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    For Netanyahu, like Trump, Only ‘Fraud’ Can Explain His Defeat

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    Israel’s democratic transition is set for Sunday, but nothing is certain amid the prime minister’s scorched-earth campaign to wreck his opponents’ coalition.TEL AVIV — For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is witnessing “the greatest election fraud in the history of the country.” For Donald Trump, defeat last November was “the crime of the century.” The two men’s language overlaps, it seems, because their overwhelming sense of invincibility is confounded by democratic process.Naftali Bennett, a right-wing nationalist, will take office as Israel’s prime minister Sunday, if approved by parliament, but Mr. Netanyahu’s raging assault on his likely successor shows no sign of relenting. He has said there is a “deep state” conspiracy.Mr. Netanyahu accuses Mr. Bennett of conducting a “fire sale on the country.” A “government of capitulation” awaits Israel after a “stolen” election, he says. As for the media, it is supposedly trying to silence him through “total fascism.”Although it appears that a peaceful democratic transition in Israel will take place, nothing is certain.Attacks by Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party on Mr. Bennett’s small Yamina party have been so vicious that some Yamina politicians have needed security details. Idit Silman, a Yamina representative in the Knesset, or parliament, said in an interview on Channel 13 TV that a demonstrator outside her home had told her he was pained by what her family was going through, “but don’t worry, at the first chance we get, we’ll slaughter you.”Naftali Bennett on Monday at the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.Pool photo by Maya AlleruzzoThe apotheosis of Mr. Netanyahu’s whatever-it-takes methods has left violence in the air. The events of Jan. 6 in the United States, when a Trump-incited mob stormed the Capitol, are not far from Israelis’ minds.“Over a dozen years, Mr. Netanyahu convinced himself that anyone else ruling Israel would constitute an existential threat,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst. “His strong-arm tactics present a direct challenge to a peaceful transition of power.”Division and fear have been Mr. Netanyahu’s preferred political tools; and like America, Israel is split, to the point that the head of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, warned a few days ago of “extremely violent and inciting discourse.” It was an unusual warning.The police have said they will not allow a nationalist march that had been scheduled Thursday through Muslim-majority areas of Jerusalem’s Old City, but feelings over it are running high among right-wing politicians after the original Jerusalem Day march last month was canceled because of Hamas rocket fire.Mr. Netanyahu’s security cabinet decided Tuesday to reschedule the march, on a route to be agreed with the police, for next Tuesday, June 15. Mr. Netanyahu sees the march as an important symbol of Israeli sovereignty.To hold the march would be playing with fire, as the short war with Hamas last month demonstrated. The issue, it appears, will now fall to the Bennett government to resolve.No evidence has been produced to back claims that Mr. Bennett’s prospective new government is anything but the legitimate product of Israel’s free and fair March election, the fourth since 2019 as Mr. Netanyahu, indicted on bribery and fraud charges, has scrambled to preserve power.Mr. Netanyahu calls Mr. Bennett’s tenuous eight-party coalition, ranging from far-right to left wing parties, a “dangerous” leftist government. But it is not the left that defeated the prime minister.It is politicians on the right like Mr. Bennet and Gideon Saar, the prospective justice minister, who became convinced that Mr. Netanyahu had become a threat to Israeli democracy.Election billboards in Jerusalem three months ago showed Mr. Netanyahu on the right, and his rivals, Gideon Saar, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAlluding to the mass suicide at Masada of Jews who refused to submit to the Roman yoke, Mr. Bennett said in a speech explaining his decision to head an alternative government that Mr. Netanyahu “wants to take with him the entire national camp and the entire country to his own private Masada.”It was an extraordinary image, especially from Mr. Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, and it captured the growing impression among many Israelis that the prime minister was determined, at whatever price, to leverage political survival into stopping the criminal process against him.“He should have quit when the indictment came out in 2019,” said Yuval Shany, a law professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former dean of its Law School. “Any reasonable politician would have stepped down. Instead, he went full throttle against the judiciary. In the end it seemed his main political aim was arriving at an immunity from prosecution arrangement.”In other words, the personal — staying out of jail — had become paramount for Mr. Netanyahu. So much so that he was prepared to erode core institutions of the rule of law and democracy, like the Supreme Court, an independent judiciary and a free press. In this sense, the outbursts of recent days have been a culmination rather than a departure.“He became a politician who would go to any lengths, without limits,” Mr. Shany said.He had prominent company. Mr. Netanyahu, whose unpredicted 2015 electoral victory gave him a new sense of being all-powerful, formed close bonds with Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, and with Mr. Trump. He was drawn to leaders across the world intent on centralizing power in new, illiberal models.Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump at the White House last year. Both men have found it difficult to accept that an electoral loss could be explained by anything except fraud.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhat Mr. Netanyahu needed, through all those Israeli elections, was a majority strong enough to change Israel’s Basic Law to make prosecution of a prime minister in office impossible, and to take from the Supreme Court the power to strike such legislation down.He never quite got that majority.“There’s no doubt he wanted to narrow and minimize the authority of judicial review of the Supreme Court over both Knesset legislation and the administrative decisions of government bodies,” said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “But the checks and balances of our young democracy are intact.”Those checks and balances are likely to get Israel to Sunday and a democratic change in government. But Israel, unlike the United States, is a parliamentary rather than a presidential democracy. Mr. Netanyahu will not disappear to some sunny retreat beside a golf course. As chairman of Likud, he will wield considerable power..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“He is not going away, and he will not be quiet,” said Merav Michaeli, the leader of the Labor Party, a member of the new coalition. “And it will take a long time to repair the damage.”The incoming government is reviewing legislation that would set a two-term limit for a prime minister and oblige anyone who has led the country for eight years to spend four years out of the Knesset. It signals how Israeli democracy has been jolted by Mr. Netanyahu’s total of 15 years in power.Merav Michaeli, leader of Israel’s Labor Party, a member of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, at a conference three months ago near Tel Aviv.Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNir Orbach, one of the members of Mr. Bennett’s right-wing party who has come under withering attack from Likud and been pressured to change his mind about supporting the new coalition, posted an explanation of his thinking on Facebook:“It is not a simple decision, but it is obligated by the reality of life in which we get up every morning, over 700 days of governmental instability, in a civil crisis, in a violent discourse, in a sense of chaos, on the brink of civil war.”The post was as good an expression of Israeli exhaustion at Mr. Netanyahu’s contorted fight for survival as any.Ms. Michaeli said: “Netanyahu has been eroding Israel’s democracy for a very long time.” Alluding to the 1995 killing of Yitzhak Rabin, she continued: “Remember, we had a prime minister assassinated here. We are in an ongoing fight for the character and soul of Israel. But we will prevail.”The next few days will test that assertion. Mr. Bennett urged Mr. Netanyahu to “let go” and abandon his “scorched earth” policy. But to expect a gracious exit from the prime minister appears as far-fetched as was expecting it from the American president who also claimed that defeat could only be theft. More

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      The Israeli Feminist Trying to Save Liberal Zionism

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Israeli Feminist Trying to Save Liberal ZionismCan Merav Michaeli rescue Israel’s Labor Party?Opinion ColumnistMarch 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Peter Rigaud/laif, via ReduxWhen Merav Michaeli, a pathbreaking feminist, was elected head of Israel’s Labor Party in January, some people offered her condolences. Labor was once Israel’s governing party, the home of many of the country’s iconic leaders: David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin. It ruled continuously from Israel’s founding in 1948 until 1977, and then a few more times after that.But since the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, which for many Israelis discredited the country’s peace camp, the Israeli left has collapsed. Because of its politicians’ inability to form a stable government, the country is about to hold its fourth elections in two years, and in January polls showed that, for the first time, Labor might fail to meet the threshold to win any seats at all in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. For a party that once seemed to define Israel itself — especially to liberal diaspora Jews — it’s been an almost inconceivable fall.There’s a phenomenon in business and politics called the glass cliff, in which organizations in crisis turn to female leaders. That seems to be how Michaeli, a former journalist who once gave a talk titled “Cancel Marriage” at an Israeli TEDx conference, became Labor’s leader.“Welcome to the Worst Job in Israeli Politics, Merav Michaeli,” said a headline in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Her victory, wrote Anshel Pfeffer, doesn’t “so much reflect Michaeli’s popularity — she ran against six virtually unknown candidates — but the fact that no other politician wants to be remembered as the leader under whose watch Labor failed to get into the Knesset altogether.”But after Michaeli won, something unexpected happened. Labor’s poll numbers ticked up, and it’s now expected to capture six or seven seats when the country votes on March 23.“She’s the best thing that’s happened to Labor in recent years,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster and political analyst in Israel, told me. She described Michaeli, a former journalist once known for her campaign to make Hebrew, a highly gendered language, more gender inclusive, as “avant-garde.” Scheindlin added, “She has a backbone, and she’s not just blowing in the wind.”Labor’s last leader, Amir Peretz, was the opposite. In 2019, he swore he would never join a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, shaving his famous mustache so Israelis could better “read his lips” on the matter. The next year, he went back on his pledge, bringing Labor into Netanyahu’s unity government.Even as her party joined the ruling coalition, Michaeli insisted on remaining part of the opposition, making her, as The Times of Israel wrote, “a bizarre sort of one-woman opposition to the coalition from within.” Once in charge, she pulled Labor out of the government. The party’s improving fortunes suggest that taking a stand against Netanyahu has paid off.Now, six or seven seats still isn’t much, given Labor’s former dominance. (Netanyahu’s Likud currently holds 36 seats, followed by 33 seats for the centrist Blue and White party.) A party led by an avant-garde figure might seem, almost by definition, to have limited mainstream appeal. But after rescuing Labor from oblivion, Michaeli is convinced she can restore it. “I am here because this is my project — to turn it back into a ruling party,” Michaeli told me.Merav Michaeli, Labor’s new leader, says there is still a constituency for the two-state solution in Israel.Credit…Sebastian Scheiner/Associated PressI first met Michaeli in 2009, when she was still a journalist. As she remembers it, it was at a party in New York before the first convention of J Street, the liberal pro-Israel group. At the time, she said, Israelis knew only two kinds of American Jews — those with right-wing views on Israel, and those who were indifferent. She wrote a newspaper column about progressive American Jews who cared about Israel’s future. Her editor, she said, told her that she had no idea what she was talking about, and never ran it.J Street would eventually turn into a force in the Democratic Party. But as Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians has grown ever more entrenched, many progressive Jews, myself included, have become skeptical about the future of liberal Zionism. I’d love to believe that Michaeli could do what she’s promising, creating a socially democratic Israel committed to a just resolution of the Palestinian conflict. But I see plenty of reason for doubt.Right now, Israeli politics is mostly a contest between different right-wing factions. Seeking to cling to power, Netanyahu, on trial for corruption, has struck a vote-sharing deal with the Religious Zionist Party, which includes what The Times of Israel called “Israel’s most extremist and openly racist Jewish political movement,” Otzma Yehudit. (One of Otzma Yehudit’s leaders, the paper reports, holds an annual “commemoration party” at the grave of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians in 1994.)Netanyahu’s main rival, Gideon Saar, was once his protégé, and is in some ways even more conservative. And unlike in America, young people in Israel are to the right of older generations; according to data from the Israel Democracy Institute, 69.9 percent of Jewish Israelis ages 18 to 24 describe themselves as right-wing. It’s hard to see where support for a liberal revival could come from.But Michaeli argues that, as in the United States — where liberal economic policies are often popular even with self-described conservatives — there is a gap between people’s issue preferences and their political identity.“There is actually a majority in Israel that wants what we are offering,” she said. “People want socially democratic positions on the economy and society. People want a welfare state. People want pluralism, they want equality.”She’s convinced that there remains a large constituency for a two-state solution, at least in principle. “Of course there is a huge majority that does not believe it is achievable,” she said.That’s true not only in Israel, and not only on the right. The inexorable growth of Israel’s occupation, and the increasing power of those in Israel calling for outright annexation of Palestinian lands, can make it hard to believe that a two-state solution is still viable. If it isn’t, neither is Israeli democracy, unless and until the country is prepared to give equal rights to the Palestinians it rules. For years, it’s been a truism to say that Israel is approaching the point where it can be Jewish or democratic, but not both. It’s possible that, as much as liberal Zionists don’t want to admit it, that point has been crossed.So I asked Michaeli why American Jews committed to liberal democracy should still feel connected to Israel. She grew vehement, saying that the experience of living under Donald Trump should redouble our empathy for Israel’s embattled progressives.Michaeli’s first four years in the Knesset coincided with Barack Obama’s second term. “I spent those four years being attacked by liberal American Jews for failing to replace Netanyahu, failing to be an effective opposition,” she said. She grew deeply frustrated trying to explain the near impossibility of constraining a demagogue.“And then when Donald Trump was elected, I was devastated, but at the same time, I said to my friends, ‘Welcome to our lives,’” she said. “Now you will understand us better, because you felt the same — it’s the way your life changes. All of the sudden your president becomes your life, and your jaw drops 10 times a day, and you experience how a scandal happens every 10 minutes and everybody becomes numb, and you run out of words to express how horrible things are.” With Trump, she said, “I thought that my American liberal friends will at last understand what we have been up against all this time.”Instead, Michaeli feels that some liberal American Jews are giving up on their Israeli peers. “Don’t you get that we need you and you need us?” she asked. “You need us, because as long as Israel, which used to be a true democracy, and is half of the Jewish people, is under such threat, you need us to get over this as much as we need you to be able to strengthen your democracy.”She insists, however hard it is to imagine now, that a two-state solution is still within reach. “It has to happen,” said Michaeli. “I’m convinced that it will, eventually.”“Really?” I asked.“Yeah, of course,” she said. “Listen, I brought Labor back almost from the dead.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More