Bonus episode: Lessons from the collapse of the Israeli Government
Dan recently joined the Commentary Magazine podcast to share analysis on the current state of Israeli politics. We are posting that conversation here.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] What to make of the political meltdown in Israel? Well, I've gotten this question from a lot of our subscribers over the last few days. I recently had a conversation on the Commentary Magazine podcast with John Podhortz, Abe Greenwald, and Noah Rothman. John interviewed me about what actually is happening in the Israeli political situation, where it's going, what does it mean for Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid, Bibi Netanyahu.
So, we're dropping a special episode today of the Call Me Back podcast, where we're taking that conversation I had with the commentary crew and turning it into a dedicated segment. To get you up to speed on where Israeli politics stands and where it's going. This is call me back.
Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, June 21st, [00:01:00] 2022. It is the summer solstice. I'm John Podhortz, the editor of commentary magazine with me as always, executive editor, Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe. Hi, John, associate editor, Noah Rothman. Hi, Noah, John, and joining us today. Startup nation author.
Call me back. Podcast host, friend of the podcast commentary, Inc board member and all around great guy, Dan Senor. Hi, Dan. Welcome. Hey, John. And, and live, live guests at one point at your Palm beach. Podcast, which is a big moment and one of our, one of our only live guests ever. And you were there in part to talk about what we are gonna ask you to talk about today.
Because what we talked about in Palm Beach has now happened, which is that the. Israeli government the jury rigged Israeli government, uh, led by Naftali Bennett. And yet your Lapid has collapsed or has basically committed suicide. Um, and [00:02:00] uh, so for an interim period, uh, Bennett has stepped down as prime minister and Lapid, uh, these are two heads of two Minor parties, uh, Lapid will become interim prime minister until elections are held in October.
Why so late, you may ask? Because of the Jewish holidays, uh, of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and, uh, various other things that, that, that mean that they have to stretch out until the end of October. So, Dan, uh, Though everybody was predicting the demise of this coalition from the minute that the coalition was formed, and it really is a fascinating and unprecedented experiment in governance in Israel, um, what actually happened here is something that, uh, nobody really In america really understands and that represents an unbelievable act of political four dimensional chess [00:03:00] gamesmanship by the, the, the israeli politician non parae.
Uh, Bibi Netanyahu. So maybe can you lay this out for everybody? What happened? Because it's kind of crazy, a law that nobody even knew existed, that was coming up for a completely pro forma renewal, has turned out to be the weapon that Bibi used to engineer the downfall of this government that has kept him out of power.
Yeah. I mean, I think we should, we should at some point get into. Talk a little bit about the lessons of this, this model of government, because there's nothing like it that's been tried certainly in Israel and anywhere else in the Western world that I know of, uh, in terms of such, such a broad rainbow coalition, but in terms of what, where we are now, what actually brought the government down just to get, um, very technical, but it's important is there is a law in Israel that, uh, handles the regulations and rules around [00:04:00] how Israeli citizens living in Judea and Samaria Are respected under treated under Israeli law, meaning that there's military authority in the West Bank Samaria.
But there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers, citizens of Israel who also live in Judea, Judea and Samaria. And there's a law that that basically applies Israeli civilian law to them, the way their taxes are collected, the way their health care is provided, the way they vote in elections, et cetera, et cetera.
That law No one really pays attention to, but technically that law must be extended every five years, the way the statute is written. So every five years, there's actually a vote in the Knesset. It's typically just a pro forma vote. It's not controversial. Most, everyone on the right votes for it. Everyone on the center right votes for it.
Even the center and the center left. Typically votes for it. The parties that don't vote for it typically are the hard left and certainly the Arab parties because it is in a sense being viewed as it could be interpreted as blessing the occupation. But [00:05:00] anyone concerned about just the normal functioning of Israel as it stands now until there's a permanent resolution with the Palestinians recognizes that those Israeli Samaria should be able to live as Regular Israeli citizens under Israeli law, that law, the five year extension is up right now and the, the, uh, the opposition led by, by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been looking for opportunities to create, to sort of exploit the chasms within this coalition because it's such an ideologically diverse coalition and break the coalition apart.
He's been poking and poking, and he identified some opportunities that failed, uh, over the past year. He wasn't able to do it, but on this particular issue, he was able to do it, because you normally don't have a coalition led by someone from the hard right. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, his party, Yamina, Yamina in Hebrew, literally means like the translation is, [00:06:00] is translation to English is further right, like a party that's going to move further right, even further right than Likud, it was, his party was founded to be a party that's going to move further right than Likud, it was, his party was founded to be On over at Likud's right flank.
So you had on the one hand, someone like Bennett and his allies, Ayelet Shaked and others within the coalition who were obviously going to vote for the extension of this law. And then you had the, an Arab party, the Ram party, a Muslim party in the coalition. You had the merits party, hard left, you know, so you had hard left and Arab parties in the coalition that would never vote for it.
Now, Bennett. And many of his allies in the government just assumed, and by the way, Lapid was, was prepared to vote for it because as I said, the center and even the center left don't have a problem with it. We should explain that Lapid's party is actually three times the size of Bennett's party, Bennett, Bennett.
Was prime minister with a party that until six weeks ago or something had a [00:07:00] grand total of six seats out of the hundred and twenty in the Knesset, but Lapid's party totally unprecedented by in Israeli politics again, typically in Israeli politics. Historically, the party that the prime minister of the country is the leader of the party with the greatest number of seats.
In the Knesset and, or, or in the government. So you would have like the labor party with 20, 30 seats, the leader of the labor party builds a coalition and becomes prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu for years, prime minister, you know, Likud would have 20, 30 seats. They were the largest party within the coalition.
Bennett to your point, John had six seats, whereas Lapid's party had multiples of that in his party. 18, right? I mean, he had like, so he had three times the number of seats, but he was not Acceptable enough to the parties of the even further right, uh, to Bennett. And so this thing happened where Bennett was six seats ends up.[00:08:00]
As head of the coalition. And then about six weeks ago, he, three different members of his party, of Bennett's party, of Bennett's party, Yamina resigned, or, or, I mean, I don't quite know where they left the government. Yeah, well, it's important to say that this whole coalition, because Lapid could not form a government, even with his party that, that had a large number of seats, Lapid goes to Bennett and says, let's form a partnership.
And we will rotate as prime ministers. Then I get to take your six, seven seats, depending on when it was, add them to my party and we'll cobble together a few others. And then we can actually get to 61. We can form a government. Right. 61 is the majority because there were 120 seats in the grass. So Bennett had incredible negotiating leverage in this situation because Lapid could not form a government without him.
So Bennett said, fine, we will form a partnership. We will be rotating prime ministers. We'll each serve as prime minister, but I'll be [00:09:00] first. Bennett said, I'll be the first prime minister and you'll come in after me. And, and Lapid agreed to that, which then created this bizarre situation with Bennett.
Leader of one of the smallest parties in the Knesset becoming prime minister of Israel, which on the one hand was very impressive. And I've had guests on my own podcast. People like Mika Goodman, for instance, who've marveled at, at, uh, what an accomplishment this was and a, a great moment of political compromise that these very ideologically diverse leaders could come together and form a government.
And, and it was, it was something to be studied. I think there's something. Some truth to what Mika Goodman and others have argued, but the, but at the end of the day, you also recognize Bennett was an incredibly weak prime minister because he had no political base within his own government. He had nowhere to turn within his own government for support.
So he was constantly negotiating, not only with members of his own party, which as you [00:10:00] point out, John started to pull back and say that we're not going to be part of the government anymore. But he, but he had a very, he was constantly negotiating with the Muslim party and left wing parties. And so it ideologically just became unworkable, which many people predicted.
It was just a matter of when I, I, for one did not expect this to be the moment. I thought there were many other fault line moments that would have broken up this coalition. And it didn't up to now. And it was impressive that it didn't, but this is, this is a bizarre situation. So basically Bennett had to resign.
In a weird way on principle, which is to say he had to quit because by quitting and ending the government with this caretaker government, that law that had to be affirmatively passed next week, or the citizenship rights of. Israelis living on the West bank would have been imperiled, right? The government had to fall so that that law would become odd, [00:11:00] would automatically renew.
So that's the genius of what BB did here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so let me just, uh, so just cause, cause it's a, it's a little technical. So the law says every five years, the law has to be formally extended. The Knesset has to form has to vote on it. And it's normally a formality if the Knesset doesn't vote on it.
Then it's automatic. There's an automatic six month extension built into it. Bennett assumed he would have the votes for it either in his own coalition, or since the opposition is dominated by the right, of course, the right is going to support this. Of course, the opposition will support it because they're supported by the settlers.
To vote settler movement. And what Netanyahu engineered was no, no, no, no, no. Prime minister Bennett. Don't take these right wing votes in the Knesset for, in the opposition for granted just because they are, they are aligned ideologically on protecting the settlers. [00:12:00] If it means over this vote, as a process matter, we can bring down your government, that's the priority.
And the settlers will understand it because they're sympathetic to bringing down your government. So do not count on, on the right wing parties in the opposition to give you cover on this vote. So then Bennett and Lapid, in the most bizarre situation over these last few days, go into negotiations with the Muslim party and the hard left party in their own government, begging them To vote for a bill that will give protections to Israeli settlers and the, and the ROM party and the, and the other, and other left wing parties factions within the coalition are like, are you kidding me?
We cannot vote for this. So, so he, I mean, it was like, so he had nowhere to go. And, um, and it, it really did. I mean, You know, Ron Dermer, who is on my podcast this week, but a couple of months ago, he was, he was on my podcast. So [00:13:00] Ron Dermer was Israel's ambassador, is an American who made Aliyah, was Israel's ambassador to the United States and one of the closest states, Sariatim to Natan Sharansky and then to Bibi.
Right. So, I mean, he's, he's been nothing. Yeah. Who's alter ego. And he tried to be objective in this podcast conversation I did with him. And he was, he was analytical, but he obviously clearly like Netanyahu is very resentful of this coalition for understandable reasons, because they argue that, that Bennett in the last election made clear he would never sit with Lapid, that he would sit with BB, but he would not sit with Lapid in a new government.
And then of course he. He didn't sit with Netanyahu and he did, uh, form a government with Lapid, a government that would ultimately make Lapid prime minister. But what, what Ron Dermer argued in that conversation was at the end of the day, this is a coalition of why, while the Mika Goodmans of this world and others will marvel at the incredible feat of political compromise, uh, that was, that was necessary, [00:14:00] um, and that was accomplished to form this government.
And at the end of the day, this government was about one thing. Which was opposition to one man. It was a coalition that, that who's only fuel and, and, and almost like, uh, links links among the various factions within the party were, were hardened by opposition to one man being in power. And that was Netanyahu.
And once. Once that, that is nothing new is not in the frame, ideologically, there's problem after problem after problem and internal tension after internal tension, after internal tension. And there's no way a government that is so not just unaligned, but actually an open conflict on so many core issues.
There's no way a government like that can survive. And I, I actually think good Mika Goodman and Ron Dermer were both right. Right. I mean, I think, I think that this government accomplished more. Then even some of its biggest skeptics like Dermer, um, would [00:15:00] have predicted, right? They, they passed a two year budget and passing these budgets in Israel are very hard to do.
Uh, even hard to do for, for a government that's ideologically aligned and they passed a two year budget. So that was impressive to Israel had a really rough last few months. I mean, it's one of these periods where we're Jerusalem day, which is often the source of a lot of tension. We could love a lot of these marches.
In the old city in the Jewish quarter, some would characterize as provocative by, you know, marches by set by, by, by, by right wing Israelis celebrating the unification of unification of Jerusalem and then march into Arab neighborhoods and right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basic. So hardcore. So hardcore religious Zionists, uh, protest in a way that some characterize.
I think it's overstated. Uh, that's, that's provocative and, um, can inflame a tense situation and it happened to overlap with the Ramadan. Uh, so it was like a powder keg, uh, waiting to happen at the same time you had [00:16:00] the street violence, which we know about the stabbings and shootings, uh, in Israeli towns and the spike of a different kind of terrorism than Israel has, um, typically experienced.
And so things got really hot. Uh, over the last few months and this coalition basically held together despite that. I actually thought that was, I thought some kind of domestic flare up between. Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, which you saw around Ramadan and Jerusalem day, or another Gaza flare up, but another Israeli Gaza war, similar to what, uh, uh, Israel experienced in the final days of final weeks of Netanyahu's last government.
Uh, I thought those would have been one of the dynamics that that would be the dynamic that would break up this government primarily because the ROM party, the Muslim party would say, there's no way we can be part of this coalition, Mr. Bennett. When you're taking such a hard line, cause Bennett was pretty hard line.
Actually. Some would argue even more hard line than Netanyahu in dealing with these [00:17:00] terror threats in terms of the tactics he was willing to use. I thought an issue like that, or the budget would break up the government. I would have never imagined this sleepy law. That literally gets re extended every five years, as though like, and no one's paying attention, would be the, would be the, would be the issue that broke up, um, broke up the government.
But it did, and like I said, Netanyahu's been looking for these, these pinpricks to kind of test the, the, whether or not the, the, the ideological tensions could break, and So look, if you love politics, I just have to say that if you, if you love politics as a spectator sport, you know, I mean, you're watching, you know, I don't know, you're watching, you're watching Michael Joe.
I mean, you're watching a man who is better at the raw functioning of politics in Bibi Netanyahu than any. Other person alive on this planet. Nobody could have predicted this because he's the only one [00:18:00] who saw it on the chessboard and figured out that this, he could make this move. Now, here's, what's interesting.
We go to October, BB knows, and this is also, this is the thing in the background of why this happened. Now, polling in the last two or three weeks has shown a surge. Bibi's numbers, when, when Israel, when, when you see polls of, of, of, of Israel, they calculate how many seats each party would get if the election were held today, as opposed to percentages the way we do, you know, that Biden would get 43%.
So you see it party by party. So Likud, Bibi's party, is back in these polls at 36, double the number of any other party's representation. However, if you tally. Together, the kind of government that Likud could form based on all the political analysis. Even with this [00:19:00] surge, because I think he got 30 seats or 29 seats in the last election.
So he would have been back to 36, which is what he was at when he formed his government in 2017 or whatever. He still can't form a government. He's at 59. He's not at 61. So, um, we're back in this amazing situation in which, uh, there were, Bibi's government, there were four elections. In which no, no one could get to an outright majority from 2019 to 2021 for election.
So Bibi just remained prime minister until finally this thing was cobbled together to, to, to take it away from him. And you could see the same thing happening in October 2022, maybe. Well, uh, right. So the, the election's slated for October. Uh, the question is, I mean, [00:20:00] there, there, there, there are a few inputs that, that you have to consider right now, you're right.
Based on the public polling now, not to get again, super technical here, but under Israeli election law, you, you, you need, so, so you get, you get a seat for every percentage of the vote you get, but there's a threshold of 3. 2. 3. 25 percent meaning 3. 25 percent gets you about four seats. If you get 3. 25 percent of the national vote, you get about four seats, uh, in the, in the Knesset.
If you fall below 3. 25, if you get 3 percent or you get 2. 5%, you get zero. In other words, you, it's not like you can get one or two seats. The law says you have to have a minimum of 3. 25 percent of the vote. And with that, you get your four seats and then you can build above that. But if you get less than that, then your seats get reapportioned, um, to other parties, there is a push right now.
The leader, I think of, of United Torah Judaism, one of the, one [00:21:00] of the right, uh, wing Orthodox groups. Orthodox Jewish religious parties, uh, in, in, in Israeli politics is, is apparently introducing a bill that would bring the, the threshold down to 1. 25%, which would make it easier for seats for parties that just win one or two seats to still get their seats.
Netanyahu is. From what I understand behind all of this. So there's, there's some move to make sure that parties on the right that get fewer seats, don't lose those seats. So that's the first thing. The second thing to look, the two people to watch are Gidon Saar and, uh, Benny Gantz. So Gidon Saar, Gidon Saar was a member.
These are both Lee Kudnick's. Well, not Benny Gantz, but he was actually speaker of the Knesset, Gidon Saar. Yeah. And he's, and he was a long time Likud, uh, Knesset members, you know, been involved with Likud politics for some 20 years, broke off in opposition to Netanyahu, started a new party called New Hope.
Um, he has six [00:22:00] seats right now in the Knesset. If Netanyahu can figure out a way to bring him over to the Likud right now. He's saying he will not join the Likud. He will not fold back into Likud. He will not partner with Likud. He will basically not enable a path for Netanyahu to return to prime minister.
I'm not sure that's his last, his final word, because if you look at the polling, he runs the risk of actually falling below the threshold and losing all his seats. Or at least polling worse than, than he currently has. So there may, and he's currently justice minister and I don't think he wants to go from being justice minister, prominent role in the government to having nothing.
Um, so, so he still may be in play. Uh, so John, when you talk about that, that Netanyahu is still not north of 60 seats, it's assuming that Gideon Tzar doesn't break and come over. The other one is Benny Gantz, current defense minister, uh, leader of Koho Levon, the blue and white party. And Gantz, who feels that he got screwed by Netanyahu in 19, like, like every, like [00:23:00] everybody else in Israeli politics, 20, 20, 21.
Where he and Netanyahu worked on a rotation agreement where Netanyahu would serve as prime minister in, in the, in the first year and then in November of 21, he would hand over the premiership to Gantz. But in June of 21, Netanyahu figured a way to break up the government, go to new elections, denying Gantz's opportunity to ever be prime minister.
So, Gantz hated Netanyahu and felt that Netanyahu completely double crossed him. The only person Gantz hates more today than Bibi And Gantz has eight seats. He's part of the Bennett government. He does not want to be part of a Lapid government. And according to public reporting, there have been intermediaries between Netanyahu and Gantz meetings.
So there is a world in which Gantz Moves over to the opposition and helps Netanyahu form a government. They could try again to have form of rotation. So there are still, I mean, yes, Netanyahu is not at north of 61 in public polling, but there are still a lot [00:24:00] of cards to turn over. And Netanyahu is negotiating with Gantz's people with, with Gita and SARS people.
There's this push to reduce the threshold, to empower smaller parties on the right, to have more representation. So I still think there's a lot of maneuvering. Uh, to, to play out over the next couple months, that could help you know, yeah, I have a question. What is the status throughout all this of BB's court cases?
Um, and is it safe to say as it looks that the, those issues have not hampered him at all in, in his sort of fight back to, to, to power. The cases are dragging on. I mean, I, I saw Netanyahu in February in, in Jerusalem, uh, met with him and at the time he was focused on three things. Which were, which seemed to be in this order, one, figuring out how to engineer his return to [00:25:00] working on his memoir.
So he's working on a book, which I actually think will be, um, pretty interesting. He, he hasn't, he hasn't penned a book in something like 30 years, a little less than 30 years. Uh, his last book was place among the nations, which was, which was very good. And this is, this is really his, his, this book is going to be his life story.
Uh, and, um, and then he was working on the legal. His legal cases and the legal cases seem to be taking up. This is just my impression. There's nothing he said to me. I'm just, was observing just my sense of surgery. We're taking up the least amount of his time, uh, because they were dragging on. One of the cases in particular is, is hit a bunch of, um, roadblocks from a, from the prosecutor standpoint.
And, uh, and I, so I, I, you know, they're, they're not getting the attention they once were. And I think Netanyahu or the people around him at least believe that he becomes prime minister of these cases really, really, really slow down. There was a push to get a, um. A bill attached to, I forget which bill, I think it was the [00:26:00] bill that would dissolve the parliament, dissolve the Knesset that would make it virtually impossible for someone who's under indictment and fighting, um, these kinds of charges in court to serve as prime minister.
Obviously this bill was designed to target Netanyahu. So it would, it would make it impossible for BB to serve. The bill failed, um, to pass. So I. I don't think his, I mean, we, this is not, this is not my judgment on the situation. I just, I just said an analytical point. I don't think the legal cases are an obstacle to his return.
I mean, they're also not a legal obstacle. They may not be a political obstacle to his return because the longer these go on, uh, the more the holes in the cases become apparent. They are, they are weak. I mean, they're, they're weak, weak cases and I, I would be perfectly happy to say otherwise. If I believed otherwise, I hold, you know, I'm not here holding a brief for Bibi, but, um, a lot was going on that led to the, to the decision to prosecute him for this, [00:27:00] a lot of the politics that were going on here and the pressure that was put on, uh, Mandelblit, the Attorney General who allowed the cases to go forward, um, that is, Very hard to separate out from the fact that he had been prime minister for 12 years and that the entire political establishment, including a lot of the political establishment on the right, uh, was sick of him and, and he had made so many enemies and wanted to see the back of him, but this will be Maybe, you know, with the exception of Trump getting reelected in 2025, maybe one of the single most extraordinary, uh, resuscitations in political life.
Well, I, I will say, uh, just two, two quick points. One, uh, he is trying right now to, Netanyahu is trying right now. I think it's difficult. He's trying right now. So, so, so basically. The bill that determines the dissolution of the Knesset, [00:28:00] each side, the government has its own bill to do it. And the opposition has its bill.
So it's basically on whose terms would the government be dissolved now under the opposition's bill on the Netanyahu's preference is that he. There's, there's not a caretaker government led by Lapid, which is what will happen if, if the government, the Knesset is dissolved, caretaker government led by Lapid for the next few months until an election.
Netanyahu's preference is that a new government is formed, a new caretaker government, but a new government is formed. With the existing Knesset. So if Netanyahu can cobble together 61 seats within the existing Knesset. So force, force the vote of new comp, no confidence. And then a replacement government has formed that he leads now, presumably they still go to elections under that situation, but at least he's the.
Interim lame duck prime minister when they go to elections. Now, why is that important from what I understand? It's very important to Netanyahu when he was prime minister during those four failed or four elections that failed to lead to a government [00:29:00] that you said it earlier, John, he was always the interim prime minister.
He was always the lame duck prime minister during those. Interim periods as when Israel bounced, you know, uh, hobbled from for hobbled from, from election to election. He said, well, he still had power and that power mattered to the religious parties and the religious groups in Israel and the settlers because he still Could apportion he could deal with appropriations of funding and and all sorts of other issues So it mattered to those parties that netanyahu was still In the seat and he was able to use that to keep them loyal to him If he's not the interim prime minister when he's running for prime minister, Which means he's not able to form a government after the if he's not able to form a government after the next election Then he doesn't have that much Some of these folks are saying you know what we'll give you another shot You're our guy to try and run again because we think you you're the best shot at winning But if you fail again that you can't form a government [00:30:00] What do you have to offer us?
You're not the interim prime minister that, that is there holding things together until the next election. You can still take care of us. So him having even that interim power is important to him. Anyway, this is an incredibly revelatory conversation. Uh, Israeli politics is. Unbelievably interesting for anybody who's interested in politics.
It's important to note two things, which is that one thing that Bennett said, uh, yesterday, as he was saying goodbye to his prime ministership, is that one of the things that he was proudest of was in, in handling, uh, The American, the relationship with the United States, with the new Biden administration, wanting to re enter the Iran deal and Israel opposing re entry in the Iran deal in a way that did not jeopardize the Israeli U.
S. relationship. Obviously, a strong dig at Bibi for, uh, for [00:31:00] being so crosswise of Obama during the Obama presidency, but, um, an interesting point. Nonetheless, though, you know, I have to say that in my general estimation, uh, of course, the minute that the, um, war in Ukraine started, any idea that That there was going to be a JCPOA as we can see this week with the revival of new sanctions and things that Tony Blinken has been saying and all that that this was a fool's errand to begin with trying to restart the JCPOA given what Iranians were gonna ask for and the fact that Iran is now hurtling toward Nuclearization, but it's an interesting point Bennett Bennett Did not discredit himself in this year as prime minister.
I mean, and he's young and he's young and Israeli, he's not that young. No, no, he is young. I, you know, I don't know where he goes, but it's not like, it's not like he's disgraced himself. It's not like he goes off like all of my [00:32:00] year into the wilderness at the end of her political career. I would say that, um, but, but you know, some.
Friends of mine who are allies in Israel of Netanyahu have had made the point when they knew Bennett was, you know, a little over a year ago, was contemplating, was deciding between joining Netanyahu in a government or forming his own with Lapid, they, they argued, and I was skeptical at the time, but they may have been right, they argued at the time that if Bennett is, is the kingmaker for Netanyahu's next government.
And he's always positioned himself as to the right of Netanyahu and has a party that's ideologically to the right of Netanyahu. He really becomes the heir on the right to Netanyahu. He's the best position to, to, um, build and expand and grow the, the right in Israel after Netanyahu. And if he partners with Lapid and the Ram party, you know, you know, the Muslim party.
He'll never be able to inherit the right and he's, so he's gambling, you know, what they thought was at most, he could be prime minister for a year or a year [00:33:00] and change and then kind of be done because he will have compromised himself versus a longer term game, which was to, you know, to swallow partnering with BB for some period of time and then, and then ultimately succeed him and, you know, make.
He may have been, he may have had a longer, you know, he, in 2019, he got, he didn't meet the threshold in the 20, in those elections. He was, he was wiped out of parliament and that could easily happen again. I will say one other thing, John, is one other enormous accomplishment, which we haven't spent time on is, you know, many on the left and then the media and academia call Israel.
An apartheid state. And, and, you know, if Israel is an apartheid state, they're really bad at it because this government was formed also by another kingmaker, as we've talked about, which was the leader of an Arab Muslim party. It is pretty extraordinary. And in, in, in Israel, in a Jewish state, the key to forming a government was a Muslim.
an Arab Muslim party that basically they worked pretty well [00:34:00] together for, for about a year, which is extraordinary. And there are some who are going to say that that the failure of this government has proved that that was unworkable, that an Israeli Arab party cannot be part of the Israeli government.
And my only response to that is it is not true that an Israeli Arab party cannot be part of an Israeli government. It means that Israeli. Arab party probably can't be part of a government that's being held together with a one seat margin. So if an Israeli or parties can be part of a government, they should probably have a little more cushion, 65, 66, 67 seats in the government, which would allow the Arab party to sit out certain votes and the government not, not fall.
So the lesson isn't that Arab parties in Israel can't be part of the political process at that level. It's just, if, if they're going to choose to. Participate, they can't be holding the whole government together. Look, Bibi's 72 years old. If he becomes prime minister again, we're looking at a race in 2024 in the United States between an 82 year old man and a 79 [00:35:00] year old man.
So who's to say Bennett made a mistake? Like, Bibi's, you know, Bibi's a spring chicken, uh, by some of these calculations. And so, the only thing that is Preventing him from being prime minister forever, or really interfered or interceded with his continuing prime ministership were these legal cases. And if they go away or he is found innocent or whatever, um, there's no stopping him at the very least.
The one thing you can say about Naftali Bennett is that when the history books are written, he will be in that list of people who served as prime minister of Israel, and there just aren't that many of them. Right. You know, I mean, there are some that nobody remembers, like Levi Eshkol, hardly anybody remembers the name of Levi Eshkol, but, you know, almost everybody.
Yeah, he was Prime Minister during the Six Day War. I know he was, but he is like one of the most obscure figures in Israel's history, and everybody else, anybody who was even mildly literate in Israeli history knows. [00:36:00] And so there is Bennett, and I guess Lapid, too, will find his name. Yeah. And the person to watch now, I think is, I mean, Benny Gantz could be part of a future government, Gideon Sarr could be a part of a future government, the person, I think, to really watch who was going to be super, a key player in where things shake out is Ayelet Shaked, who's the, who's, uh, who's the interior minister now, a top lieutenant to, uh, Bennett, the number two, uh, worked for BB like Bennett, like many people who ultimately run against BB, uh, worked for BB years ago when he was in the opposition.
And. Um, she, she was in the Likud, she could come back to the Likud, um, and I think she will be a force in the, in the right, uh, going forward whether Bibi's prime minister or not. So Dan Senor, as ever, as always, thank you so much for your, your, your insight and your analysis and everybody go and subscribe to Dan's Call Me Back.
Podcast. You can hear musings on these subjects this week with [00:37:00] Ron Dermer. Ron Dermer. Speaking of which, Ron Dermer. Right. It's Ron Dermer's plan for how Biden can get the Nobel Peace Prize by engineering a formal peace agreement with Saudi Arabia. Okay. So. Thanks. Dan's gonna, again, Dan is going to do the thing that people used to do on Johnny Carson when they were big stars and not hang around for the later segments because they have more important things to do.
So with that, we will say goodbye to him. And I will start talking about the ex chair because that is What I have to do now is talk about the chair, by the way, way John. And my dream for a future guest appearance is I get to read, do the ad read for the X chair. Oh yeah. Oh, you are on. Not today. Not today.
You're on. Not today. Alright, all good seeing you.
That's all for my conversation with the commentary crew on the. Political meltdown in Israel. It's a topic I'll be returning to in the weeks and months ahead. Lapid, Netanyahu, Bennett, Ayelet Shaked, lots of interesting and important [00:38:00] characters. We'll be following it closely. Be sure to subscribe to Commentary Magazine, the website, and.
This commentary podcast, which is, it's more of a niche play, kind of a boutique podcast, unlike call me back, but I still highly recommend it. And please continue to listen to the call me back podcast. The podcast is produced by Lon Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.