Bad-mouthing Netanyahu

By Dogan Akman

The bad-mouthing of Prime Minister Netanyahu by leftist Jewish Americans and Israelis and their respective organisations has become a pathological obsession. Not a day passes by without someone or some organisation doing it.

Nor does a day pass by without reference to the on-going interminable police investigations of the Prime Minister’s suspected and alleged wrongdoings. I simply cannot understand why the cops cannot just shut up and wait for the Prime Minister to retire from politics. They would in most, if not all, other civilised countries.

Despite all the nastiness hurled at him, prior to and in the early stages of the latest Hamas war,   the Israeli electorate’s approval rating of Netanyahu and the Likud went up and reached higher than those for all the other Israeli political leaders and parties.

Since there was no reason to think that the Israeli electorate had taken leave of its senses, its support for Netanyahu, said it all.

At present, this support is faltering as a result of the manner in which Netanyahu handled the Gaza war. The Israeli electorate is weary of him for his failure to hit Hamas hard enough to deter it from attacking Israel any time soon and inflicting even harder times and more destructive terror on the Israeli inhabitants both further north and further south. The electorate is at a loss to understand why the Prime Minister agreed to a ceasefire and thereby gave Hamas enough time to replenish itself and get ready for its next round at its time of choosing.

Hence, it is not surprising to read that according one of the most recent polls, a sizeable segment of the electorate, appears to have switched its loyalties from Netanyahu and Likud to the former IDF Chief of Staff General Benny Gantz and his formation. A curious choice in the light of undistinguished performance, particularly as Chief of  the IDF General Staff and the lack of any tangible evidence  that he  possesses the proper qualifications i.e. the knowledge, intellect, personal attributes and qualities and the kind of temperament required to lead the country successfully on both  the domestic and the international fronts.

But then again, Israelis seem to have periodic love affairs with former generals particularly after painful experiences such as, for example, the most recent one experienced with Hamas.

To the best of my recollection, retired generals- even those with most honourable records on the battlefield, are not necessarily able to convert their military successes into political successes and in fact are susceptible of making serious errors of both military and diplomatic nature. On this score, the cases of Dayan (War of 1973), Rabin (Oslo) and Sharon (Gaza) readily come to mind.

On the domestic political front, proportional representation, particularly  one with a low threshold of eligibility, as is the case in Israel, makes  governing extremely difficult  as illustrated by the following two  recent cases:

The Minister of Defence, no less, in an act of pure political opportunism quit the government and withdrew his party from the governing coalition, despite his knowledge of the existing complicated situations on both the northern and the Gaza fronts, knowing full well that his decision may well cause the government to fall and plunge the country into an untimely general election, at an inopportune time.

The leader of another party, supported by the Minister of Justice of the same party, sought to blackmail the Prime Minister by threatening to pull the plug on the coalition government, if he is not appointed Minister of Defence, only to desist not long after, upon realising that his chances of pulling it off were not promising while in the meantime, his political standing took the kind of heat he could not bear much longer.

Mercifully, for now, save for extraordinary unforeseen situations, the elections are still a year away-an eternity in the politics of great many countries and particularly in Israel.

My one hope and prayer is that the electorate in its wisdom will not vote against Netanyahu and Likud out of spite, contempt or hatred just to get him out but instead, will vote for the person whose quality of performance can be reasonably expected to equal and preferably surpass that of Netanyahu.

Negative voting of the “Anybody but” kind, would not bode well for Israel in its current situation facing multiple serious and powerful military and foreign policy challenges.

In the meantime, I wish that all those Jewish folks, at home and abroad, particularly in the United States, engaged in chronic bad-mouthing Netanyahu, would take a long break and come up with the names of one or two Israelis who are electable to the extent of being able to lead the government and whose overall performance in foreign relations and the safety and security of the country can be reasonably expected minimally to match, that of Netanyahu. And let’s see who they come up with. In the meantime, if the Attorney General can muzzle the police, all the better.

For my part, I am willing to make one wager of one bottle of good Israeli wine of my choosing that Gantz will not become Prime Minister and Netanyahu will keep his job.