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Nothing Will Happen, Because Nothing Happened

Hillary Clinton was the last politician Netanyahu wanted to see in the Oval Office after the US election. As First Lady and then secretary of state, she had played key roles in both of the administrations he had clashed with over matters he considered vital to Israel’s security. In an interview with CNN, Hillary Clinton had said, “I’ve known Bibi a long time. And I have a very good relationship with him, in part because we can yell at each other and we do. And I was often the designated yeller.”¹ That wasn’t exactly what Bibi was looking for in a president.

Had Netanyahu not given up his US citizenship upon becoming an Israeli diplomat in 1982, he would have instinctively voted Republican. But this year’s candidate was no kind of Republican he had ever dealt with before. He wasn’t even a politician.

“Bibi is a risk-averse politician. He dislikes instability and Donald Trump is the opposite of the kind of leader he wants to deal with,” said a former aide who spent time with Netanyahu in the United States. Another former member of his team put it more bluntly: “Bibi is scared of both candidates.”

Netanyahu had learned from his mistake in 2012 and was keeping well away from the campaign. He had sent strict instructions to Israel’s diplomats in the United States to show no favor to either candidate under any circumstances.

What made it even more difficult was that his benefactor Sheldon Adelson, who had first supported Lindsey Graham and then Marco Rubio, was now firmly on the Trump bandwagon, plowing millions into the campaign. Things with Adelson had not been going smoothly of late. In September 2016, Sheldon and his wife, Miri, had been absent for the first time from Netanyahu’s annual speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Sara had been complaining about her photographs not appearing frequently enough in Yisrael Hayom, and Bibi was beginning to wonder whether the paper was that helpful to him anyway. “Market share isn’t necessarily power,” he had said recently, remarking that the paper had “little influence.” On his relationship with Adelson, he said, “Do you think I can tell that redhead what to do?”²

Like everyone else, he had gone to sleep on November 8 expecting four years of Hillary Clinton. Waking up to Trump, Netanyahu reflected that while this wasn’t exactly the GOP president he had dreamed of working with, after so many years of arguing with Democratic administrations, he did see some unique benefits in having a President Trump.

While other world leaders were still working out how to contact the president-elect, putting calls through to the Trump Tower switchboard, Netanyahu was the only one who was already personally acquainted with him. Bibi and Donald had met back in the 1980s, during Netanyahu’s UN days—they had been introduced by Ronald Lauder, Bibi’s friend who was also an old friend of Trump’s.

Trump’s name had even appeared on one of Netanyahu’s handwritten millionaires’ lists, though he was in the lowest category, indicating that he was good for an occasional favor, but not much more. In 2013, Trump had appeared in a YouTube clip, calling upon Israelis to “vote for Benjamin. Terrific guy, terrific leader. Great for Israel” (though it wasn’t part of the Likud campaign and had been made by one of Netanyahu’s American admirers on his own initiative).

Netanyahu knew other key figures in Trump’s circle. The family of Trump’s son-in-law and soon-to-be senior adviser Jared Kushner were old supporters—Jared had once had to move out of his room when Netanyahu came to stay with them in New York City. And he was familiar with the Breitbart News Network crowd.

Breitbart’s CEO, Larry Solov, had written that the website had been “born in the USA” but “conceived in Jerusalem,” and that the idea to set it up had come to him and cofounder Andrew Breitbart when they were on a junket for conservative bloggers to Israel in 2007. One of the highlights of their trip had been a meeting with Netanyahu, who was then leader of the opposition. The website that Solov and Breitbart envisioned, Solov said, “would be unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel. We were sick of the anti-Israel bias of the mainstream media and J-Street.”³

Most American Jews were horrified by Trump’s victory and by the reports of the alleged anti-Semitic views of Steve Bannon, who had been Breitbart’s editor-in-chief and was now Trump’s chief strategist. But Ron Dermer, who knew Bannon, reported that he was “very pro-Israel.” To Netanyahu, that was all that mattered. Netanyahu and Bannon shared a unique historical belief. Both had been brought up—Bibi by his historian father and Bannon by his Catholic parents and teachers—to view the “Reconquista,” the fifteenth-century Christian victory over the Muslim Moors in Spain, as a key moment in history when “Western civilization was saved” from the Muslims.⁴ Benzion taught Bibi that this was the precedent for the return of the Jews to their land.

On the face of it, there seems to be little in common between the self-made diplomat and politician and Trump, the bumptious salesman. Netanyahu is an intellectual and an ideologue, while Trump finds it difficult to remember any books he’s read, and his only dogma has ever been promoting his brand. But there are similarities as well. Both men are fundamentally insecure, lacking in introspection, and have an uncanny ability to sense their rivals’ weak spots and sniff out their voters’ inner fears. Netanyahu’s perpetual campaign mode also resembles the Trump presidential campaign, with its reliance on constantly stirring up resentment and divisions between parts of the electorate. Shortly after the election, Netanyahu began daily urging his aides to “be like Trump.” One Trump trait that the Netanyahu team was quick to adopt was branding unfavorable reports in the media as “fake news.”⁵

Trump, promising to build a wall on the US border with Mexico, had repeatedly mentioned Israel’s border fence as his model, saying, “Walls work. Just ask Israel.” Netanyahu, trying to curry favor, Tweeted, “President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israel’s southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea,” causing a diplomatic spat with Mexico and angry protests from the Mexican Jewish community.

Netanyahu was even more delighted when Trump appointed his team for the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Kushner was to be in charge overall, while two of Trump’s lawyers also received key appointments: Jason Greenblatt was to be special representative for international negotiations and David Friedman the new ambassador to Israel. All three men belonged to the right kind of American Jewry, as far as Netanyahu was concerned—conservative, right wing, and Orthodox. They were prime specimens of the minority of American Jews who supported the settlement policy. Greenblatt had studied at a yeshiva in the West Bank, and Friedman had helped with fundraising for one of the settlements. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, a stalwart of the ultra-pro-Israel Christian evangelist movement, was also a reassuring figure. The Trump team proved itself during the transition by trying to convince Russia’s ambassador to avert the UN resolution condemning the settlements.

After his election, Trump had called a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians “the ultimate deal” and said that “as a deal maker,” he wanted to seal “the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”⁶ But it quickly became clear that he had no idea how to go about doing it. On February 15, 2017, Netanyahu arrived in Washington for his first White House meeting with a Republican president. At their joint press conference, Trump was asked for his opinion on the two-state solution. Abandoning nearly two decades of American foreign policy, Trump answered, “I’m looking at two-state and at one-state and I like the one that both parties like.”

There was a more jarring note for Netanyahu when Trump, answering another question, turned to him and said, “Hold back on settlements for a little bit.”⁷ But Netanyahu didn’t mind holding back on settlements for Trump. It wasn’t the total freeze that Obama had demanded in their first meeting, and besides, Netanyahu was happy to have an excuse to rein in his rival, the education minister Naftali Bennett, and the rest of his coalition’s far right wing, who were demanding a massive settlement-building drive, including even extending Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank. Netanyahu didn’t want to jeopardize his security coordination with the Palestinian Authority.

For all his rhetoric and opposition to formal settlement “freezes,” Netanyahu has never been particularly interested in building more settlements. During his tenure, fewer new settler homes were built in an average year in the West Bank than under any of his predecessors in the past three decades.⁸ He has continued to receive the grudging support of the settlers because, unlike his predecessors, he is also not planning to attempt any diplomatic initiative that could lead to some of them being evicted.

Only two months after Trump’s inauguration, Dermer, speaking at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, said that “for the first time in many years, perhaps in decades, there is no daylight between our governments.”⁹ In early May, there was a flurry of reports from Washington that Trump was planning “something big,” that Netanyahu’s old friend Ronald Lauder was urging him to put pressure on Netanyahu—and that, of all people, the Trump team was being advised by Tzipi Livni. Netanyahu had been able to portray Obama as a “hostile” president, and therefore defying him was interpreted by many Israelis as a sign of his strength. Saying no to a “friendly” president like Trump would have been more difficult to explain to the Israeli public. But on May 22, as Trump arrived in Israel, Netanyahu’s fears evaporated.

Unlike Obama, who had waited five years to make his presidential visit, Israel was on the itinerary of President Trump’s very first international tour. Arriving directly from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Trump stepped off of Air Force One in Ben Gurion Airport and told his hosts, “We just came from the Middle East.” Not to be outdone, Sara Netanyahu told the president and First Lady, “We’re just like you. The media hate us but the people love us.”¹⁰

Trump spent twenty-four hours in Israel, making speeches that could have easily been written by Netanyahu. At one point Bibi even said, “I think we quote each other.” On the peace process, Trump said he was “personally committed,” but that he had no plans. In the many speeches he made during his whirlwind visit, he barely mentioned the Palestinians, and never once a Palestinian state or the settlements. Beyond mentioning that both sides would have to make “tough decisions” to reach peace, he offered no specifics. But he was hopeful, after his meetings with Arab leaders in Riyadh, where he said he had discovered that “there’s a lot of love out there” in the Middle East.¹¹ On the other hand, he had plenty to say about Iran’s malignant influence in the region.

In the short closed meetings he had with Netanyahu, Trump had some vague ideas about working with the Saudis and other Sunni states, but nothing much beyond that. In his brief meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem, Trump mainly demanded that the Palestinians crack down on incitement against Israel in their schools and media and stressed the need to fight terrorism. As Trump made his final farewell speech at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Sheldon Adelson, in the first row, watched proudly. He had spent millions to bring the two men to power. It had been the perfect visit.

Greenblatt and Kushner made a few more trips to the region, usually telling either side what they wanted to hear, but not proposing any new plans. Meanwhile, in Washington, there were reports that Trump, beginning to realize how complicated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, had lost his initial enthusiasm for achieving the “ultimate deal.”

In August, Abbas met with a group of left-wing Israeli MKs in Ramallah. “I have met with Trump’s envoys about 20 times since the beginning of his term as president of the United States,” he reported wearily. “Every time they repeatedly stressed how much they believe in and are committed to a two-state solution and a halt to construction in the settlements. I have pleaded with them to say the same thing to Netanyahu, but they refrained. They said they would consider it but then didn’t get back to me.”¹²

Ten days later, Netanyahu was guest of honor at a settlement not far from Ramallah to celebrate fifty years since the beginning of the settlements. “We are here to stay, forever,” he said. “We will deepen our roots, build, strengthen and settle.”¹³ This time there was no American president on the phone demanding explanations.

Worse was in store for the Palestinians when Trump broke with nearly seven decades of US foreign policy by announcing that the US would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Like all other governments, the US had refrained from officially recognizing Jerusalem until a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement could be reached. President Abbas responded that the Palestinians would no longer recognize the US as an “honest broker,” nor accept a Trump peace proposal, if any would ever be put forth. Trump fired back by threatening to cut US funding for UNRWA, the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees.

THERE WERE DRAWBACKS to having an administration so detached from the region. In July 2017, when a short round of violence broke out following the killing of two Israeli police officers on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and Netanyahu’s hasty decision to set up metal detectors at the entrance to Haram al-Sharif, no US secretary of state was willing to make marathon phone calls to Abbas, ensuring security cooperation with Israel. Netanyahu was forced to swallow the humiliation of dismantling the metal detectors. At least calm was restored.

Where Trump’s lack of any real interest in foreign policy irked Netanyahu most was Syria. For six years, Israel had watched anxiously from its northern border as the Assad regime lost control of most of the country, which was being torn up among rival rebel factions and the jihadists of the Islamic State. Into the vacuum had come Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, who propped up the failing Assad. Israeli intelligence kept its eagle eye focused on Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force officers, and every few weeks came news of mysterious explosions and air strikes on depots and convoys of advanced weapons that Hezbollah was hoping to spirit away to its arsenal in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

Netanyahu’s Israel had been careful not to get sucked into the terrible war across its border, but over six years it had carried out nearly a hundred operations in Syria, trying to prevent Hezbollah from building up its military capabilities. On January 18, 2015, a group of senior Hezbollah commanders and Iranian officers including a general had been killed in an air strike on the Golan Heights. This wasn’t just another night attack on an arms convoy, but the elimination of an Iranian and Hezbollah command group in Syria that had been planning to expand its operations to Israel’s border.¹⁴

At no point in Netanyahu’s premiership was Israel so close to being “on the brink of war with Hezbollah and Iran,” as one senior IDF officer described it months later. Israel braced for a response, which came in the shape of a missile attack a few days later on the Lebanese border that killed two Israeli soldiers. And then all was quiet. Iran and Hezbollah were too invested in the survival of the Assad regime for a further escalation with Israel. The gamble had paid off—Hezbollah kept away from the Golan.

Even Netanyahu’s most bitter critics in the security establishment had been forced to praise him for safeguarding Israel’s northern interests as Syria descended into chaos. But by early 2017, that achievement seemed to be eroding. In September 2015, Russia, taking advantage of Obama’s inaction in Syria, had deployed its air force to Syria, and had begun ruthlessly bombing the rebel areas. Within eighteen months, Vladimir Putin had saved his client Bashar al-Assad from losing power, and the regime was back in control of most of the country. Iran, which had backed Assad from the start, with military assistance and billions of dollars, now demanded, in return, to be allowed to establish permanent bases on Syrian soil. Netanyahu’s entreaties to the Trump administration to intervene on Israel’s behalf with Putin to block Iran’s entrenchment failed to result in action. Netanyahu was forced to rely on Putin, who relished the opportunity to keep both Iran and Israel off-balance.

It would be a gross exaggeration to say that Netanyahu was beginning to miss Obama, but he realized he wouldn’t be able to rely on Trump either.

NETANYAHU REVELED IN finally having the Palestinian monkey off his back. Halfway through the Obama presidency, he had already identified rapidly diminishing international interest in the issue. Aside from John Kerry, France’s President Hollande, and a handful of European foreign ministers, fewer world leaders were bothering him about the Palestinians. The optimistic decade after the end of the Cold War, when democracy was on the march and even the most intractable conflicts seemed solvable, had been forgotten. New autocratic leaders were coming to the fore, and “illiberal democracy” was spreading. With the Arab world in turmoil, the European Union in crisis, and Asian powers rising, the world just stopped caring about the Palestinians. And Israel had technology to offer.

Netanyahu had failed to convince the world that Israel was justified in keeping the settlements, but he had succeeded in taking the settlements off the global agenda. He had changed the old diplomatic paradigm whereby the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the source of all the problems in the region.

Netanyahu expanded Israel’s diplomacy in the Far East, where leaders were especially eager to acquire Israeli technology and had little interest in the Palestinians. He established a special rapport with nationalist leaders, such as India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Shinzo Abe.

“Bibi loves meeting Asian leaders,” said one senior Israeli diplomat in 2015. “They just want to talk business. Recently he sat down for an hour with the leader of one of the major Asian powers, and the entire meeting was about technology deals, until the last minute when one of the diplomats cleared his throat and put a note in front of the leader. It was a thirty-second statement on the importance of the peace process. The leader read it and asked Netanyahu if he wanted to respond. Bibi said no, and they went off to lunch.”

Netanyahu loved playing the statesman, and there were plenty of prime ministers and presidents constantly visiting Jerusalem to give him the impression that it was him they were seeking. Not a month passed without a foreign trip, with Sara at his side. In some months he made two or even three excursions abroad. He had become one of the most recognized world leaders—at the British prime minister’s office on Downing Street, “a call from Netanyahu” would be the code used by aides to bring meetings to an end.¹⁵ He expanded his Asian outreach to Africa and Eastern Europe and started holding multinational regional summits, where he could dispense wisdom to half a dozen leaders at a time. The fascination was real. Netanyahu was the leader of a small country who had brazenly defied two presidents of the United States and emerged unscathed.

Another group of leaders who were gradually willing to engage with Netanyahu were the Arab Sunni dictators, who saw him as a partner both in their joint rivalry with Shi’a Iran and as a useful ally to have when dealing with Trump’s Washington. After the years of turmoil following the 2011 revolution in Egypt, a new strongman had emerged in President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who came to power in 2014 and immediately reinforced the Egyptian military’s iron grip on power. Under Sisi, the security relationship with Israel, cooperating against Hamas in Gaza and ISIS in Sinai, intensified. Sisi smilingly told interviewers that he had useful conversations with Netanyahu and that they spoke over the phone “a lot.”¹⁶

Beneath the surface, cooperation with other Arab states that, unlike Egypt, had no diplomatic relations with Israel were improving as well. While no details were being acknowledged in public, Netanyahu’s emissaries and senior figures in the Saudi leadership were coordinating their moves against Iran.

In many ways, Netanyahu felt more at ease with leaders like Sisi, Trump, Putin, and Modi—“strongmen” with a disregard for liberal democracy who saw in Netanyahu a kindred spirit and a veteran challenger of international consensus.

FROM EARLY 2017, the trips were Netanyahu’s only respite from a relentless barrage of police investigations into his and Sara’s financial affairs. Those of his closest associates came under scrutiny as well.

Upon returning to power in 2009, Netanyahu was determined not to allow the legal system to badger him or his wife again. His loyal justice minister, Yaakov Neeman, appointed Yehuda Weinstein, a defense lawyer specializing in white-collar cases, as the new attorney general. At one time or another Weinstein had worked for most of the senior Israeli politicians who were facing allegations of corruption, including Netanyahu. In 2016, Weinstein was replaced by Avichai Mandelblit, who for the previous three years had been Netanyahu’s trusted cabinet secretary.

Mandelblit, a painstakingly meticulous former IDF military advocate general, was reluctant to investigate his old boss. The first case brought before him regarding Netanyahu was the “Bibitours” investigation in January 2017. Despite evidence of half a million shekels being paid by private individuals and organizations to upgrade tickets and hotels for Bibi and Sara during the period that Netanyahu had been finance minister, Mandelblit ruled there was no criminal case for them to answer.¹⁷

In December 2015, Netanyahu had appointed Roni Alsheikh, former deputy head of Shin Bet, as police commissioner. He believed Alsheikh wouldn’t investigate him, but the spy-chief directed his officers to probe the prime minister’s affairs. Mandelblit couldn’t ignore the mounting evidence of the Netanyahus’ sense of entitlement and indifference to any code of public standards. In October 2016, he authorized widening the investigation into multiple allegations that Sara had misappropriated funds destined for the upkeep of the prime minister’s official residence. In December 2016, he ordered a second investigation into crates of champagne, boxes of Cuban cigars, and jewelry that Bibi and Sara had received. The couple didn’t deny receiving them, but insisted they were just “gifts” from “close friends.”¹⁸ As the gift list lengthened, to the tune of 1 million shekels, and with it the names of well-known tycoons from Israel and abroad who had sent them, police officials favored indicting Netanyahu for taking bribes. While Mandelblit mulled the case, ordering additional inquiries and authorizing police to question Bibi and Sara, more came up. Police investigating fraud allegations against Netanyahu’s former bureau chief, Ari Harow, discovered, on Harow’s smartphone, recordings of Netanyahu and his media enemy, Arnon Mozes, publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth. In meetings before the 2015 election, Netanyahu and Mozes discussed a deal whereby Mozes would have his newspaper improve its attitude toward Bibi. In return, Netanyahu would prevail on Adelson to limit circulation of Yisrael Hayom, which was eating into Yedioth’s profits.¹⁹

The two archenemies failed to reach a deal, but police were convinced they had the basis of a bribery indictment. This time, the police questioned not only Bibi, but also Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miri. In August, the Supreme Court upheld a Freedom of Information petition requiring Netanyahu to divulge the frequency of calls he had with Adelson and the editor of Yisrael Hayom. He was forced to reveal that in 2012–2015 he had spoken over the phone 160 times with Adelson and over 300 times with editor Amos Regev.²⁰ The Adelsons’ relationship with Bibi, which had grown a bit distant in the past year, became even more remote. In September 2017, for the second year running, they didn’t attend Netanyahu’s UN General Assembly speech, and suddenly began to be seen more in the company of Netanyahu’s rival on the right, Naftali Bennett. To make matters worse, Harow, who had once been a loyal aide to Netanyahu, now agreed to serve as a witness for the prosecution to avoid jail time in his own case. And while there was no indication that this was part of the police investigation, some argued that Netanyahu’s claims in the recordings that he could get Adelson to change Yisrael Hayom’s circulation plans were potential evidence that the vast sums spent on the freesheet could be considered illegal political funding for Netanyahu’s benefit.²¹

Much larger corruption investigations were afoot. David Shimron, Netanyahu’s attorney of over four decades, was arrested in July 2017 in a case of alleged kickbacks paid by a German shipyard manufacturing submarines and warships for the Israeli navy. Netanyahu wasn’t officially a suspect and denied any knowledge of the affair, or of his lawyer also working for the Israeli representatives of the shipyard. But Moshe Yaalon, the former defense minister who had been forced out by Netanyahu a year earlier, suddenly recalled that Bibi had shown a great deal of interest in naval procurement and demanded that Israel buy more submarines.²²

Another case involved Shaul Alovich, the owner of the telecommunications giant Bezeq, and Shlomo Filber, Netanyahu’s former campaign manager, whom he had appointed director-general of the Communications Ministry. Both were arrested in July 2017 on suspicion of colluding in security fraud. In February 2018, Filber, who had served Bibi for two decades, agreed to testify against him. Netanyahu was alleged to have intervened in Alovich’s favor in return for positive coverage in a website he owned. Again, Netanyahu denied any knowledge of the actions of one of his closest advisers.²³ A Freedom of Information petition had revealed no less than seven private meetings between Netanyahu and Alovich at the prime minister’s residence while he had been communications minister.

Barely a day passed without another development in Netanyahu’s legal sagas—associates being hauled in for questioning, billionaires asked to detail the gifts they had showered upon him, former employees of the prime minister’s residence suing the couple in court.

Increasingly, Sara became the target as depositions and witness statements were leaked to an insatiable press, which reported on her alleged abrupt orders, obsessive hygiene strictures, and tantrums toward employees at the official residence, as well as her demands for expensive gifts. She began losing cases in the Labor courts as well.

In September 2017, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit decided to indict her for fraud and breach of trust after a lengthy police investigation into the financial management of the prime minister’s official residence raised the charges that she had illegally spent over $100,000 of public funds on private meals by some of the most expensive chefs in Jerusalem, despite the presence of a government-employed cook at the residence.²⁴ The guests at these meals had been prominent Israeli billionaires.

Bibi and Sara had long had a liking for rich people and a sense of entitlement for the trappings of the high life. When their legal adviser Yaakov Weinroth urged them to write a check for the chefs’ bills and avoid an indictment, Sara refused to pay from their own private account.²⁵

As the legal troubles accumulated and more of Netanyahu’s longtime aides became implicated, the circle of remaining confidants dwindled. He even had to part with his trusted diplomatic emissary Yitzhak Molcho, when he was detained for questioning in the “submarines case.” The changing cast of advisers and officials at the prime minister’s office joked among themselves about their dispensability, calling themselves “irons” for their anonymity and easy replacement.

As friends and advisers fell away under suspicion, and criminal indictments loomed, a siege mentality pervaded the weekends at the Netanyahus’ second home in Caesarea. Ministers who had agreed on policy with him on Thursday found the decisions reversed at the Sunday cabinet meeting, after Bibi had spent a Shabbat with Sara and Yair, their son, who was still unemployed and living at home in his mid-twenties. The weekend after Mandelblit announced his decision to indict Sara, Yair posted a neo-Nazi cartoon on his Facebook page with the faces of his parents’ critics, including Ehud Barak, superimposed onto the cartoon. The public backlash forced him to remove it a day later, but not before David Duke and other white supremacists had celebrated it.²⁶ Yair was becoming a target of media scrutiny, just as his mother had. He and Avner were the only prime ministers’ children in Israel’s history to have around-the-clock bodyguards and drivers, even though former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen insisted there was no security risk. Public criticism intensified when tapes emerged of Yair, during a tour of Tel Aviv sex clubs, with his driver and bodyguards, talking to friends about the services of strippers and prostitutes.

“Nothing will happen, because nothing happened,” became Netanyahu’s constant response in public to the allegations against them. In Likud rallies organized by his supporters, he launched into long rants against the “leftist fake news media” he said were behind the “unprecedented witch hunt” against him and his family. He made long lists of his achievements, punctuated with the refrain, “That, they don’t report!” He was determined not to resign. Even when in February 2018 the police recommended indicting him on multiple charges of bribery and fraud, he vowed to continue serving as prime minister. And even if the media refused to recognize it, Netanyahu was certain the Israeli people knew, just as the world leaders had come to understand, how indispensable his leadership was.

In April 2017, at a gathering of the prime minister’s office employees for Passover, Netanyahu described the Israeli media as “an industry of depression.” He accused them of “not reflecting the public’s feelings”:

Where they see unemployment, I see full employment. Where they see a ruined economy, I see a flourishing economy. Where they see congestion, I see interchanges, trains, bridges. Where they see hesitation and insecurity, I see steadfastness and incredible strength that projects all around us…. Where they see a sinking, crumbling nation, I see Israel rising as a global force. I see it all over the world, in all the leaders arriving here every day and in my meetings with them abroad, with the leaders of world powers. That’s how they see us—as a global technological power, as a world force in security, in intelligence, in technology. Israel is a wonderful country and from the perspective of decades, certainly from thousands of years, they will truly see a big miracle happened here.²⁷

Incapable of recognizing the work of others who built Israel long before he became its leader, and raging against those who won’t acknowledge his greatness, Netanyahu is reduced to believing it is a miracle that could never have been achieved without him.