OPINION: Israel’s false messiah will take Israel to the brink and beyond

Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to hollow out Israeli democracy may have been seen off for the moment, but he remains a clear and present danger to the country’s social fabric.

Bibi began his professional career in marketing and has spent decades since selling himself as Israel’s saviour. But now Israel needs saving from him.

Back in the 1970s the youthful Netanyahu was working as the marketing director of a furniture company in Boston, when the then Israeli Ambassador to Washington picked him – out of the blue – as his deputy.

From there he began to ascend the greasy pole of Israeli politics becoming his country’s ambassador to the UN in the 1980s. It was the launch pad – at home and overseas – for his ambitions. Bibi was in huge demand as a spokesman possessing fluent American accented English, a sharp turn of phrase, and telegenic good looks. His C.V since then is well known, and he’s now the longest serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history, after David Ben Gurion.

But where Ben Gurion was responsible for building the fledgling country up to become a functioning and strong state, so Bibi is tearing it down, preying on dysfunction, and weakening the foundations that hold the country together.

When I was in Israel in the 1990’s Bibi was leading the opposition and the charge against the Oslo peace process with the Palestinians. He didn’t just oppose the policies of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but put himself in the midst of efforts to demonise the government as a whole.

I recall seeing him on TV at a right-wing demonstration in Jerusalem in 1995 as his supporters burnt pictures of Rabin adorned with a keffiyeh while calling the Prime Minister a traitor. Netanyahu excelled in fanning the hatred but then denied responsibility for its consequences when disaster struck and Rabin was assassinated.

For Netanyahu, incitement and falsehoods have been useful tools to be deployed for self-promotion. When he became Prime Minister for the first time in 1996, he was caught on microphone counselling a revered Sephardi Rabbi that left-wingers have ‘forgotten what it means to be Jewish’. I recall the uproar this called among many Israelis who saw in Bibi, an unprecedented willingness to pick away at the fragile social fabric for political advancement.

He has pursued the politics of division time and again over the years. On election day in 2015 he (falsely) claimed that a right wing government was ‘in danger’ as  ‘left-wing NGO’s’ were bussing in Arab voters in ‘droves’ to vote against him.

Bibi is Donald Trump’s Israeli twin. Like Trump he is willing to see the country burn so that he can remain in power. The current crisis in Israel is a direct consequence of Netanyahu’s desperate wish to avoid the legal peril he finds himself having been indicted on corruption charges. Rather than allow a trial to proceed he has decided that disassembling the integrity of the country’s judicial system is the way to go.

In this he has found common cause with the most extreme religious and nationalistic elements in country, who for their own reasons, want to put the courts under their effective political control.

The past few days have seen a sharp popular rebuke to Netanyahu and his allies’ aim to turn Israel into yet another Middle Eastern autocracy. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis – not just from the left – turned out to prevent Bibi’s power grab. Like Trump, Bibi called right wing thugs onto the streets to attack those who have rallied for Israel’s democracy. But in the face of overwhelming numbers on the streets he has been forced to temporarily retreat by delaying his plans to eviscerate the judiciary.

Bibi may be down but he is not out, and he is utterly determined to pursue his goals whatever the cost.

He has just announced that he is putting Itamar Ben-Gvir, the extreme right wing Minister of Internal Security in charge of a new ‘National Guard’.  This new and superfluous body is aimed at circumventing the established security forces and carrying out the will of its political masters to crush any legitimate opposition.

Israel has faced many crises before and overcome them. But this one is different, as it has threatened the fragile unity that holds the country together.

Many in Israel are celebrating the victory of people power, but this is dangerously premature. Bibi is a man unchanged and so long as he remains in power, Israel is in peril.

• Richard Miron is founder and director of Earshot Strategies Ltd