Netanyahu keeps saving Israel's Left from the Right - opinion

• Author: GIL TROY
• Date: 30 March 2021
• Published date: 30 March 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

We, the members of SIC, the Sane (but Stressed) Israeli Center, thank you. Your narcissism, your confusion between your needs and the state's, saved Israel from a fanatic, ultra-religious, ultra-right coalition with a Kahanist tic that could have ruined the country's delicate internal equilibrium. Your refusal to retire has alienated "droves" of right-wing voters and political leaders, exiling them from the Likud, their natural home.

If you, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, weren't running, a credible right-wing prime ministerial candidate could have united Yamina's, New Hope's, and Yisrael Beytenu's mandates with your supporters', forging a powerhouse coalition of 72 in the 120-person Knesset. Some of Blue and White's eight and Yesh Atid's 17 seats would also have veered rightward.

So, consider just how personal your fourth electoral failure is. You've done amazing things this year. Millions of us feel liberated this Passover, thanks to the vaccinations you secured. And history will salute the Abraham Accords you negotiated. Yet, despite those two grand slams, and with 26% of the electorate so fanatically committed to you they voted for you in 2015, 2019 and 2020, you ended up with... the same 26%.

That means that the election pivoted on tribal identity, not historic achievements. And it emphasizes that you've forever been a minority prime minister, repeatedly securing power more than popularity, long before you ran afoul of the law.

We repeat my long-standing request that you and President Reuven Rivlin put us out of our misery. End the stalemate: take a pardon, retire from politics, and start making the money you and your family crave, to subsidize the imperial lifestyle that suits you, while covering your son's many libel suits. But end this farce that somehow holding onto a quarter of the country reflects some popular mass desire for you to keep torturing us.

Every day you remain in office, you coarsen Israel's soul. Too many honorable people justify your dishonorable acts, saying, "that's politics," or "that's the Middle East." That's not the politics David Ben-Gurion or Menachem Begin played. And Israel has succeeded as the Mideast's only functional democracy, as the Start-Up Nation, and now as Vacci-nation, by transcending and transforming its neighborhood, not replicating its worst vices.

For decades, you've often invoked Winston Churchill but rarely acted as grandly as him. Finally, the comparison works. Just as Britain's voters refused to...