Talk about an anticlimax.
At 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning, Likud head Benjamin Netanyahu’s family spokesman, Ofer Golan, issued a brief statement saying that “a little after midnight the Netanyahu family left the residence at Balfour.”
That was it. With no confrontation, no resistance and little fanfare, Netanyahu – who is no longer prime minister – moved out of the Prime Minister’s Residence at the corner of Smolenskin and Balfour streets in Jerusalem. Just like in a normal country. A convoy of black cars was filmed leaving the residence.
Why is something that should be a given of any significance at all? Because of all the buildup – for weeks and months, if not years.
All the speculation that Netanyahu would do everything to stay in power, including overturning Israeli democracy. All the talk that he would not voluntarily leave the symbol of his power for the last 12 years; that his supporters would ring the residence and prevent his eviction – or, US Capitol style, that they would storm the Knesset when a new government was sworn in.
Twenty-eight days ago, after the new government was sworn in, reporters yelled questions at Netanyahu as he left the plenum and was going back to his office.
The newly minted former prime minister ignored all the questions, except one that caused him to stop on the steps and turn around. Will there be a peaceful transfer of power, he was asked.
“No,” Netanyahu responded sarcastically. “There is going to be a revolution.” Then he added with a tone of disgust, “What a stupid question.”
The question, however, was born out of an atmosphere that existed, and which many bought into: that he would do anything, including destroy the country’s democracy, to stay in power.
On June 1, an analysis on Haaretz’s website was headlined, “With His Rule Slipping Away, Netanyahu Could Bring Capitol Insurrection to Israel.”
On June 2, the same paper ran another analysis under this headline: “A Government Without Netanyahu Is Imminent. So Are the Threats.” The subhead was even less subtle: “As Netanyahu mimics Trump in recent days, fear of a Capitol-style coup is rising.”
If you write and broadcast and chant long enough that Netanyahu is Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban or Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you begin to believe it. Except he’s not. Nor are Israelis Hungarians or Turks who would stand aside and allow a leader to trample their democratic rights. It’s time to give the nation, and Netanyahu, a little more credit.
The nation should get some credit for cherishing its democracy, and for a determination to preserve it, and Netanyahu deserves the benefit of the doubt that he cares deeply about the future of the country and does not want to destroy it.
The unthinkable happened here on November 4, 1995, when Yigal Amir murdered Yitzhak Rabin – the assassination of a prime minister, the political murder of the leader of the Jewish state by another Jew. No one thought it could happen.
Since that time, however, everyone thinks that everything can happen. As a result, all difficult scenarios are taken to their most extreme conclusions.
If Netanyahu harshly criticizes the attorney-general, who he believes unjustly indicted him, then he is trying to overturn and undermine the rule of law. If he says the new government is not legitimate, then he is mimicking former US president Donald Trump – in fact, becoming Trump – and encouraging an Israeli version of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that must be just around the corner.
A week before the new government was sworn in, a senior journalist at one of Israel’s most important media outlets met, along with a couple colleagues, a key foreign diplomat and said in complete earnestness that he did not know if Netanyahu would voluntarily leave office.
Asked what he thought Netanyahu would do, what scenario he envisioned and whether he thought Netanyahu was organizing some kind of a coup, he simply shrugged and said he does not know how it will play out, but that he did not think Netanyahu would voluntarily give up power.
How could an intelligent man with a very large platform and considerable media influence be so wrong? Because he believed his own hyperbole, because he had little faith in the nation’s checks and balances, because he had little faith in the country’s people and because he was willing to believe the absolute worst about Netanyahu.
And in the end, a convoy of black cars pulled up to the residence on Balfour Street in the middle of the night and drove the Netanyahu family away. Why the middle of the night? To deprive the protesters who have been camped outside the residence for more than a year a victory photo.
And a few hours later, at 5:45 a.m., the sun rose again on Israel’s democracy – loud, caustic, rambunctious and angry. Doomsday did not dawn. It was an exaggeration to ever think it would.