Bibi Derangement Syndrome and the Gaza Six

Life rarely allows us to escape complexity. Do you find yourself torn between the concrete evidence of Netanyahu’s dysfunction and the criticism you hear of “Bibi Derangement Syndrome”? You should be. Hating Netanyahu has become an obstacle to clear thinking for many Israelis. He earned legitimate criticism, but it harms us when we automatically discount everything he says and does. We need to bear F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation in mind.

Back in 2019, the right-wing Israeli intellectual Martin Sherman described Bibi Derangement Syndrome polemically:

Netanyahu is an easy man to hate. Regular readers of this blog know that I criticize his manipulative, unethical way of running the country. I have no brief to present in his defense. I, and over two-thirds of Israelis, want him to take responsibility for his manifest failures and go home. The three big ones are:

• His security concept based on the division between Gaza and the West Bank and strengthened by economic incentives for Hamas through Qatar. 

• Cutting the civil service to the bone, such that it no longer has the personnel to meet the needs of the public in an emergency. 

• The attempt to limit judicial review of executive action, the only effective check and balance in our political system, without offering any alternative to place brakes on unchecked executive power. 

Add to this his longstanding political style which promotes division as a technique for energizing his base, his social vision that seeks to limit social solidarity in a nation chronically under siege, his record of extravagant spending on luxury items (the “Prime Ministerial jet” comes to mind), and the severe accusations of corruption for which he is on trial.

During a political career that continues even though its major policies came crashing down on October 7^th, he bested rivals, won elections repeatedly, and significantly changed Israeli society. He made many enemies, not just among the tattered remnants of the Israeli Left where you would expect to find them. Netanyahu has so profoundly dismayed even his supporters that 37% of voters for parties in his coalition want him to retire. Many of those enemies are people who share his fundamental right-wing economic and social philosophy, worked closely with him, and who count the minutes until he leaves politics. Think of Bennet, Lieberman, Yaalon, and so on. What burst into public outrage with Hamas’ most recent killing of the Six was the culmination of all these factors.

Tragically and ironically, the outburst of anger directed at Netanyahu following the assassination of the Six concerns an issue about which he is not mistaken. Here is where the imbalanced approach gets in the way of clear, if painful, thinking. Netanyahu’s tragedy is that having made his career at the expense of his credibility, he does not have the public trustworthiness to speak the harsh truth to his nation. Large swathes of the public (39%) simply do not believe his motivations are kosher.

The horrible truth is that Israel cannot save many more of its kidnapped citizens if the price is the one demanded by Hamas: an end to the conflict, and withdrawal to the status quo ante. Israel cannot afford to end this war without removing Hamas as an active political and military factor controlling life in Gaza. If the defeat of Hamas is anything less than clear, if Sinwar emerges from his tunnel and rules Gaza, Israel will have lost. The next war, an even worse one, will be in the cards.

Why is it that Netanyahu is incapable of credibly conveying that painful message? His history of self-centered political maneuvering returns to bite him. I may be stating the obvious, but Netanyahu has never attracted admiration for his personality.

From time to time, one meets Israelis named after famous leaders. I once met a man we called “Beni,” whose actual name was “Ben-Gurion.” Here is a fun fact: David Levy, the famous Beit She’an construction worker and union leader who rose in the Likud to become Foreign Minister, named his son “Eshkol Levy” after the Labor Party leader and later Prime Minister Levy Eshkol. I have never encountered a person named after Benjamin Netanyahu, our longest-serving Prime Minister. He doesn’t cause the desire to have our children emulate him. That has always been his weakness, and now, when he needs that resource of public trust to deliver a strategic message of great importance and painful content, he does not have the public’s confidence.

It is not Bibi Derangement Syndrome, but a careful examination of his incapacity to govern that leads me to say (yet again) that having alienated public confidence, Netanyahu needs to resign.