Meet the new Netanyahu. Not the same as the old Netanyahu, says WashPost rightie turned leftie gal Jennifer Rubin, more in sorrow than in anger. In case you haven’t been paying attention, frequent Israeli prime minister (and frequent AV non-fave rave) Benjamin Netanyahu has sunk from, well, atrocious to abysmal. Simply put, the man hath no bottom, and now, in league with a band of ultra right-wingers, he is attempting to seize arbitrary power in Israel the likes of which Donald Trump has frequently dreamed of, though fortunately not yet obtained. In other words, “new Bibi” is just old Bibi on steroids.
Well, sez AV. But Jennie says that “critics”—people like me who have always thought of Bibi as the Israeli Trump—have got it all wrong.
What those critics fail to appreciate is that Netanyahu of today is not the Netanyahu of old, the keen political mind who could overwhelm opponents, bully his own allies and navigate international diplomacy while keeping himself in tune with domestic public opinion. Talking to Israeli media, politicians and scholars over the past few weeks, I heard over and over again that this is a much-diminished Netanyahu, someone who entirely misread public opinion and failed to anticipate the broad coalition of opponents he was creating.
Uh huh. This is the same “keen political mind” who appeared before the UN in 2012, wielding a cartoon picture of an atomic bomb (more or less), claiming that those monsters in Iran would be ready to detonate one in the next six months! The same skillful navigator of international diplomacy who came to the U.S. at the invitation of smirking prick John Boehner, at that time Speaker of the House, to give a speech to both houses of Congress denouncing the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration with Iran to halt their nuclear program, which, three years after Netanyahu’s fatuous “warning”, had yet to produce an actual bomb.
It was during this speech that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul enraged Jennie—old Jennie—Likudist Jennie—for failing to applaud Bibi aggressively enough, even though, noted wiseguy Bill Maher, Rand had given Bennie fifty standing ovations—“one for every Jew in Kentucky”.
Bibi hasn’t changed, Jennie. You have. You’re not a Netanyahu-luvin’ crackpot any more. And that’s a good thing.
