Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a child, everyone has called him “Bibi.” Though he is now age 73. they still do. In fact, he refers to himself by that name – his recent autobiography is titled, Bibi: My Story.
Despite Netanyahu’s being as controversial a figure in the United States as he is in Israel, American reviewers were generally kind. The Wall Street Journal, for example, called Bibi “compelling” and “fascinating.” Which, if exaggerated, generally is true. Netanyahu tells his story with vigor and conviction – though obviously, maybe necessarily given he is still a working politician, he is strongly opinionated and even jaundiced. His book reflects his passions and proclivities, his preferences and biases, his formidable strengths, and his many, many weaknesses.
Netanyahu is the most successful elected official in Israeli history. He has easily dominated the country’s politics for the last quarter century, and he currently serves, again, as its prime minister. (To date his longest tenure was between 2009 and 2021.) But notwithstanding his remarkable political successes and economic accomplishments, for many Israelis he has long been an object of contempt. There was never any doubt of his intelligence and talent. But his enemies have long thought him narrow-minded and hard-headed; dogmatic and autocratic; and corrupt. Even his allies have conceded he is argumentative and arrogant; excessively assertive and sometimes dangerously aggressive. Withal, in December, Netanyahu managed to forge a right-wing coalition, form a government, and become prime minister the third time over.
To read Bibi is to be reminded of how he got to be who he is. His father, Benzion, was an historian and political activist of prominence and eminence. And his brother, Yoni, who died leading the legendary raid at Entebbe, is one of Israel’s most revered heroes. No wonder Benzion’s son and Yoni’s brother has been so driven. So driven he has finally come perilously close to driving himself – and his country – into the ground.
For ten weeks have been massive protests in Israel, primarily (though not exclusively) against the government’s plan to overhaul, effectively to gravely weaken, the Israeli judiciary. This weekend it was estimated that some half million Israelis took to the streets to demonstrate – this in a country whose total population is about nine million.
The last few months have so seriously strained the national fabric of Israel that talk has been of civil war. But even short of civil war, Netanyahu has presided over a state now so bitterly divided that closing the chasm will be, certainly in the short term, impossible. Impossible given that trust in their leader among huge swaths of his followers can now never be restored.
It was, however, one thing for Netanyahu to govern a state that was newly threatened from within. Now it’s quite another – for it turns out he simultaneously governed a state that is newly threatened from without. The recently announced rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia that was brokered by, of all countries, China, came out of left field. Who knows what Bibi knew? But for the rest of us this freshly crafted détente came out of left field.
We cannot know how this will all play out over the long term. But in the short term the détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a severe blow to Netanyahu’s personal and political prestige, and to his cherished reputation for keeping Israel safe. Iran is Israeli’s most unrepentant enemy. And Saudi Arabia’s effective ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin-Salman, is a man with whom Netanyahu long thought, apparently erroneously, he could do business.
It’s a tragedy. Israel, specifically Israel’s demoracy, is vulnerable as it has never been before. Vulnerable to unmitigated strife from within – now not only between Israelis and Palestinians but between Israelis and Israelis. And vulnerable to unmitigated hostility from without – now not only from Iran but, potentially, from a shifting balance of power in the Middle East.
Bibi concluded Bibi as follows:
The rebirth of Israel is a miracle of faith and history. The book of Samuel says, “The eternity of Israel will not falter.” Throughout our journey, including in the tempests and upheavals of modern times, this has held true.
The people of Israel live!
How deeply sad that Bibi’s insatiable lust for power – which explains his deal with right-wing extremists, to become prime minister yet again – has sundered the Israeli people, threatened the Israeli state, and fractured his claim to greatness.