FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM – Fall 1,000, 2,000, 4,000: a pitfall-filled rise to the heights of power. The interrogation reports collected by the agents investigating Benjamin Netanyahu, now on trial for corruption, reveal the glimmer of the family mirror in which Bibi has reflected himself during these almost sixteen years as head of government. “My husband is the strongest in the world. As Prime Minister, he protects and defends the nation. They admire him everywhere. “He is doing great things for the Israelis, it is the newspapers and television channels that are massacring, massacring, massacring him,” says his wife Sara, who was heard as a witness. “My father manages very important matters, such as the daily survival of the Jewish people,” comments his son Yair, who followed and still advises on the digital campaigns of the leader, who turned 74 last Saturday. Arnon Milchan, the Israeli-born Hollywood producer, has to answer for the boxes of rosé champagne and cigars given to the couple and also reports on the conversations with the “King” when Time magazine crowned him years ago. “Bibi repeats: If I collapse, the Jewish people collapse.”
The lens through which Israelis viewed the man who presented himself as Mr. Security was shattered by the massacres of Saturday, October 7th. The mirror in Netanyahu’s house appears to have remained intact. This house – while citizens are evacuated south and north – has become the Jerusalem villa provided by American billionaire Simon Falic, although the official residence is functional. According to the Channel 13 news report, Benjamin and Sara brought the state chef with them, which violates the rules that prohibit the use of public-paid staff in private offices.
Trust in the government has fallen to its lowest point, as low as it was just twenty years ago during the second intifada with the wave of suicide bombers on buses and clubs. Eighty percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to take responsibility for the disaster – he came close to doing so in his speech tonight – as do the leaders of the armed forces and intelligence services. “Herzi Halevi, the chief of staff – writes Yossi Verter in Haaretz – has actually already submitted his letter of resignation. Instead, the prime minister spends half his energy trying to survive politically.”
The prime minister is already maneuvering so that the inevitable commission of inquiry – as after the Yom Kippur War or the second in Lebanon – is coordinated by the government and not the state: the fundamental difference is the broader legal powers. Bibi’s anger – the newspapers reveal – would be directed exclusively at the generals; he is convinced that it is their fault that he got into this tragedy. But as opposition leader, he called for Ehud Olmert’s resignation in 2006 because of the mistakes made during the 34 days of fighting with the Lebanese Hezbollah: “Whoever did the damage cannot be the same who repaired it.” And to the commission responsible for the “Responsibility for the security of the nation lies entirely in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief, the Prime Minister.”