1
Return of the “Bibi Spirit”
March 2015
On Wednesday, March 11, 2015, six days before the general election, Benjamin Netanyahu summoned a few leaders of the settler movement to an urgent meeting at the prime minister’s Jerusalem residence. It wasn’t the ordinary forum of Judea and Samaria leaders, those who have ties with the media and regularly leak the contents of their meetings with the PM to the press. This was to be a key meeting; historic, even. Netanyahu required complete secrecy. He had invited only people in whom he had absolute faith: those closest to him, the most experienced and reliable activists on the ground, the people who could tell Netanyahu what he needed to know.
What he most wanted on that day were voters. The last weeks of the campaign had turned into a catastrophe for Netanyahu. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. After unilaterally calling the election to score an easy victory, he suddenly found himself slipping behind his enemy, Yitzhak Herzog, in all the polls. From a sure winner and eternal prime minister, Netanyahu turned into a lame duck waiting to be put out of its misery. Herzog was leading by a steady two to four points. The street was controlled by left-wing NGOs funded by American billionaires supporting the peace process. Those parts of the media that could not yet be controlled by Netanyahu filled the headlines with derogatory stories about his wife and him. A constant stream of former generals called for Netanyahu’s ouster and replacement, claiming he was jeopardizing Israel’s security. According to most pollsters the gap between Netanyahu and Herzog was even greater, and the wider it became, the sooner Netanyahu’s imminent collapse. Herzog’s campaign managers spoke of a double-digit victory. It had happened before to Netanyahu in 1999 when he was pushed from office by Ehud Barak. Bibi had opened that campaign with a lead of 1 or 2 percent and ended it with total failure.
During the final weeks of the 2015 campaign, Netanyahu was subjected to a seemingly endless series of electoral catastrophes. The media were full of stories of his wife’s obsession with collecting empty bottles for recycling and pocketing the deposit on bottles bought with public funds. There was the state comptroller’s report on greedy and wasteful spending in the PM’s residences (both official and private); a failed broadcast campaign comparing the country’s larger trade unions with Hamas in Gaza; and there was the ongoing housing and real estate crisis in Israel, most of the responsibility for which fell on Netanyahu’s shoulders. All this added to the fact that less than a year earlier, Tel Aviv had been bombed by Hamas nonstop for two months. There was more. In short, Bibi was everyone’s scapegoat. Led by the free daily Israel Today, financed by a staunch supporter, the American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, he tried to fight back, but by this time Netanyahu was drowning in a flood of bad news that threatened his tenure in the prime minister’s office.
Netanyahu was under siege. He was surrounded by political adversaries aspiring to replace him, or at least to kick him out of office. Moshe Kahlon, a former minister in his government, resigned and established a rival party, “Kulanu.” Kahlon had already closed a coalition deal with Labor’s Herzog. Kahlon intended to go with Herzog even in the event of a draw with Netanyahu. Kahlon’s wish to depose Netanyahu was an ambition shared by others: Avigdor Lieberman, who had sworn to depose Bibi, was in on it, as was Yair Lapid, who seemed to feel that getting rid of Netanyahu was his mission in life. Even Shas leader Aryeh Machluf Deri was sick of Netanyahu saying behind closed doors that he would do everything he could to rid the country of his leadership, even if this meant sitting in the same coalition as Yair Lapid.
In Likud, too, things were looking bad: Netanyahu had virtually no strongholds within his own party, except for that devoted stalwart, cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz. Many Likud MKs had already begun deploying for the “day after.” Some of them held secret meetings with former minister Gideon Sa’ar, who had resigned several months earlier and swore to do everything in his power to remove Netanyahu from the prime minister’s office. The knives were unsheathed and honed for Bibi’s downfall, which was meant to take place the day after his election defeat. Senior Likud members vowed to learn their lesson from the 2006 defeat, when the party, under Netanyahu’s leadership, won only twelve Knesset seats, an unprecedented political low, but at that time none of them had had the power to overthrow him. This time, the Likud leaders would not let that happen. They would not grant him a single minute of grace. According to the plan, Netanyahu would be overthrown immediately after his defeat.
Benjamin Netanyahu heard it all and saw it all. He was alone against the world. From Washington to the European capitals down to the city of Tel Aviv, everybody wanted to be rid of him. Yitzhak Herzog took wing and nested in Jerusalem, Likud’s stronghold and Bibi’s city.
It was during these days that, against all odds, he was infused yet again with the “Bibi Spirit” made famous in his first campaign. Call it the spirit of resolve, the refusal to quit, the code of the last man standing. Suddenly, Netanyahu had gone back twenty years to the days when he was young and full of energy, the great white hope of the Israeli right. Then he had managed to achieve the unbelievable: to defeat Shimon Peres only six months after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Then, too, no one believed he stood a chance. The day after the Rabin assassination, he was sure the right didn’t have a hope of winning an election for the next twenty years at least. But he won.
Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, was also present at the meeting in the PM’s residence on the Wednesday before the elections. Bibi and Sara are two people completely united in personality and spirit. Several of the campaign leaders were also present at that meeting, including Shlomo “Momo” Filber, a long-standing Netanyahu associate and a successful operations officer in everything concerning the Judea and Samaria regional council. Filber was the campaign’s operations officer, responsible, too, for the program devised at that meeting. Netanyahu looked at the assembled settlement activists before him before embarking on the speech of his life. As far as he was concerned, at that moment this speech was even more important than the one he had delivered to the U.S. Congress.
“I suggest you start packing,” Netanyahu told his guests. “I am facing defeat. The left is about to win the election. I will be ousted from the PM’s office, but it’s you who’ll be paying the real price. You will be ousted from your homes. Remember the disengagement from Gaza? It’s back. The left will form a government that will dry out the entire settlement enterprise. Some of you will have to leave the House; others will simply be dried out. But it’s not too late. It all depends on us and, especially, you. You have to understand the gravity of the situation. It’s a war of to be or not to be, a war for our home, for the Land of Israel. First you need to know that a vote for Naftali Bennett and Jewish Home is tantamount to a vote for the left. So maybe Bennett will get three to four more seats, but Herzog will form the government. The minute you understand this, you have to pass it on. To your family, your friends, everyone who is part of this huge settlement enterprise. They all have to understand the repercussions of a vote for Bennett in this election.
“I need one more thing from you,” Netanyahu added. “I need you in the field. I want every regional council in Judea and Samaria to take responsibility for one or two towns with a strong Likud support base and act there, starting today and until Election Day; especially on Election Day. Our voting public is apathetic, doesn’t understand how important it is, and I want you working in these towns, 24-7. We have lists; all you need is to go to the people and bring them to the voting stations and explain what they have to do. It’s not impossible. It’s not too late.”
Netanyahu made a huge impression on his guests, some of whom having known him for years and having heard him speak dozens of times. But this time, they said, it was completely different. There was an apocalyptic air in the room. Netanyahu sounded like a prophet of doom and spoke from the heart. This time he did not make do with words; this time he would translate his words into deeds. Modern technology reveals voting trends in real time, which made it possible to pinpoint the reserves of potential Likud voters to the tiniest resolution. Databases and digitization make possible an organized and efficient campaign to reach every potential voter, in record time and with good chance of success. Filber quickly divided Likud’s traditional voting strongholds among the settler activists. Electronic databases were updated. The system was activated. The pollsters intensified their pace. Netanyahu meant to fight to the end, not to lose a single vote. If he had to go, he wouldn’t go without a struggle.
It was Benjamin Netanyahu’s finest hour. The past year had seen a steady increase in the number of his eulogizers. The sixty-six-year-old leader looked tired, burned out, and sounded monotonous. There were no more rabbits to pull out of the hat. His slogan “Strong Against Hamas” had bankrupted itself during the month of rocket attacks on Tel Aviv. Most of his allies in Likud loathed him. Almost all the other party leaders, from right and left, prayed for him to leave. At one point, the most desperate moment in the campaign, a far-reaching proposal was raised in Bibi’s inner circle: Netanyahu could announce on the eve of the election that this would be his final attempt to be elected prime minister, and if elected, his last term in office. The proposal garnered considerable support. Netanyahu himself was in favor of it. It may have softened the intense anti-Netanyahu sentiment that prevailed both within and outside his camp. Just give him one more chance, and then he’ll go. It was his wife, Sara, who rejected the idea out of hand. And it was Mrs. Netanyahu’s word that prevailed. The prime minister was not often one to disobey his wife, and certainly not over something like this.
As the campaign drew to a close, Netanyahu worked around the clock, gripped by a manic frenzy. Netanyahu is remarkable, sleeping a mere three to four hours a night. His dreams are no doubt work-related—how to bring home the votes he needs to prevail. When his adversaries rest, Netanyahu forges forward. An obsessive, relentless fighter, failure is not a legitimate option for him. He tries to be the justification for the victory. In the 2015 campaign, Netanyahu raised all these attributes to unprecedented heights, eclipsing his own previous performances.
The fight was not only for the post of prime minister, but for his very life, or at least quality of life. At that time, there was talk of a possible criminal investigation into irregularities in the prime minister’s residence. The press and the state comptroller’s report painted a problematic, some said sick, picture of hedonistic behavior in the Netanyahu household, and excessive misuse of public funds. Bibi had already been there back in 2000 after he was ousted from office the first time. Then, too, his wife was under criminal investigation regarding gifts that her husband had received as prime minister, and exorbitant expenses. Netanyahu and his wife were interrogated countless times by the National Fraud Unit. He had been thoroughly humiliated, but evaded an indictment. He would later say of his accusers that the police investigation and his public humiliation were responsible for the untimely death in 2000 of his mother, Cela Netanyahu. In the end, and after much hesitation, the attorney general decided to close the case without indictment, but leaving Netanyahu emotionally scarred. Ever since, he has been terrified of the possibility of once again having to face a similar experience.
Bibi knew that if he lost the election and was ousted from office, he’d be vulnerable to another series of interrogations, and was not willing to go through that humiliation. So, in March 2015, he was fighting not only for his political life, but also for his honor, and quite possibly for his personal freedom as well. He knew that as soon as he vacated the prime minister’s office, he would lose the immunity granted him by the state’s law enforcers. He knew all those who wished to collect a bounty on him, to be rid of him, who sought revenge.
During the final days of the campaign he pulled out all the stops. He gave interviews to every available television and radio channel, blatantly defying Israeli election laws that forbid political propaganda during the final two weeks before Election Day. Television networks played along. Netanyahu’s objective was simple: Spread fear. He created a deliberate front against the media, banished a television crew from his official Jerusalem residence on Election Day, refused interviews to specific journalists, and presented a version of reality in which the left-wing media were trying to oust him from office by cooperating with the extreme left and the Arabs. He knew that this was the way to bring home traditional Likud voters and to rake in as many of the Jewish Home voters as possible. He wanted this community to vote for him, to identify with the siege he had been under, to feel indebted to him for his political sacrifices on their behalf, and to rally round the incumbent prime minister. He made his by now famous announcement that “hordes of Arabs are flocking to the voting stations,” claiming that “buses funded by left-wing NGOs are driving them in.” This was untrue, but on Election Day truth was the last thing that concerned Netanyahu. He knew how to stir the most basic instincts of right-wing voters, and had succeeded in awakening them. Throughout his campaign, his HQ distributed untrue video clips and beeper messages via social media claiming that Hamas and its military arm, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, were calling all Israeli Arabs to vote against Netanyahu. It worked.
On Election Day, Moshe Kahlon, ex-Likud MK and now head of his own political party, toured the voting stations. Toward evening, he visited towns with a heavy Likud electorate, where his own potential voters were lurking. An experienced political fox who could sniff a Likudnik from a mile away, he noticed an extraordinary phenomenon that evening: large numbers of Likud voters flocking to the voting stations. Dozens of them greeted him warmly. We want you to be the next finance minister, they told him; you are one of ours; we love you. “So you’ll be voting for me?” he asked. They were not and they said so.
“We are voting Bibi.”
And so they did. During the last days of the campaign, Netanyahu managed to bite off four to five seats from Jewish Home, around four from Kahlon, two to three from Avigdor Lieberman, and a similar number from Shas party. Even Eli Yishai, who had established a party to rival Shas from the right, lost all his support and remained out of the Knesset. Netanyahu’s campaign caused the right-wing ultra-Orthodox camp to lose much of its power, but it didn’t matter. Netanyahu won.
Netanyahu himself could not believe what he had achieved. Just four days before Election Day, he was telegraphing defeat. “It’s the end of an era,” he said to his supporters. “We’ve lost.” An internal poll gave Herzog a three-point advantage. It was the same on Sunday and Monday. But Netanyahu didn’t despair. He fought to the end, getting louder and pushing harder those final forty-eight hours. The fact that he had become the underdog actually helped him. At the start of the two previous campaigns he was considered the man to beat for premiership, a certain winner. And in the course of those campaigns he lost five to eight Knesset seats. This time he was heading for defeat. At the last moment, the Likudniks rallied around him, which gave him the election. An idea of Bibi as a man under siege by all of Israel’s enemies, starting with the media and the left all the way to the Arabs, succeeded beyond all expectations. Add to this mix President Barack Obama, one of Netanyahu’s most valuable electoral assets. For Israel’s right, Obama has been an enemy who wanted to see Bibi deposed, and that fact was a major boost for Bibi’s campaign. Taken together with the massive get-out-the-vote effort of the West Bank settlers on Election Day, something unprecedented happened: Netanyahu’s party won thirty Knesset seats, twelve more than predicted only a week earlier.
The first rumors of a possible draw spread during the afternoon of Election Day. As the stations closed, the gossip became reality. The television analysts were reporting a draw. Netanyahu, ensconced with his close supporters and waiting to deliver a defeat speech, was happy. A draw was all he wanted. Netanyahu headquarters had already sent out a group of Likud activists to demonstrate outside Kahlon’s headquarters, to pressure him against joining a coalition that was forming under Yitzhak Herzog. By morning, it was no longer relevant. During the night, the draw had turned into a sweeping victory for Netanyahu. Earlier, in the late evening and into the night, Herzog had been trying to form a coalition. He spoke with Kahlon, Lieberman, Lapid, and others. They all gave the impression there was something to discuss. But by morning, it was all over. Netanyahu had thirty seats and Herzog only twenty-four. As far as Netanyahu was concerned, this was only the beginning, but even he couldn’t believe it. The Bibi Spirit had done it again. The magic was back. Netanyahu had reinvented himself.
What was he going to do next?
Copyright © 2017 by Ben Caspit
