As corruption allegations mount against the Prime Minister, his air of invincibility has been punctured.
By Ruth Margalit | The New Yorker | Mar 6, 2018
“It’s the Louis XIV syndrome. More than just saying that the state is him, his feeling and the feeling of those around him, is that the damage to the party and the country by his resigning would be so great that it’s worth doing things that would have been unthinkable were it anyone else.”
— Nahum Barnea, Israeli columnist for Yediot Ahronot
Israel is famously low on pomp and circumstance. Attend an Israeli wedding and guests are likely to appear in jeans, with sunglasses perched on their foreheads. When Donald Trump landed at Ben Gurion Airport last May, the Israeli government tried to keep it stately — red carpet, military orchestra — but it wasn’t long before a member of the ruling Likud Party whipped out his cell phone and snapped a selfie with the American President on the tarmac. So minimal is the ceremoniousness that, whenever it exists, it tends to take on outsized meaning.
One such ceremony took place on Monday, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Trump in the Oval Office. Netanyahu tried to project an air of business as usual — the relationship between the United States and Israel “has never been better,” he gushed — even as Trump may have quickened the Israeli leader’s pulse by saying, nonchalantly, that “we have a shot” at “doing” peace with the Palestinians. But only one thing was on the mind of the travelling Israeli press corps. A reporter asked, “Prime Minister Netanyahu, would you like to comment about the latest news coming from Israel?”
“I will later,” Netanyahu replied quietly, maintaining a glued-on smile. Continue reading “Israel contemplates a future without Netanyahu”
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