If Netanyahu Were in the White House, Who Would He Be?

Ever since he entered politics a decade or so ago, people have compared Benjamin Netanyahu to American presidents. First, it was John Kennedy. Like JFK, Netanyahu is a handsome, mediagenic man with a good war record and a domineering father who has the daunting task of replacing a fallen older brother as the family’s standard-bearer.

Jack Kemp, who called Netanyahu “an Israeli Ronald Reagan,” based his comparison on Netanyahu’s skill as a communicator, his American neoconservative economic and social policies and, most of all, his hard-line posture against an Evil Empire--in Netanyahu’s case, the empire of Islamic terrorism.

Since Netanyahu became Israel’s prime minister last summer, commentators here frequently have remarked on the similarities between him and Bill Clinton. Almost the same age, they share an elite American education (Clinton at Georgetown and Yale Law; Netanyahu at MIT), a flair for electoral politics and a vulnerability to what the Clinton camp refers to as “bimbo eruptions.”

On Wednesday, after a three-month investigation, the Israeli national police recommended to the Justice Ministry that the prime minister be indicted for fraud and violating his public trust, offenses that carry a three-year prison term. Netanyahu stands accused of taking part in a conspiracy to subvert the Israeli legal system and help out an indicted political crony by appointing a fourth-rate (and presumably pliable) party hack to the position of attorney general, the country’s most sensitive law enforcement post.

Next week, the new attorney general, Eli Rubenstein, will announce whether he intends to bring Netanyahu to trial. If he does, Netanyahu will become the first Israeli prime minister indicted for a felony. If Rubenstein’s decision is “no,” it will be challenged by Netanyahu’s political opponents and very likely overturned. Either way, the question of Netanyahu’s U.S. presidential doppelganger is already settled. He is the Israeli incarnation of Richard Nixon.

To most Americans used to seeing Netanyahu appear as the voice of high-minded reason on TV talk shows, this comes as a surprise. But Israelis are not shocked. In his relatively brief public career, Netanyahu has exhibited a depressing lack of character and basic decency. In the primary campaign, he smeared his opponent, Foreign Minister David Levy, with a charge of blackmail. Later, he helped whip up the wild climate that preceded the murder of Yitzhak Rabin (Rabin’s widow still publicly refuses to forgive him for what she considers his responsibility for the assassination). In the 1996 election, Netanyahu ran a notably dirty campaign against Labor’s Shimon Peres, orchestrated by American political slime-meister Arthur Finkelstein.

In office, Netanyahu has displayed a paranoid style that has alienated the senior officers of the Army, the heads of the secret service, the elite of academia, the legal establishment, the press, the police and, most significantly, his own cabinet. He appointed a justice minister who was forced to resign because he is accused of suborning perjury; a chief of bureau who, it emerged, had a long police record; a security advisor who can’t get security clearances, and a staff of nonentities distinguished only by their canine loyalty to their boss. It is these Israeli Ron Zeiglers--and only them--who have sprung to Netanyahu’s defense in recent days.

Indeed, watching the current scandal has been like seeing Watergate unfold in fast frame. Like Nixon, Netanyahu has been tragically out of touch with reality. First he declared his innocence and demanded a full investigation. Next he watched helplessly as his John Mitchell--Justice Minister Tzachi Hanegbi--and his Haldeman--Avigdor Liberman, director-general of the prime minister’s office--become embroiled in the conspiracy.

Then, when the results of the investigation came in, Netanyahu sent his aides to attack the investigators in the name of good government (“The police are trying to stage a putsch against a democratically elected administration”). All that’s missing is a report of the prime minister roaming the halls of the Knesset, talking to the portrait of Theodor Herzl.

“The accusations against me are a kishkush,” Netanyahu said when the story first broke. Kishkush means nonsense, or at least it used to. Today, it has become the mocking Hebrew equivalent of Nixon’s “third-rate break-in.”

Netanyahu may or may not go to court, but he already has had the only trial that really matters. Like Nixon, he has told the public he is not a crook; and like Americans during Watergate, Israelis are laughing with tears in their eyes.