Netanyahu Sends in the Clowns
If you are a politician, you can respond to public protesters in a variety of ways. You can avoid getting too close to them. You can ignore them. You can use your bully pulpit to address their concerns from a position of strength. What you probably should not do is physically tussle with them or taunt them with childish facial gestures.
But that is precisely what a group of visiting Israeli politicians has been doing in New York City over the past week. Last Friday night, Simcha Rothman, a right-wing Israeli lawmaker, was accosted by a group of Israeli demonstrators on the streets of Manhattan. This was not particularly surprising, given that there are many Israelis in the area, and Rothman is the architect of the government’s proposed overhaul of Israel’s judiciary, which has provoked unprecedented outcry in the country itself. Political protests are common in New York, and this small one would likely have gone unnoticed if not for what happened next: Rothman turned around and wrestled a megaphone away from one of the demonstrators, in an incident that was caught on camera. And he did this on the Sabbath, when religious Jews like himself are forbidden from handling electronic devices. Suddenly, what would have been an unremarkable protest in America became national news in Israel.
Rothman wasn’t alone in inadvertently amplifying his antagonists. Two days later, Amichai Chikli, the government’s minister of diaspora affairs, was photographed at New York’s Celebrate Israel parade giving what appeared to be the finger to nearby protesters. The image of Chikli rocketed around the web, presented by critics as him flipping off the American Jewish community.
[Yair Rosenberg: The Israeli minister who is defending Elon Musk]
This was unfair to Chikli. The middle finger is not a common gesture in Israel, and its meaning was likely unknown to him. As Chikli later explained, he was simply using his middle fingers to lift the edges of his mouth, in order to tell the protesters to “smile” because they were at a parade. In other words, the government minister was not engaged in profane schoolyard taunting of the protesters. He was engaged in non-profane schoolyard taunting of the protesters.
These bizarre altercations might seem like odd one-offs—two men having bad days. But they are not. They are a reflection of the dysfunctional state of the Israeli right and a harbinger of its future. And they are largely the legacy of one man: Benjamin Netanyahu.
Say what you will about Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, but imagining him engaging in any of these antics is impossible. A man of formidable political skill and constant awareness of his position, Netanyahu is famous for managing his image and never allowing his many critics to throw him off his stride. But for decades, he has worked assiduously to ensure that no one with similar talents ever ascends to the summit of right-wing Israeli politics. Rather than groom a successor, he has systematically drummed out every rival competent enough to challenge him, slowly hollowing out his Likud party and reducing it to a cult of personality. The Israeli political landscape is littered with former conservative rising stars dashed upon the rocks of Netanyahu’s ruthless reign. The ones who remain now lead smaller parties, on the outside of Likud looking in.
This successful strategy guaranteed that Netanyahu remained the undisputed king of Israel’s main right-wing party. But it has also ensured that when the 73-year-old premier inevitably departs the scene—whether due to his ongoing corruption trial or his age—there will be no one of his political caliber on the right to replace him. The clownish conduct on display in New York this week was not a coincidence; it was a consequence.
In the past, when pressed about who might succeed him, Netanyahu has offered up his former Mossad head Yossi Cohen and his American-born adviser Ron Dermer—two individuals with no electoral experience or popular following, let alone a path to the premiership. In reality, the future of Netanyahu’s party looks a lot less like him and a lot more like what was on display in New York. When he is gone, this is who will be left.
In 2015, Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s equivalent of Saturday Night Live, ran a sketch that captured the way that many Israeli right-wingers had learned the wrong lessons from Netanyahu’s public persona. In it, the prime minister is being interviewed by CNN, delivering his usual talking points—“and don’t make me say ‘Holocaust’ again, because I will!”—with unctuous precision. But suddenly, he is interrupted by the appearance on-screen of another conservative Israeli politician. A perturbed Netanyahu asks, “What are you doing here? Lecturing the world in English is my thing.” The man replies, “You call that English? Get this: subsequently.” The interview then devolves into the two men competing over who can say the most complicated English words.
[David Grossman: Israeli democracy faces a mortal threat]
Today, this comedy has become reality. Right-wing Israeli politics is full of Netanyahu wannabes without Netanyahu’s talent—people who confuse language skills for political skills. Last month, I experienced this firsthand. I interviewed Chikli, the diaspora-affairs minister, after he publicly intervened on Twitter to defend Elon Musk, who had tweeted that the Jewish financier George Soros “hates humanity” and “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization.” Many considered these remarks to be anti-Semitic, and I expected to have a robust debate over whether these people were misreading or overreacting to Musk’s words. But though Chikli enthusiastically agreed to the interview, he did not come prepared to answer the question it was premised upon, refusing five times to discuss the actual content of Musk’s tweets.
The ability to speak English does not imply the capability to persuade; it can just as easily provide opportunities to be embarrassed. Today’s Israeli right is full of politicians who know enough English to speak it but not enough to know how they sound—people who mistake performative trolling for effective politicking. This is Netanyahu’s legacy: an Israeli right that has the ability to talk to the world but diminishing capacity to navigate it.