Op-ed: A person in Netanyahu’s situation should have bowed his head and kept silent. He definitely shouldn’t have organized an Erdoğan-style rally for himself. He should have waited quietly for the attorney general’s decision. Instead, Netanyahu chose war.

Likud members know how to close ranks when they have too, and that includes the ministers, some of whom bit the bullet on Wednesday evening and sat at the front row at the Likud rally, opposite the stage. They found it difficult to hide the heartburn, but none of them opened their mouths. Anyone looking to the future knows that this isn’t the time to talk.

Now, sentiments talk. Emotions talk. Now’s the time to applaud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now’s the time of people like Miri Regev, Tzachi Hanegbi, Nava Boker and Ayoob Kara. The group of sycophants who only see the primary elections in the horizon, who put the state’s best interest at the bottom of their agenda.

The claims that were made at the Tel Aviv Convention Center on Wednesday evening are so unfounded that it’s hard to take them seriously. Did the media pressure Ari Harow to sign a state’s witness agreement? Did the Left—this impotent camp, whose greatest success is bringing a few hundred people to protest outside the attorney general’s home over the serious suspicions against the prime minister and the charges against the prime minister’s wife?

Netanyahu at Wednesday’s rally, against the backdrop of the Likud logo. Cynically and sophisticatedly binding himself and his family together with his party (Photo: EPA)
Netanyahu at Wednesday’s rally, against the backdrop of the Likud logo. Cynically and sophisticatedly binding himself and his family together with his party (Photo: EPA)

 

Netanyahu told the crowd about a wise man (who is probably called Benjamin Netanyahu), who said to him in the morning: “They don’t just want to bring you down, they want to bring all of us down. Likud, the national camp. They know they can’t defeat us in the polls, so they’re trying to topple us without elections.”

What can anyone say about such an argument? Is there a serious person who actually believes these things? First of all, who’s “they”? The police? The State Attorney’s Office? The Left? The media? And what does it mean to bring “us” down? Who wants to bring down Likud? Who’s accusing Likud? The investigations are against the prime minister, who is cynically and sophisticatedly binding himself together with his party, welding himself and his family together with Likud into one mass, as if “Likud is me, I’m Likud.”

There’s so much Machiavellianism here, so many lies. Why even the latest polls have shown that if Likud is headed by a different leader, the party will gain even more Knesset seats.

Nevertheless, it was impossible not to feel discomfort. Watching this demonstration, the factual distortion (not to mention the historical distortion), hearing Netanyahu turn his family’s unlimited hedonism and exploitation into a harassment of his wife by the media, as if it’s all about “a cup of tea served to her righteous father on his deathbed.”

Hearing the disparagement, the lies, the hatred towards members of a large public, who felt on Wednesday that this isn’t their prime minister, that they’re outsiders in this country in light of such a divisive speech. A speech of a camp leader, turning to the members of his camp and inciting them against the other camp.

A person in Netanyahu’s situation should have bowed his head and kept silent. He definitely shouldn’t have organized an Erdoğan-style rally for himself. He should have waited quietly for the attorney general’s decision. Instead, Netanyahu chose war.

As reported by Ynetnews