Netanyahu vs. Gantz: A budget battle that has nothing to do with economics

If elections are the price Israel has to pay for providing Netanyahu with a chance of escaping justice, then he will make us pay it.

By JEFF BARAK
WITH HIS court case looming on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is launching a last-ditch campaign against the levers of civil society, in particular the judiciary, the police and the role of the free press. (photo credit: TAL SHAHAR/REUTERS)
WITH HIS court case looming on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is launching a last-ditch campaign against the levers of civil society, in particular the judiciary, the police and the role of the free press.
(photo credit: TAL SHAHAR/REUTERS)
When Yona Avrushmi calls demonstrators against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “germs... they spread diseases and must be kept away from society,” it’s time to sound the alarm bells.
It’s one thing for Yair Netanyahu to call the demonstrators “aliens” and claim they make his father laugh, but whereas Netanyahu junior is a 29-year-old boy who still lives with his parents and spews out his frustrations on social media, Avrushmi is a convicted murderer. In 1983, he threw a hand grenade into a crowd of Peace Now demonstrators, killing Emil Grunzweig.
For this dreadful act, Avrushmi served 27 years in prison, but his time behind bars has not led him to express any regret. Returning to the same terminology of “germs” he used when interrogated by the police after the Grunzweig murder, Avrushmi told Channel 12 News at the weekend that today’s demonstrators are “evil people” and “haters of Israel.” While he himself would not go to Balfour Street to confront them, he said, “some young guys are going, and they know what to do, they know exactly what to do.”
In a properly run society, one would expect an immediate statement from the Prime Minister’s Office decrying such violent terminology and acknowledging the right of citizens to demonstrate against their leaders. But today, just as back in 1995 when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by Yigal Amir, Netanyahu is deaf and blind to the incitement and threats of violence emanating from his supporters.
While anti-Netanyahu protesters were being physically attacked on the streets of Tel Aviv last month, our prime minister refused to unequivocally condemn the violence. Pathetically, he sought to insist instead that he was the victim of incitement, and that a satiric art installation of him feasting at a Last Supper-type tableau was no less than “a shameful threat of crucifixion.”
As far as the paranoid Netanyahu is concerned, a mentally disturbed homeless man carrying two razor blades and a plastic gun near the Prime Minister’s Office, about whom protesters outside the office alerted the police, constitutes a concrete death threat against him, worthy of a media statement. If only Rabin would have had such an attenuated self-regard for his own safety, perhaps he would have taken the real threats against his life, aired by protesters at the raucous rallies led by Netanyahu, more seriously.
From his very first “Netanyahu is good for the Jews” election campaign back in 1996, our self-centered prime minister has devoted his entire political career into dividing Israeli society and fomenting hatred of the other. Now, with his court case looming on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Netanyahu is launching a last-ditch campaign against the levers of civil society, in particular the judiciary, the police and the role of the free press, in a desperate battle to escape the consequences of his actions.
THE PRIME MINISTER’S current political dispute with Defense Minister Benny Gantz over the former’s insistence the government passes only a one-year budget this year (which effectively would be a budget for only November-December, given the legislative timescale), and not a combined budget for 2020 and 2021 as agreed to in the coalition agreement with Blue and White, has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with his own personal survival.
For the narcissistic Netanyahu, the cost to the country of such irresponsible leadership is immaterial.
If throwing the country into a fourth round of elections in the space of two years, in the midst of the most destabilizing pandemic in modern history, is the price Israel has to pay for providing Netanyahu with a chance of escaping justice, then the prime minister will make the country pay the price in the blink of an eyelid.
Netanyahu knows that if the current coalition government stays firm and passes a budget later this month for this year and next, the clock starts ticking ever faster to the beginning of his scheduled court appearances, three times a week, in January. For as long as Blue and White have control over the Justice Ministry, and a veto over government legislation, there is no way for Netanyahu to wriggle out of his legal predicament.
Elections, on the other hand, provide the possibility of a clear victory for the right-wing bloc and the chance to pass legislation providing Netanyahu with immunity, as a sitting prime minister, from prosecution. For Netanyahu, this, and not the deadly destabilizing effect of COVID-19, is the most pressing issue facing the nation.
The present coalition government was set up with one purpose, and one purpose only: to end the current round of political instability and concentrate the state’s efforts on combating COVID-19 and restoring the economy. If Netanyahu chooses to undermine this by recklessly tearing up the coalition agreement he signed, then one can only hope the electorate finally sees through his selfishness and deposes him from power.
The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.


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