clogging up the political system, Israel can break the cycle of repeated, indecisive elections.
The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.
Some people have floated Nir Barkat as a possible alternative to Netanyahu. But he has decided to back Netanyahu and oppose Saar.
The Attorney General was ordered by the Supreme Court to give his opinion today (Wednesday, Christmas) on whether Netanyahu will be able to form a new government in March. That is one day before the Liud primary. The AG has asked for a delay in giving his opinion until Friday, one day after the primary. Either date is a truly outrageous meddling in both the Likud primary and the March election. The court’s efforts to control Israli elections and decide who may or may not be Prime Minister become more and more blatant every day.
@ Edgar G.:
Thank you very much, Edgar. Your posts are likewise, excellent.
WM
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
But that seems to be the sort of guy that Bear and others like-as he says here…Malleable…. transparent, willingly share state secrets with the public so that he can satisfy his curiosity…. etc.
@ Wooly Mammoth:
You are definitely on to something stinky here. I heartily agree with your posts. Netanyahu is needed more now than ever. Even his enemies are clear that he is being conspired against…by other enemies..
. Jeff Barak is a staunch “peacenik” and has been for well over 20 years. He has advocated Israeli withdrawal to something close to the 1949 armistice lines, the expulsion of the “settlers” from Judea-Samaria, a Palestinian state, the end of the “occupation,” etc. The whole nine yards. He has repeatedly compared the Israeli right to Nazis. He even opposed Israel’s Supreme Court when it ruled in favor (after a twenty-year legal battle) of evicting certain Arab families from houses they had illegally occupied in Jerusalem and returned them to their legal Jewish owners. He argued that Israel had never returned the land it has requisitioned from former Palestinian owners after the 1948 war of independence, and therefore had no right to demand that Arabs return land that they had occupied to their Jewish owners.
Because Barak has never held views even remotely similar to those of Sa’ar or any other Likud leader, not just Bibi, his claim that he wants to “revitalize” the Likud by ousting Bibi and replacing him with Sa’ar is pure hypocricy. He just wants to encourage disunity in the Likud.
[continued]
Netanyahu does not deserve to be thrown under the bus by his once “loyal” supporters.
The Bad Karma will stick, Big Time.
One last point, note all of the anti-Israel NGOs which have cropped up in the last thirty five years. There is a lot of money to be made selling Israel out for those desperate for an easy and lucerative day job. And much more for those able to wrestle the Likud away from the steadfast Netanyahu in the guise of a “more pro Israel agenda” only to do a deal with the left. We are talking about thousands of millions of dollars.
Beware.
Vote Netanyahu and keep these untested Genies in their respective bottles.
Lieberman is to blame for Likud not being able to muster the Knesset majority both times. PM N. Performed Quite Well.
I trust Caroline Glick on this issue. Bibi is being railroaded.
Lieberman supporters should Vote for Bibi or Bennet.
Something evil may happen, otherwise.
Jeff Barak is right on the mark in this article. Time for new leadership in the Likud.
Many people have left the Likud because of Bibi’s Machiavellian management style. These people plus those currently the Likud could rally around Saar whose views are to the right of Bibi. Not just the Telem members cited but strong leaders like Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked.
If Bibi is forced out by the Supremes, who seem determined to oust him, by far the best successor to him as leader of the Likud. This is the summary of his life and career in Wikipedia:
While Sa’ar is a good man, Edelstein has far more political experience. His heroic struggle as one of Russia’s leading “refuseniks” will make it very difficult for the Supremes to harass him without sparking widespread public outrage. I know of nopast allegations of corruption against him. His extensive contacts in Russia and Ukraine will be very helpful to Israel’s diplomacy. While Sa’ar has a distinguished military record, his knowledge of the world outside Israel is less extensive than Edelstein’s.
Because Edelstein’s father is a Russian Orthodox priest, while Edelstein opted for his grandfather’s religion, he has strong appeal to Israel’s large number of Russian Orthodox citizens with Jewish relatives or spouses. He could take many of their votes away from Leiberman, where they do no good to the national camp.
Since he has extensive experience dealing with extremely biased courts and police in Russia, he is the Likud leader best prepared to deal with Israel own biased, tyrannical judicial=prosecutorial=police triad.
He is popular with Bibi’s supporters, a personal friend of Bibi’s while also on friendly terms with Sa’ar and his supporters. This makes him the Likud politician best positioned to unify the party when and if Bibi resigns. He has wisely managed to remain neutral , at least in public, in the Netanyahu-Sa’ar primary contest.
Go, Yuli!
Israel also has had a bad experience with a government whose leader did not have enough charisma or respect even within his own party to govern effectively. In December 1953, David Ben-Gurion suddenly and unexpectedly resigned as Prime Minister. Later biographers later discovered that his motives were purely personal and apolitical (he and his wife wanted to work full-time on saving their failing marriage with intensive marriage counseling and psychotherapy), but most Israelis at the time assumed it was a complicated political move. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett took over as Prime Minister for nearly two years.
But Sharett did not have sufficient charisma or authority even within his own party to effectively lead the government effectively. His minister of Defense, Pinhas Lavon, without telling Sharett about it, set in motion a hair-brained scheme to train certain Egyptian Jews to carry out a terrorist campaign in Egypt in order to discredit the Nasser-Naguib government, create. and persuade the British not to withdraw from the Sues Canal zone, as they agreed with Egypt to do. Predictably, the “Lavon Affair,” as it was called , was a disaster that provoked the Egyptian government to expel what remained of the Egyptian Jewish community and speeded up Egypt’s build-up for a second Israel-Egypt war, for which Nasser was already making preparations. There was finger-pointing all around when the hair-brained scheme and its disastrous consequences for Egyptian Jews was exposed. Sharon didn’t even command the authority to fire Lavon or any other top-echelon who was alleged to have been involved in the plan.
Clear direction was only restored when Ben Gurion and his wife completed their reconciliation efforts with a romantic second honeymoon in Venice, and Ben Gurion then accepted a request by the cabinet to return to office in February 1955 as Defense Minister. In November 1955 he also returned to the prime ministers’ office. The drift and confusion in Israeli policies ended as Ben-Gurion prepared the armed forces and the Israeli people for the inevitable “second round” with Egypt.
If Sa’ar, or Katz or Edelstein, or whoever succeeds Bibi as Likud leader, or possibly prime minister, such another Moshe Sharett, command enough personal authority and respect to lead effectively? Let’s hope so. But I am not too hopeful. Without their leader of nearly 25 years, the party may break up.
Israel has had two previous experiences with national unity governments. Both worked out badly both for the country as a whole and the junior partners in the coalition.
In 1967-70 Menachem Begin’s Herut party joined a national unity governent that was dominated by the left-leaning Labor party. However, after three years, in 1970, Begin and his two colleagues from Herut resigned, complaining that they had been unable to exert any influence on government policies, although they were allowed to participate in cabinet meetings. During this period, Israel did annex “East” Jerusalem, but failed to take many other necessary measures. It developed no plan for the future of Judea and Samaria, and put forward no proposal for negotiations about this territory. The government’s only announced policy was to “wait for a phone call” from King Hussein. The government did not encourage Jewish settlement in the “West Bank,” and harrassed the small group of Jewish settlers who moved to Hebron on their own initiative. It rejected the request of the mayor of (then Christian) Bethlehem that it annex his city to Israel. It failed to develop an autonomy plan for the Judea-Samaria Arabs that would have been led by non-PLO or terrorist affiliated traditional tribal leaders, as proposed by Moshe Dayan. There was a policy paralysis.
Worst of all, Israel accepted a cease-fire agreement with Egypt that allowed Egypt to put missiles along the banks of the Suez Canal, causing disater in the 1973 war.
The ‘national unity” government between Labor and Herut-Likud between 1984 and 1988 worked out even worse. The only ‘accomplishments” of these four years was Israel’s withdrawal from most of the Lebanese territory it occupied in 1982 without a peace treaty with Lebanon (Lebanon signed a peace treaty, but its parliament refused to ratify it), the Jonathan Pollard Scandal, and the Iran-Contra scandal, in both of which Israel was implicated. Simon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, who alternated two-year terms as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, worked to undermine each other’s policies, resulting in government paralysis and inertia, and sending conflicting signals to foreign governments.
May God save us from a third national unity government!
Mati Tuchfeld in Israel Hayom has a revealing column in Israel Hayom, in which he explains why Blue-White and leftist journalists like Jeff “Barak” (nee Black) are supporting rightist Giyon Sa’ar. THey apparently believe he would be a pliant tool of Benny Gantz, despite his rightist rhetoric. Genuine national-camp people should take note.