Nothing Splits Israel Like Netanyahu

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Judging from the ads, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s just a single issue on the ballot for Israel’s Sept. 17 election: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Benny Gantz, a former military chief who leads the Blue and White bloc, has released a spot showing the prime minister in a submarine with the words “fraud” and “bribery” and bags of money floating past the porthole.

Ehud Barak, who headed the government from 1999 to 2001, in July unveiled a video filmed in a Tel Aviv falafel joint. As customers queue at the counter, he pulls out his credit card and pays for their sandwiches—a jab at Netanayhu, who has been accused of corruption and accepting expensive gifts.

Even Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu’s transportation minister and leader of a far-right bloc, attacked him for not standing up to a judicial system that he says doesn’t respect religious values. “Weak,” Smotrich wrote on Twitter. “Zero leadership.”

Missing in virtually all the political messaging is any reference to the fundamental issues Israel faces: relations with the Palestinians, potential conflicts with Iran, Lebanon, or Syria, a widening budget deficit, and the divide between religious and secular Jews. Instead, Israel’s second national vote in five months has become a referendum on Netanyahu. On July 20, he surpassed founding father David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-serving leader—but Attorney General Avihai Mandelblit has said he intends to indict Netanyahu for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust unless the prime minister can convince him otherwise at a hearing scheduled for October.

Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc won a majority in an April vote, but he failed to form a government. A key stumbling block was his pursuit of legislation granting him immunity from prosecution and weakening the Supreme Court as a way of ensuring such a measure wouldn’t be struck down. Instead of letting a rival try to assemble a coalition, Netanyahu dissolved parliament—a reflection of how his legal woes had narrowed his options, says Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “A centrist party did not want to join a government led by a prime minister who’s about to be indicted,” Plesner says.

Israeli elections have historically offered a choice between starkly differing ideological standpoints. Political parties fanned out on either side of clear fault lines, and their campaigns sought to highlight their particular worldview. But today there’s a broad consensus that negotiating with the Palestinians is pointless, and two decades of near continuous right-wing rule have entrenched a largely neoliberal economic agenda.

That means it’s difficult to distinguish between Bibi—as he’s almost universally known—and his strongest opponent, Gantz. Both favor holding on to major West Bank settlements, and Gantz has said that “when Israel’s security is under threat, there is no daylight between us.” While opposition candidates find economic issues to quibble with, there's no denying that Israel is blossoming under Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Unemployment is near all-time lows, the tech sector is thriving, and trade with new partners is expanding.

“Why are there no national security issues on the agenda? Because the vast majority of the Israeli public is united on them,” says Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief and head of the Institute for National Security Studies. “What’s left to be discussed is Bibi as a person, his personality, his corruption.”

The attorney general’s draft indictment, announced in February, followed a widespread graft probe, marking the first time a sitting Israeli leader has come so close to criminal charges. Netanyahu has been accused of taking gifts from wealthy friends for political favors and advancing the interests of the country’s largest telecommunications company in exchange for positive coverage from a news site it owned. “This election is about the role of law as a foundation of the Israeli political system,” says Dan Avnon, chair of Hebrew University’s political science department.

Netanyahu is fighting back by highlighting the growing economy and his ties with world leaders such as Trump and Vladimir Putin. One ad shows the prime minister picking up a phone call from the U.S. president—with the warning “Who do you want to answer?” Another features Netanyahu as a lifeguard at a beach. “I’m keeping you safe, like I always do,” he tells a pair of bewildered paddleboard players. A third shows caricatures of Gantz and Yair Lapid tussling over a playground swingset, with the tag line “The premiership isn’t a game.”

Some on the left are trying to revive the ideological debate. Although Israel was founded as a socialist state, in recent decades Netanyahu and his predecessors have embraced free markets, demonized unions, and imposed austerity programs. With the ascendancy of the right, the left “just stepped back and started to apologize, and sometimes even take the point of view of the right just because they were afraid,” says Stav Shaffir, a leader of the left-leaning Israel Democratic Party. “We need to reestablish the discourse on the most important issues for Israel.”

One topic that has started to capture the public’s attention, aside from Netanyahu, is the sensitive one of synagogue and state. Right-wing nationalist Avigdor Liberman, a former Netanyahu aide turned rival, is surging in polls after his refusal to join the governing coalition last spring because of his demand that fewer ultra-Orthodox men be exempted from military service. Otherwise, though, there’s little disagreement among the two leading parties—something Liberman tacitly acknowledges with his call for a national unity government between Likud and Blue and White.

But that’s doubtful with Netanyahu at the helm. Minimizing the risk of punishment in any eventual corruption case will likely be a priority if he wins the election—and that could once again scuttle his chances of success. Beneath any discussion of issues lies Netanyahu’s quest to evade prosecution, says Dan Meridor, a former minister and elder in Likud. “Land, peace, the Palestinians, and Iran,” he says, “as important as that is, it’s not the real thing for him.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Rocks at drocks1@bloomberg.net, Yaacov Benmeleh

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