Netanyahu: The country’s Rorschach test - analysis

Netanyahu has become a domestic issue, and one that deeply divides the country.

By HERB KEINON
FILE PHOTO:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks on as he arrives to review an honor guard with his Ethiopian counterpart Abiy Ahmed during their meeting in Jerusalem September 1, 2019 (photo credit: REUTERS/RONEN ZVULUN/FILE PHOTO)
FILE PHOTO:Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks on as he arrives to review an honor guard with his Ethiopian counterpart Abiy Ahmed during their meeting in Jerusalem September 1, 2019
(photo credit: REUTERS/RONEN ZVULUN/FILE PHOTO)
Israel knows from elections.
In its 72-year history, the Jewish state has gone to the polls often. By the time next Independence Day rolls around, it will have gone to the polls to vote for the Knesset on 23 different occasions. Three of those elections, or 13% of them all, will have taken place within the 11-month period that we are all now living through.
But it is not only the frequency of the voting that will set the March 2 election apart from the others. It will also be the substance of the campaign.
Of the past 22 Knesset election campaigns, almost all of them have been dominated by security/diplomatic issues. One major exception was 2013, when Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party managed to turn the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription issue into a major part of the campaign.
But that was the exception. Israel is different in many ways from the Western democracies with whom it likes to identify – its challenges are different, its neighborhood is different, its threats are different.
It is also different in that unlike most other Western democracies, when it goes to the polls it almost never votes on domestic issues. Bill Clinton’s famous 1992 election battle cry – “The economy, stupid!” – would never work here.
Rather, in Israel war and peace issues always dominate the campaigns: the Palestinians, the settlements, Lebanon, terrorism, Gaza. Our elections do not focus on health, education and welfare. And while the upcoming campaign will certainly not revolve around health, education and welfare, one domestic issue will dominate this time: Benjamin Netanyahu.
And that is what Netanyahu has become – a domestic issue, and one that deeply divides the country.
The upcoming election, like those in April and September, will be a referendum on Netanyahu. That the country has not delivered a clear answer to this referendum question in the previous two elections this year shows the depth of the division on this issue.
Netanyahu is Israel’s Rorschach test: half the country sees him as a victim, half as victimizer.
If in the previous two elections there were attempts by the parties to bring issues like the policy toward the Gaza Strip or annexation of Jordan Valley into the campaign debate, this time there will be less of a likelihood to even go through the motions. It will be all about Netanyahu, and whether he is suited to serve yet again.
Both Likud and Blue and White have an interest in making the campaign all about Netanyahu.
The Likud will want to make Netanyahu and his legal woes the central issue in order to rally their base, in order to play to the feeling that many of their supporters have that Netanyahu has been wronged, and that the “Leftist elite” in the judiciary and the media – unable to defeat Netanyahu at the ballot box – is trying to “steal the country” out from under their noses.
Blue and White will want to make Netanyahu and his legal woes the center of their campaign for a similar reason: to play to the feeling among many of its supporters that Netanyahu – as well as his ultra-Orthodox and right-wing allies – have unleashed dark forces that are threatening to steal the country out from under their noses.
Each party will send the same subliminal message to their voters: whose country is it anyhow – let’s retake our country! And that message promises to be particularly nasty, because it will necessitate trying to demonize that segment of the country presumably trying to do the stealing.