Is There a 'New Netanyahu'?

U.S. President Donald Trump's insistence on issuing a presidential pardon for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, amid his ongoing trial on criminal charges, raises the question of whether such a pardon would lead to the emergence of a "new Netanyahu" different from the one everyone knows. However, the accumulated facts indicate that Netanyahu remains the same, and there are those who assert that he will remain so. Some, including Aluf Ben, the editor-in-chief of "Haaretz," go so far as to say that a presidential pardon would only remove what remains of checks and balances, increase the power of the prime minister, and reinforce the rule of the autocratic individual. It's worth noting that Netanyahu has not tempered his vehement attacks on the rule of law, the media, and opponents, but instead added what is described as a process of political cleansing within the military and security institution.

This interpretation regarding Netanyahu is not a product of the current moment influenced by the trial or the prolonged war in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but has been a habit of some Israeli academics and analysts for years. To be more precise, we should recall what, for example, the Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell (1935-2020), a specialist in fascism, wrote over ten years ago, particularly emphasizing that Israel is no longer "the only democratic state in the Middle East" as it claims, especially after the aggressive war on Gaza in 2014. In his view, what distinguished that war in particular was the behavior of intellectuals, who moved towards complete commitment to the official line, with most of them following the herd. Furthermore, the bankruptcy of mass media during that war was absolute. Moreover, universities and the academic institution conformed to the governance and the overwhelming majority in the street; and without anyone asking them, some university institutions began to demand that academic staff restrain themselves in their criticisms.

Secondly, the mentality represented by Netanyahu is fascistic, centered on the need for the existence of an internal enemy in addition to the external enemy. What Netanyahu has proven over his long years in power is that without hatred of Arabs, without vilifying what is described as the "left" as treasonous, and without fierce attacks on freedom of expression and criticism, his extreme Jewish nationalism would not be complete. On more than one occasion, Netanyahu's behavior has revealed that free media, which exposes his scandals every day, is like an immediate enemy. Thirdly (and perhaps most importantly), it is mistaken to think that what drives Netanyahu to all this behavior is the fear of being imprisoned at the end of his trial; if that were his only goal, he could have reached a plea bargain to cancel the charges in exchange for retiring from political life. But Netanyahu is hungry for power and worships it. Therefore, he recoils from any manifestation of liberal democracy that seeks to limit executive power and glorifies what is called the "governance principle," as if the principal mission of the state is to govern at any cost and regardless of what happens.

While within the three branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive), the law constitutes the mission of the first and second branches, this is neither coincidental nor trivial; rather, the rule of law is what organizes the management of the state, and it is what bestows legitimacy on its acts and activities. As one of the senior political science professors in Israel (Professor Yigal Elam) previously pointed out, the source of the word "legitimacy" is a Latin word meaning "law." In contrast, those who speak on behalf of the "governance principle" practically claim that the branches which preserve the rule of law should be in service of the third branch, the executive; this is a distorted principle, relied upon by any dictatorial regime.