One Tuesday After...

The Tuesday 9th was one week ago, and gone are also the excitement, emotions, anger, thoughts and worries.

People had elected what they considered the best for them. With or without other people's worries, they, those people with the right to express their vote, decided what is the best for them, their families and the future of their children. The elections were fair, people went to vote in a relatiely higher number - although it is a bit not so inspired to make elections' day a free day when the young people will most probably go to the seaside or to Eilat instead of going to vote. But the big majority knew exactly what they are voting for, what is the discussion about corruption, who is acccused for corruption and what does it mean voting the person accused of corruption for another mandate. The voters also had enough time - 13 years - to figure out if that person is worth being in the office again. Or what will it happen when more religious parties will be present in the government. Or how good will it be for the country to have a stronger voice of the Kahanists heard in the Parliament or in the public opinion. 

That's how things are and there is nothing to do against or for. How things will be, people who voted decided the last Tuesday. They are the one responsible for their future and it will be their future from now on. 

Democracies gave the people's right to decide about their future. Including about a future where democracy is rather a memory. 

About Tuesday

A couple of years ago, when Obama was president, the decision makers in Israel shared more than once the opinion that Washington shall understand that 70 years after its founding the Jewish state is entitled to take its own decisions and be responsible for them. An opinion perfectly available that would have make a break in a certain level of inter-dependence between the two countries, each with specific strategic, geopolitical and economic interests.

After 13 years in powe as prime minister - anyone remembers Thomas Moore's quote: 'Laws could be passed to keep the leader of a government from getting too much power'? - 'Mr. Security' Benjamin Netanyahu announces that he succeeded - in fact - to convince the American administration about: the need to recognize unilaterally the Israeli sovereignty of the Golan Heights, eventually over the West Bank soon, the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem etc. What would it have to say when a new administration will be installed - at least the mandates of the American presidents are wisely limited to eight years - and will decide to reverse those decisions? 

If on Tuesday, the first Benjamin - or Bibi - will win against the second one - Benny Gantz - as the polls are already showing, what future for the Israeli democracy? There will be probably negotiations for creating a coalition, and the president Rivlin has an important word to say. But the Kahanists will be in the Parliament and together with them, way too much religious people. Fortunatelly, there are still some normal heads among the religious establishment wise enough to know that religion and politics shall be separated otherwise the poison is dangerous for both sides.

The predominance of an unique religious mindset already estranged the diaspora organisations. For years, the Kotel - the Western Wall - is a place of confrontation and exchange of curses. An abnormality despicable for all those involved in the bashing, will be about to become normality. 

Bibi's extremists friends, from Orban Viktor to the Austrian far right party and the Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines will rejoice, but this is the place where the Likud, created in 1973 by Menahem Begin and Ariel Sharon belongs to? Not forget about Putin...Or the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro.

Journalists are permanently under threat as the prime-minister and its family hates it. Using a rhetoric familiar to his American friend, he and his wife and the son Yair are labelling easily every news daring to criticize them as 'fake news'. Israel Hayom and the dozen of thousands of boots and fake accounts and media brigades are 'real'. In psychological language it's called being delusional.

If the polls are to be believed, the day after Tuesday will be a sad day, with a new round of witch hunting, with a media under new threats and a deeper division not only between the Jewish/Israeli electorate and the Arab electorate - whose demonization is also part of the current 'Mr. Security's discourse - but between the Jewish/Israeli electorate and the Jewish/Israeli electorate. This division will go far beyond between the Tel Aviv 'party' people and the Haifa 'working people and the Jerusalem 'praying people', but between those who want a better and safe future for their families and children and the one family who's concerned about its own wellbeing. Europe, America and the world, there will be mor and more 'yordim' coming. 

Democracies are dying too and there is nothing that might stop the decline. 

All About 'The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu'

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'As usual with Bibi, he was the victim'.

The elections in Israel are going to happen in about one month, and Netanyahu is facing - again - serious accusations of corruption by an attorney general he nominated among his many layers of his inner circle. Apparently, Bibi has a special art to get estranged from people that used to be close to him, and/or cannot be used for his immediate needs. It happened with Naftali Bennett, with Ronald Lauder, with many others.

Haaretz journalist and The Economist writer Anshel Pfeffer published a very well researched political biography of someone who is mostly an 'outsider' of the Israeli political system. Without belonging to the elites of princes of the Founding Fathers that created the state of Israel and its institutions, distrusting the media and the power of big bureaucracies such as the Foreign Ministry or the Army, Bibi succeeded. Was he better fit to the 'spirit of the time', did the intensive training as a member of the lites of Sayeret Matkal empowered him with a special penchant for lonely wolf attitude, or maybe was the distrust of the Jewish leadership he took from his father, Benzion, the incentive for trusting himself as the one and only Israel's leader?

Netanyahu is not a commoner and although not part of the mainstream ruling or academic or economic elite and 'had never lived as an ordinary grown-up civilian in Israel', he has the right connections. He is charming and speaks English and has the 'chutzpe'. He is a perfect PR product - including of his own efforts but it doesn't get more than the glittering. For instance, while at the UN, he 'became a star of the airwaves, the darling of Republican circles and the Jewish American elite, but he had little lasting influence in the highest echelons of decision making'.

And there is also Sara Netanyahu. 

And a very big availability to trade partners and find ennemies. He called once the toxic Kahanists he signed a political agreement recently 'thugs'. He was a vocal participants at rallies against Yitzhak Rabin without taking a clear stance against those who screamed 'death' against Rabin - some of the Kahanists' colleagues amongst them. He positions himself as a champion of opening towards the Arab world, forgetting that Shimon Peres went to Oman and Qatar long before his emissaries. As for his hawkish stance on Iran, many representatives of the establishment - among which the late Mossad chief Meir Dagan were vocally and logically against.  

But in the words of Anshel Pfeffer: 'He sees no one capable enough or worthy of replacing him and fails to understand how anyone could contemplate someone else leading Israel'. 

Will King Bibi -the name of a movie by Dan Shadur - win another mandate soon? Who will be the losers of such a re-confirmation (besides the state budget, for reasons that do not have to do with the improvement of the military training, for instance).

Bibi. The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu can be easily read and understood also by someone not familiar with the intricacies of Israel's political life. Sadly, it is about a kind of leadership replicated in many parts of the world. One can stay and wait because not too much to be done, anyway, but at least you know what expects you. And millions of other people too. 

Although I've personally been a bit reluctant and careful with this book, it is a professional approach, that neither the right or the left shall consider biased. There are facts and figures and files of corruption. And the enemy within.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review