Haaretz: If Re-elected, Netanyahu's First Order of Business Will Be an Obscenity Against Democracy

The most common complaint about the past 100 days is that this campaign was devoid of substance and content. It occupied itself with the trivial and the sensational, along with displaying an addiction to mudslinging, cheap gimmicks and trashy video clips. We didn’t get to see party leaders sitting opposite one another and talking about their platforms, detailing their worldviews, presenting plans and serious content, confronting the issues.

That’s not only the fault of the politicians and certainly not of all of them. Part of the responsibility lies with the media, which was swept up in an ugly wave of false news and spins at the expense of the “issues.” [...]

But his path won’t be an easy one. Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, has declared that he won’t support retroactive legislation. He would prefer to have Netanyahu continue in the role of defendant. Kahalon already committed to opposing the proposal. Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked will decide when the time comes. Not even all of Likud’s members will vote in favor: Gilad Erdan said he would vote against such a bill; maybe Yuli Edelstein and Avi Dichter will, too. Here and there, a few islands of sanity remain.[...]

Only Netanyahu, whose status in the global arena is extraordinary, is capable of enlisting the heads of the great powers and “third-party countries” to help him in his election campaign. So it was with U.S. President Donald Trump and the Golan, and so it was with Netanyahu’s trip Thursday to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin, who instructed his army in Syria to assist in the “intelligence and operational” effort that led to the return of the remains.

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Tzipi Livni to Haaretz: Next Israeli Election Will Be Referendum on the Declaration of Independence

But Livni plans to use the situation to her advantage. In one of her first moves as opposition leader, she gathered together representatives of 40 civil society organizations active in a wide range of causes and invited them to join her new “emergency coalition,” as she terms it, to fight this law, which she believes jeopardizes Israel’s democratic character. [...]

An outspoken advocate of the two-state solution, Livni has led numerous rounds of negotiations with the Palestinians on behalf of the Israeli government. Her cabinet posts have included stints as foreign minister, housing minister, immigrant absorption minister and, twice, justice minister. And in more than two decades of government service, she has moved increasingly toward the left. [...]

Livni broke with Likud in 2005 and, together with then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and future Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, helped found the centrist Kadima party. After Kadima disintegrated, she started a new party, Hatnuah, which focused on promoting peace. It joined with the Labor Party before the 2015 national election to form the Zionist Union alliance. After Isaac Herzog left the Knesset earlier this month to assume his new position as chairman of the Jewish Agency, Livni was appointed opposition leader by Avi Gabbay, Labor’s new chairman. (Although he heads the party, Gabbay does not have a seat in the Knesset and, therefore, cannot serve as opposition leader.) [...]

Livni steps into her new role at a time when Israel-Diaspora relations have also hit rock bottom: Progressive Jews – who account for the vast majority outside of Israel – have grown increasingly anxious about the direction the country is taking, both religiously and politically.

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Haaretz: Getting the Democracy We Deserve

There’s also no one to struggle with. Aligned against Netanyahu is nothing, an empty space. No one stands up to him. The prime minister is being questioned as a criminal suspect and no one challenges him seriously, except for the police commissioner and protest organizer Eldad Yaniv. Just imagine similar allegations against Shimon Peres, with Menachem Begin or even Yitzhak Shamir in the opposition – heaven and earth would be shaking. But Israel has in recent years developed a regime with no opposition, like in Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey – but with a global innovation Made in Israel: It’s the opposition’s fault that there’s no opposition, not the government’s.

The so-called opposition has nothing to sell. It has nothing to offer other than “Netanyahu is corrupt,” as if Netanyahu would be fit to continue in office if he were modest, morally pure teacher of Jewish law. There is no alternative to be found, even if you search with a microscope. This can be seen on the Facebook page of Labor candidate Avi Gabbay: It’s empty. “Together we will turn Israel into the greatest country in the world.” The populists Netanyahu and Yair Lapid couldn’t have put it any better. [...]

From the other contender, Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid, we could of course expect much less. “Mr. Prime Minister, you’ve done good things for the Jewish people. But enough.” What a fighting opposition! Lapid’s Facebook page deals mainly with corruption and conscripting the ultra-Orthodox. We all know that Israel that has no other issues to deal with – or maybe Lapid just doesn’t have anything else to say.

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Haaretz: Netanyahu Has a New Scapegoat for His Corruption Scandal

Only Benjamin Netanyahu could have navigated the past three days and landed on his feet, unscathed in any significant way politically and without throwing the coalition into turmoil. He chalked up an impressive success in shaping the media discourse following the calamity of the police’s recommendations after their investigations of him. His party is united in supporting him and many of his friends took part in the vilification of the political rival who turns out to be a witness in Case 1000: MK Yair Lapid, chairman of Yesh Atid. [...]

The death throes are going to be prolonged and ugly. The handwriting of Netanyahu’s end is already written on the wall. The lightning polls conducted a day after the police publicized their findings showed that Likud has not been weakened and in fact has been strengthened, but that its leader’s situation is dire and isn’t likely to improve. The majority of the public doesn’t believe him, prefers the police account and thinks the prime minister is corrupt and needs to resign. The breaking point will come when the attorney general announces his decision to indict the prime minister – if that’s what he decides. However, that is still months down the road. [...]

Throughout all his years in politics, Netanyahu has honed to an art the practice of shifting the campaign to his rival’s field. He defines himself through the agency of his foes, both in the international arena and in domestic party politics. In the run-up to the last election, for example, he portrayed Zionist Union leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni as traitors and collaborators with the Islamic State, who were directing the militants toward Jerusalem on their pickups.

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Haaretz: Avi Gabbay, a Business Exec With Little Political Experience, Just Won Israel's Labor Party Primary and Hopes to Replace Netanyahu

Avi Gabbay, who won Monday’s runoff for the Labor Party leadership, is not the typical candidate to lead Israel’s largest left-wing party. Not only is Gabbay a relatively new name for the voters, but the path he had chosen so far for his political and business career is at odds with the ways of traditional Labor leaders: He served as environmental protection minister under a different, right-wing party, he sat in a right-wing government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and before entering the political arena served as CEO of the biggest telecommunications firm in Israel.

On the eve of the runoff that will determine his political future, Gabbay can be seen as a complex and multifaceted character. The same person that had no problem sitting in a government accustomed to a diplomatic freeze now swears he is continuing the path of the late Yitzhak Rabin, and that he is unafraid to touch on the sensitive issue of East Jerusalem. His printed platform even states he would hand over Arab neighborhoods in the capital to the Palestinian Authority. [...]

Even in the business sector it is hard to identify the real Gabbay: He crossed the lines from the Finance Ministry’s budget department for a job at telecommunications monopoly Bezeq, and later fired workers while pocketing tens of millions of shekels for himself. On the other hand, all his colleagues at the firm described to Haaretz a sharp and well-liked manager who made the company more efficient and helped it grow while always treating people with respect. [...]

Kulanu officials note that Gabbay wasn’t always so adamant about Lieberman and his party. Before the 2015 elections, Kulanu and Yisrael Beiteinu had a surplus-vote agreement, which earned Kulanu a 10th seat and enabled it to demand a third ministerial post – for Gabbay. So what changed between then and May 2016? Gabbay’s close associates asserted that the appointment of Lieberman as defense minister following his support for Sgt. Elor Azaria, who executed a gravely wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron, crossed a red line. Kulanu officials deem the resignation a cynical, carefully planned move, an attempt to differentiate himself from Kahlon and to find a gimmick allowing him to strike out on his own. [...]

Gabbay left Bezeq a young man who didn’t have to worry about earning a living. His 14 years there made him a very rich man. He reportedly earned 50 million shekels ($14.1 million). Gabbay told “Uvda” that the 175,000 shekels a month he was earning by the end of his tenure did not necessarily reflect his contribution to Bezeq. His years there gave him the privilege of being able to enter politics for the sake of ideology rather than for a livelihood. Also, it cannot be ruled out that without the enormous sums he earned, he could not have funded his current electoral campaign. His money has also allowed him a larger home in North Tel Aviv, where he lives with his wife Ayelet, a teaching coordinator at a Tel Aviv high school, and their three children. His friends say his wife is a great influence in his life. Some of them say she pushed him for years toward leftist positions.

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