Blinken for Bibi !
Is Anthony Blinken Netanyahu’s Secret Campaign Manager?
I am beginning to think that Netanyahu has decided on a date for elections and that Anthony Blinken is his campaign manager. Not only has Netanyahu and the Likud reached well beyond their post October 7 lows in the polls, but people who vowed never to vote for Netanyahu again are considering doing just that. The Gantz and Eizenkot resignations from the cabinet for the sole purpose of backing US policy of ending the war in Gaza on Hamas’s terms combined with the holdup of arms shipments from the United States has been fodder for the Netanyahu re-election campaign.
It is not clear how American Jews will vote this November but it is pretty clear what the Israeli people (besides the establishment) think of the coming US elections. Being betrayed by France or the UK is dog bites man. Being betrayed by a US administration in a time of war is something else altogether. More than the hemming and hawing on arms shipments and the not very strong support in the Security Council is the attempt by the US government to divide the Israeli people.
It seems they are getting their advice from Israel’s perpetual opposition – the Ehud Barak & Co. types to whom revolution and civil war is a feature and not a bug. The leadership and probably the funders of Kaplan Street Gang as they are known, since that is the street they protest on, are not interested in winning elections. They don’t even care about Netanyahu per se. They care about “taking the country back” – from whom? From those who in election after election, vote against them. They are interested in change via the streets and courts and if that doesn’t work, via revolution. Elections are not relevant to them. My guess would be that about 95% of those actually protesting (and there aren’t that many anymore) just want Netanyahu out – more for emotional than policy reasons. But the protest leaders and foreign funders are interested in a radical change to the country.
One thing I have to say for the Biden-Blinken “stability” obsession is that the last thing they want is a violent takeover of the Israeli government, even by people they agree with. That will not bring to the region is stability.
By seeming to be betting all their chips on this gang and the useful idiots who go along with them like Gantz and Eizenkot the only rational conclusion is that Blinken truly wants Netanyahu re-elected. Why else would he get rid of Netanyahu’s main competitor – Gantz – by having him adopt the defeatist policy of the Administration? According to a Hebrew summary of a recent Thomas Friedman article he tells the Biden administration to force Israel to accede to Hamas’s demands and further stipulates that they should have been forced to have a cease fire on October 8 (presumably a cease fire on October 7 itself with Hamas still occupying Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Sderot is too much even for Friedman – but then again maybe not). The former is essentially the line being taken by Gantz and Eizenkot (and Lapid for that matter) in spite of the fact that they themselves sent troops into Gaza. This is not supported by the Israeli people as even Blinken must understand.
The only way to defeat Netanyahu is to present someone who can control the military brass and execute the war more aggressively and efficiently. Again – even Blinken must understand that. This brings me to the conclusion that Blinken is running the Netanyahu re-election campaign. The only question is – is he a volunteer or is he getting paid?
Postscript:
Netanyahu had a tough week politically as he had to put to bed one of the more corrupt laws demanded by ultra-orthodox Shas Party (and that is saying a lot) – a law that would have created around 1,000 new rabbinical positions (funded by the state of course) where his party would have total control over all the appointments. Aso, the draft law is teetering even in the Likud and the coalition seems to be splitting apart. Netanyahu tried to fix it with a speech he should have given on October 8 - telling everyone to take a step back, forget all the collation agreements that were signed and to concentrate on one thing and one thing only – fighting and winning the war.
Better late than never – but too late to change the conversation. Israel needs a leader who can control the army brass and who can have a laser focus on the war – on all of its fronts. Netanyahu can do the latter but not the former and without the former, the latter is irrelevant. He does not have the political stamina and capital to fire the Defense Minster and the IDF Chief of Staff because the Kaplan Gang will fill the streets as if he is doing something illegal and the courts will stop him, not for legal reasons but because they can. Netanyahu can avoid that by calling for elections in December or January and announcing he won’t run again (for some reason he didn’t pay attention to my open letter to him back in April). We need a Prime Minster who can withstand the media vilification campaign and legal pressure he will undergo when changes are made. I don’t know who that person is. It could be Lieberman and it could be Bennet – but I am not sure. It could be some new knight in shining armor although no one comes to mind at the moment.
The four people who can’t do it or who won’t do it if given the chance are Netanyahu (without taking the advice above), Gantz, Eizenkot and Lapid.
For Blinken and Co. they seem to be doing everything they can to keep Netanyahu in power maybe because they know that is how they can control the army.
This may be the most important thing you've written.
"It seems they are getting their advice from Israel’s perpetual opposition "
Of course they are; they're basically the same group of people. Different country, same group. (And no, this is not a subtle way of pointing out that Blinken is Jewish. I mean that this isolated, weird group permeates the decision-making process in every industrialized country.)
Thanks for clearing up the confusion about the Kaplan Street Gang.
Sometimes it helps for another person to point out the obvious.
Until now I had naively thought that the demonstrators really do want to influence electoral habits, however ridiculously. And I kept getting into annoying exchanges with the supporters of the demonstrations about this. But you cleared it up.
"It is not clear how American Jews will vote this November"
That's another story for another day, but I'm going to conjecture that they'll vote Biden - and solidly. There are polling numbers that indicate sobering issues about American Jews and Israel. But this is a discussion that has to be done very dispassionately.
I think more is needed. Not a good idea to hold elections in the middle of a war. But once Gaza is conquered and Lebanon pacified, Netanyahu probably will retire from politics. To replace him however with a strong clear Zionist leadership would require a new generation of leaders completely different from the current batch across the board, younger, devoid of the delusions of a Palestinian state and the peace process, who would make heads roll in the army and security elites and be unforgiving in their reform of many of the features of Israel's electoral and judicial system which promotes highly factional, personalized and unaccountable leaders and behaviour. All the people mentioned in all the current polls are not suitable candidates.