On this coming Sabbath, the synagogues that have reopened following the coronavirus crisis will read in the Torah about the blessings and curses that God gave the Jewish people.
And over the next few days before the Sabbath, the Likud ministerial hopefuls will find out from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been destined to the blessings of an upgraded portfolio, and who will be condemned to the desert of political oblivion.
The message of the Torah portion: Loyalty to God pays off.
The message of the history of Netanyahu’s ministerial appointments in Likud: Sometimes it pays to be loyal, and sometimes it pays to raise hell.
The 1996 election that elected Netanyahu for the first time was the closest in Israel’s history. The last-minute boost that carried Netanyahu to victory was the “Netanyahu is good for the Jews” banner campaign which came about thanks to a relationship between Likud and Chabad, and which was built by the Likud’s Ariel Sharon.
The reward Netanyahu gave Sharon for helping him win the election was… leaving him out of the cabinet at the last minute. While ministers not loyal to Netanyahu were given plum posts, he tried to leave Sharon as political carrion on the side of the road under the banners.
The only reason the National Infrastructure’s portfolio was crafted for Sharon was that in a rare moment of collegiality in politics, incoming foreign minister David Levy refused to be sworn in until Netanyahu found a ministry for Sharon.
Senior Likud figures currently waiting their turn to meet with Netanyahu to hear their political fate will undoubtedly remember that first incident and the many that followed.
After a decade of political exile, Netanyahu returned to the Prime Minister’s Office in 2009. His primary rival at the time in Likud was Silvan Shalom, who had served as both foreign minister and finance minister under former prime minister Sharon.
This time, Netanyahu tried to stymie his rival, not his loyalist. He gave Shalom the Ministry of Regional Cooperation, which without its founder Shimon Peres was seen as a political joke.
Shalom refused to take the job. It was March 31, and Netanyahu did not want his government sworn in on April Fool’s Day, so Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan came to the Knesset to mediate and facilitated a deal between Netanyahu and Shalom that allowed the swearing-in to be completed just before midnight.
How was Shalom acquiesced? Netanyahu took away the Negev and Galilee Development portfolio that he had already allocated to his loyalist Ayoub Kara, gave it to Shalom in addition to Regional Cooperation and made Kara the deputy minister in both ministries.
Loyalty did not pay off for Kara, who ended up doing a lot of the dirty work in both ministries for which Shalom took credit.
When it came time for Netanyahu to allocate portfolios in 2015, two of his closest loyalists were his number two in Likud, Gilad Erdan, and Kara. Erdan followed in Shalom’s footsteps and initially refused to be sworn in but was appeased when given a second portfolio: Strategic Affairs, in additional to Internal Security.
Kara was kept waiting until the last moment about whether he would receive the final portfolio Netanyahu would give out. It turned out to be a minister-without-portfolio, and Netanyahu gave it not to a loyalist but to a troublemaker: Bennie Begin, who joked upon accepting the appointment that he did not know which portfolio he was without.
Instead of taking a portfolio that day, Kara was taken to the hospital after fainting. The general assumption was that Kara was acting, but Kara, who had been treated for stress problems in the IDF, genuinely fainted.
Kara later became a minister, and he even was given the Communications Ministry, which required total loyalty to Netanyahu. But the two eventually fought, and Kara is now out of politics.
Netanyahu currently has a choice between giving the Likud’s final portfolios to loyalists like Tzachi Hanegbi and David Amsalem or potential troublemakers like Gideon Sa’ar and Nir Barkat. Sa’ar and Barkat are keeping silent, while Gila Gamliel and Avi Dichter are actively campaigning for portfolios. Sa’ar’s associates said he had not been invited to meet with Netanyahu.
Barkat has straddled the line between loyalist and troublemaker, knowing from past history that it is never quite clear which is preferable with Netanyahu.
“Netanyahu wants to do what is right for him, so he waits until almost the last minute, which is correct tactically but emotionally nerve-wracking,” Kara said. “He makes his complex calculations and acts according to them. Loyalty is a consideration, but sometimes he prefers to satisfy the troublemakers. I was always loyal but there are those who try both strategies. There are pluses and minuses with both approaches.”