Bibi’s downfall: Is the most dangerous man in the Middle East done for?
"Netanyahu Lashes Out as Israeli Police Wrap Up Graft Inquiries"
Benjamin Netanyahu (Credit: AP/Ariel Schalit)
Benjamin Netanyahu has set Israel, and the entire Middle East, on a path toward doomsday. Will his fall matter? Patrick Lawrence02.18.2018•10:00 PM
The political future of Benjamin Netanyahu is at last in doubt. With the Israeli police report recommending criminal charges against the prime minister, issued last Tuesday, the most dangerous man in the Middle East, as I have long called Bibi, may finally be forced from office. One could hardly be more pleased at the prospect.
But let us not fall into the trap of reducing politics to personality: Pushing aside a single objectionable figure rarely resolves crises that are at bottom systemic. Israel without Netanyahu: Yes! Israel as a fundamental impediment to peace in the Middle East: Still yes, Bibi or no Bibi. Israel as a chauvinist nation intent on inflicting a form of apartheid on the Palestinian population: It does not now appear likely that Netanyahu’s departure, if it comes to be, will be enough to pull Israel off this path. The man whose political life is now threatened has done too much to consolidate it.
Allegations of graft have trailed Netanyahu like a tin can on a string since his first term as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999. They now crystallize for the first time in the Israeli police report. It identifies two cases wherein there is sufficient evidence to prosecute the Israeli leader for fraud, bribery and breach of public trust. In one case, much written about at the time, Bibi is accused of conniving with a right-wing publisher to slant press coverage. The other case seems to be a straight-out matter of cash for influence: The police allege Bibi has accepted roughly $280,000 in gifts and illegal payments over the past decade. This is what the police just told prosecutors can be proven. Given how often Netanyahu has had to parry accusations of corruption, one imagines a lot more money may have changed hands during his two separate terms in office.
It goes without saying that Bibi continues to insist there is nothing to the allegations now officially lodged against him. And that he deserves due process as much as anyone else in judicial systems that are at least notionally sound. Avichai Mandelblit may take several months to determine whether or not to authorize prosecution. In the meantime, the attorney general talks of “turning over every stone to bring the truth to light.”
This is where things stand at the moment. If Mandelblit decides to put Bibi in the dock, he will be the first sitting prime minister in Israeli history to face criminal charges. Not by much: Ehud Olmert, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2009, announced his resignation shortly after the police recommended charges similar to those Netanyahu may now face. Olmert went to prison, but he stood trial only after stepping down. Netanyahu shows no sign of similarly surrendering office. “I do everything with only one thing in mind — the good of the state,” Netanyahu said when the police report was issued. “Nothing has made me deviate, or will make me deviate, from this sacred mission.”
This brings us to the core of the matter.
I am hardly alone in noting that prime ministerial corruption has not been the true topic among Israelis as the police have built their case. The true topic — the topic beneath the topic — is that “sacred mission” Netanyahu insists is his to fulfill. This consists of his highly aggressive national security policies — notably his incessant hostility toward Iran and his apparent determination to further destabilize Syria — and his seldom-withheld dispensation of expanded settlements in the West Bank.
In both cases Netanyahu has taken Israel to extremes we may be able to term unprecedented. This reflects a drastically rightward drift in Israeli politics evident during Netanyahu’s prime ministerial years. Many are the observers — Israeli and non-Israeli and of numerous political stripes — who think Bibi has (1) recklessly jeopardized Israel’s medium- to long-term existence, (2) cynically cultivated the violence and disorder that has long plagued the Middle East and (3) pitilessly pushed Palestinians from a condition of de facto statelessness toward de jure apartheid.
I am among these observers. Not since Menachem Begin in the 1970s and 1980s has Israel been led by so extreme a figure.
* * *
I first suggested Netanyahu was the Middle East’s most dangerous man in this column five years ago. The 2013 session of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) had opened, and there was much talk of negotiations to achieve an accord governing Iran’s nuclear programs. Things had taken a highly positive turn with the election earlier that year of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a reformist and an intellectual in the mold of Mohammad Khatami, who served as president from 1997 to 2005. Rouhani was to address the UNGA. So was Barack Obama. And so was Netanyahu. It was a moment one recalls vividly.
Rouhani spoke movingly, extending a hand of reconciliation such that he stirred the whole of his UNGA audience. Obama bobbed and weaved in the way of American presidents: Sometimes one could not tell what he meant and often whether he meant what he said. Netanyahu, on the other hand, was perfectly clear. An agreement with Iran was a pact with evil itself, Bibi asserted. Israel would do all it could to block any such pact. He then came forth with a set of cartoonish images supposedly proving how close Iran was to building a nuclear weapon. They proved as much as the photographs Nikki Haley, Trump’s U.N. envoy, likes to shuffle before the Security Council like cue cards: nothing.
Negotiations with Iran began later that year, of course, and the nuclear accord was signed two years after that. But Bibi kept his word in the matter of his vigorous opposition. His obsession with Iran and his distorted renderings of its intentions continue. His determination to keep Arab neighbors too disorderly to articulate foreign policies should be plain to anyone who looks. So I hold to my assessment as to the perils of Bibi’s presence as Israel’s PM. His fixations and compulsions are dangerous. It will be well if the Middle East and the rest of us see the back of him.
But now I must qualify this judgment. I mean this two ways.
I recently published an interview .. https://www.thenation.com/article/a-conversation-with-richard-falk-part-2/ .. conducted at year’s end with Richard Falk, the scholar, international lawyer and advocate of the Palestinian cause. I asked him midway, “Should we look at Netanyahu as a break or radical swerve in the history of Israel? Or is he just another Donald Trump act — simply saying what was meant all along but hidden?” Falk’s reply speaks for itself.
“I think he’s more opportunistic and more cynical than some of the earlier Israeli leaders,” Falk said. “But it’s the mainstream of what I would say was the conservative Zionist line of continuity from the beginning.” Falk went on to explain the fate of Palestinians as baked into the cake from the start: “The Zionist movement had to expel the Palestinians to be Jewish and democratic. Once you expel them and don’t let them back in, you’ve created an apartheid structure, because you’ve subjugated the people whose country it was.”
A couple of nearby comparisons will suffice to make my point. Many of us were shocked that cold March evening in 2003 — how well one recalls it — when we watched in real time as the U.S. invaded Iraq. Many of these many blamed George W. Bush, but the ire was misplaced: It was not Bush II who deserved our contempt, or not him alone. This was another chapter in American policy unfolding. The continuity was not to be missed. It is the same with Donald Trump: Odious man, yes. Dummkopf on many or most occasions, yes. But Trump is consequence, not cause. Various systemic crises combined to put him in office.
So it is with Netanyahu. He has done great damage, and one hopes someone even modestly more constructive replaces him if he succumbs. But the field of aspiring successors is notably thin, as you may have noticed. So far as one can make out, the best of them may merely moderate the pace and harshness of the direction Netanyahu has set. Again, it is likely to be another question of continuity.
It is time also to expand my characterization of Bibi. His dangers now extend far beyond the Middle East.
The undue influence on American politics of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby in Washington, is by now widely understood. But Netanyahu has pushed this envelope much further. Netanyahu knows how to take full advantage of the “unconditional support” that lies at the core of U.S. policy toward Israel. Think about it: In consequence of this commitment, Americans are complicit in the full succession of Israel’s breaches of international law — in the West Bank, Syria and elsewhere — as these have escalated markedly under Netanyahu. Israel’s everyday inhumanity toward Palestinians is effectively ours. Are we to be required to accept that such behavior is representative of us?
Bibi has arguably done as much as anyone to advance the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign in the U.S. and elsewhere, and his fear of the potential effectiveness of BDS is plain. The Knesset recently passed a law making support for the campaign a crime. This spreads steadily to the U.S. (and Europe, I might add). Two dozen states now have laws on their books making it illegal even to criticize Israel, to say nothing of participating in the BDS campaign. At the federal level, there is legislation in the Senate that would make anyone who does business of any kind with a BDS supporter a criminal. The penalties under consideration are fines of up to $1 million and prison sentences of up to 20 years. These measures were reportedly drafted with AIPAC’s assistance.
Is there any indication that this drift toward the internationalization of Israel’s increasingly undemocratic domestic restrictions is going to abate if Netanyahu is forced from office? I see none. Freedom of association, anyone? Of speech?
To think back to the world’s intent when Israel was established in 1948 is nearly to weep at the outcome before us. The responsibilities have long been ours. Netanyahu has made the dangers ours, too.
Israel, the U.S.A., Poland, Hungary and others (think the Philippines) suffer anti-migration and authoritarian forces. Attacks on the judiciary and attacks on the press are popularized by - you got it - right-wing 'Christian' parties.
Amid the chaos of Syria, will Israel and Iran launch an all-out war?
"Netanyahu Lashes Out as Israeli Police Wrap Up Graft Inquiries"
Neither country will benefit from a new Middle East conflict, but unless they cease military clashes, such as those inside Syria last weekend, hopes of peace remain fragile
Simon Tisdall
Sun 18 Feb 2018 11.05 AEDT
The remains of a missile that landed in the southern Lebanese village of Kaoukaba, near the border with Syria, after Israel’s military attacked 12 Syrian and Iranian targets inside Syria on 10 February. Photograph: Ali Dia/AFP/Getty Images
Tensions between Israel and Iran have hit a new high following last weekend’s unprecedented military clashes inside Syria. The fighting has intensified fears that the Middle East is heading for all-out war. But such alarming predictions assume both protagonists standing toe-to-toe, actuallywant to fight. Is this reallytrue?
Iran is portrayed as a wanton aggressor, especially by the Trump administration and the Saudis. It has steadily expanded its military presence in Syria since supporting Bashar al-Assad after 2011, deploying Afghan and Pakistani Shia militias, Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and its own Revolutionary Guards.
[...]
While sympathetic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is usually obliged to retain some sort of balance with pragmatist factions represented by Hassan Rouhani, the popularly elected, two-term president. Recent street protests were a reminder that the cleric-led regime is vulnerable to pressure from within. The demonstrations were primarily about economic grievances, but Iran’s costly involvement in foreign conflicts such as Syria and Yemen is a sore point. A new regional war could be political suicide for the regime.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, front, is a pragmatic balance to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
Iran’s leaders, right and left, know open conflict with Israel would give Trump the excuse he yearns for – to tear up the nuclear deal, reimpose swingeing sanctions, gang up with Saudi Arabia, and possibly order military intervention. Some in Iran would welcome a showdown with the Great Satan. Most would not.
IMO, there is no doubt in the world that most in all countries do not want war. After all, it is the most powerful who suffer the least danger from war. Right or wrong?
Ignore the Smiles: Trump-Netanyahu Get-together Is a Collision of Bad Karmas
"Netanyahu Lashes Out as Israeli Police Wrap Up Graft Inquiries"
The relationship between Israel and the U.S. is truly special when both their leaders are mainly preoccupied with escaping the law
Chemi Shalev Mar 04, 2018 10:04 PM
U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, February 15, 2017.MANDEL NGAN/AFP
The summit between Donald Trump .. https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/donald-trump-1.5599319 .. and Benjamin Netanyahu .. https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/benjamin-netanyahu-1.5599046 .. will be portrayed by their PR people as an expression of the stellar relations between Israel and the United States which, the White House is likely to say, have never been better. But it could also be described as a hubbub between two primo suspects, a rendezvous of the politically besieged, a cosmic collision of two bad karmas.
Defining the inevitable causality of karma, the holy Hindu text Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, composed around 700 BC, teaches “that a person consists of desires and as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.” The prophet Hosea put it more bluntly: “Those who sow a wind will reap the whirlwind.” Whatever original offences Trump and Netanyahu may or may not have committed, they have compounded them with their efforts to threaten investigators, deter prosecutors and scare the bejesus out of judges. Their evasion tactics have kicked up political whirlwinds, if not storms, which could ultimately sweep them out of office. In their desperate attempts to escape their fate, both captains often seem willing to sink their own ships, passengers and crew first.
The relationship between the two allies may have never been more special, but not only in good ways. The leaderships of both countries are possibly closer than ever in their basic political views and in their perceptions of the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Security coordination is great, both sides assert. And Trump is moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, isn’t he? But then again, in a truly unfathomable unraveling of synchronized history, the most critical “shared value” of Netanyahu and Trump, even when they meet in the Oval Office, is how to extricate themselves from the legal nooses that are concurrently tightening around their necks.
One thing supposedly doesn’t have anything to do with the other, but Israel and America these days can rightly be described these days as the United States of Meshugas. Trump has rejected rationality as an important factor of American policy, replacing it with his own impulses, whims and outbursts. Anxiety in what remains of clear-headed Washington DC has never been higher, along with elevated trepidation, and no small amount of glee, that have spread throughout the world.
Netanyahu meanwhile has rallied his troops for holy war against the Israeli police and court system, with the attorney general, who will have the final say whether to indict him, next in line. Just like Trump and the American right, Israel’s ruling Likud party and large chunks of its right wing media are campaigning against their own system of law enforcement, turning perpetrator into persecuted and branding guardians of the law as sinister co-conspirators against the throne. Both countries are caught in maelstroms, drifting into a twilight zone in which right becomes wrong, upholding the law is suddenly a form of harassment and honest public officials are cast as the ultimate bad hombres.
Both Trump and Netanyahu are either congenitally or maliciously blind to their own misdeeds. They have both patently and blatantly misbehaved, at best, but refuse to concede an inch. Although they are charged with implementing the laws of the land and safeguarding its judicial integrity, both refuse to let justice run its course, preferring to besmirch, defame and slander those who are performing their constitutional duties by investigating them. Both are appealing to the worst instincts of their respective mobs, stoking hate, sowing distrust, torching the edifice of law enforcement in order to snuff out those who would do them wrong, in their eyes.
Netanyahu seems the more rational and calculating of the two, especially after Trump’s manic week, in which he shocked Republicans and NRA types on gun control, rattled world economies with a unilateral declaration of trade wars bid a teary farewell to his darling Hope Hicks and helplessly watched his own son in law Jared Kushner get hanged, drawn and quartered for all the world to see. Netanyahu apologists claim that he is a victim of his tempestuous wife Sara, but Jared and Ivanka are the collateral damage of Trump’s own imbalance, which he now realizes, so his first reaction is to dump them. It’s surely a bad omen when Netanyahu’s staunch ally Kushner is labeled suspect just a few days before the bilateral summit.
Ostensibly, the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu will focus on the Iranian challenge in Syria. They will express their lust for Saudi Arabia and probably trade derisive jokes about Palestinians and Mahmoud Abbas, who have committed the cardinal sin of dissing Trump in public. They will portray Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize it as Israel’s capital as the greatest event in Jewish history since the founding of the state, if not more so. They will play the Embassy card to the hilt, organizing a once in a millennia extravaganza in honor of the physically modest move. Trump will shore up critical support of Evangelicals, who see no evil as long as he serves their interests, while Netanyahu will get a much needed shot in his arm, and even a well-timed electoral windfall, if current projections of the imminent downfall of his coalition are borne out.
They make an odd couple. Netanyahu is a cerebral student of Jewish history and veteran tactician of Israeli politics, while Trump is a baccalaureate student of absolutely nothing who thought he’d run for President for the kicks but ended up running the world instead. Commentators may dwell on the similarities of their xenophobia, nativism and incitement against internal enemies, which is their political weapon of choice, but what truly brings them together these days is their shared fear of indictment, hyper-inflated sense of victimhood and tendency to divide people around them like George Bush delineated the world, in another context – “you’re either with us or with the terrorists”.
Whatever actions they take and whatever decisions they make, their meeting will be tainted by suspicions that these are desperate men in desperate times who have already shown their willingness to take desperate measures. If Netanyahu can actively undermine Israeli police just because he doesn’t like the direction they’re taking and if Trump can launch a preemptive trade war because White House shenanigans have made him tense and unglued, as the U.S. media reports, there is simply no reason in the world to assume that the two would consider U.S. Israel ties in particular and the situation in the Middle East in general as somehow sacrosanct, exempt from the kind of naked exploitation and manipulation that both employ on a regular basis in their efforts to beat their respective raps. The celebration of the special U.S.-Israeli relationship, which will no doubt take center stage at the AIPAC conference .. https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/aipac-1.5598908 , will be marred by the knowledge that its two main facilitators are up to their necks in criminal problems and desperately seeking ways out.
Both may soon face a prisoner’s dilemma of sorts. For now they may prefer to stand together so that they don’t hang together, but each will bolt without a moment’s hesitation if it will help them crush their pursuers. Trump’s shock declaration that he favors seizing guns without due process is the equivalent, after all, of him suddenly stating that Israel is evil and the occupation illegal. If Hamas comes up with a billion dollars to bail out the Kushner debt, who knows, the White House might start referring to Israel as the Zionist entity and to Bibi as yet another bumbling bozo. And if the reported leaks of the Trump’s Middle East plan are accurate, including removal of a substantial number of settlements and recognition of East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, Netanyahu may be compelled by an election campaign to turn on Trump rather than lose the right to Avigdor Lieberman or Naftali Bennett.
Whatever the scenario, Trump and Netanyahu can no longer escape the realities that they created when they first crossed the line, possibly between legal and illegal but certainly between right and wrong. Their efforts to obstruct justice and savage democratic institutions have only compounded their sins. They may smile widely at the White House, but they are gnawed by fear of being apprehended and haunted by a creeping realization that, inevitably, this won’t end well for them, and possibly for their people as well.
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