It's no big secret that during an election campaign, candidates tend to exaggerate their criticism of their opponents and praise themselves a bit more than what is acceptable in cultured society. Cultured society is supposed to turn up its nose at this behavior, lift its teacup, and sniff condescendingly, "Oh, these politicians and their nonsense."
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This appropriate response has not been particularly popular in the four campaigns of the last two years. Our cultural elite, the ones sitting in every position of influence, made the mistake that every drug dealer is supposed to avoid, and sampled their own wares. Thus, one could find Benny Gantz sitting in studios and being asked how he is able to remain so dignified while billboards reading "It's either Blue and White, or Erdogan" were plastered alongside the highways and protesters wearing colanders on their heads were climbing, half-naked, on a menorah statue in an attempt to recreate the storming of the Bastille on Balfour St.
Still, there was a clear winner in the "Who is by far the best" competition, and of course, it's Naftali Bennett. He declared himself a candidate for prime minister even when the polls gave him only a handful of seats, and recommended himself with the same single-digit number, and did so shamelessly. Actually, there was a good reason he was so hot for the demanding job, even against all the odds: he simply knows everything.
Last week, MK Arye Deri spoke in the Knesset plenum and asked Bennett, who indeed managed to squeeze himself into the prime minister's chair due to political distress on the Left and by duping his voters, to "tell people about your dream, back them, that your speech in the UN as prime minister will change the world's policies toward Israel." Sure – just like one mandate for Yamina is worth four for Likud, one UN speech by Bennett is worth 70-odd years of global anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic sentiment. Easy.
But there was no need for Deri in order to expose Bennett's delusions of grandeur. He himself did so quite successfully before the election, before becoming prime minister, before reality hit him in the face. Back in the good old days, when he tried to cast himself as Superman.
In early July 2020, Bennett set up an "alternative" Corona cabinet, and a week later rushed to tweet: "For nothing. Just for nothing the lives of million citizens have been ruined. None of this, unfortunately, happened four months ago, apparently because Benjamin Netanyahu was afraid that Naftali Bennett would contain COVID too soon." In August, he had an astonishingly simple plan: "The workplan that I want to present," he said excitedly, waving hands that weren't tied down by anything, "has two stages. One – to get COVID under control in a few weeks, to defeat COVID. Not say, 'We'll wait for the vaccine,' because there might be a vaccine and there might not. So we won't depend on a vaccine. So the first stage is to get COVID under control, and the second stage is to tackle the chronic problems with hands that aren't bound by anything." I might have added the part about unbound hands, but obviously I got dizzy from the extreme simplification: "First: get COVID under control." Wow – why didn't we think of that? Of course the first thing to do is get COVID under control!
August also saw the publication of his book, modestly titled "How to Beat COVID," which ends with the words, "COVID? We've got this. No matter what happens – we're ready."
In October 2020 the trust in Bennett's wonderful capabilities increased to the point that two days before Matan Kahana, the last person on the Yamina list, was about to be sworn in as an MK, reached out to then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a friendly request: "Come on, Netanyahu, let Bennett replace you as prime minister for two months, so he can handle COVID."
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In December the vaccines arrived. Most of the country's adult population received their two doses and breathed a sigh of relief. In June 2021, the government of change and healing was sworn in. Two months after Bennett replaced Netanyahu, as Kahana (now religious affairs minister, thank God) asked, thousands of people were identified as carriers of the aggressive Delta strain of COVID. Dozens contracted it and died, and in August Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked was in the Channel 13 News studio, asking to "contain" the number of dead and pushing people to get vaccinated, as if she had never heard of the first stage of Bennett's plan to get COVID under control in a few weeks, without depending on vaccines.
In Bennett's defense, even Superman needs help sometimes, and aside from Bennett himself and a few Yamina members, no one really thinks he's Superman. The government of change is made up of a few unrelated clans, and that's before we count Ra'am. They are united only by their hate for Netanyahu and the people who vote for him, and accepted Bennett as prime minister. They see this sacrifice as big enough without having to actually obey him. His power as prime minister is exactly the power that the mandates he managed to scrape together give him, less MK Amichai Chikli.
But Bennett isn't a regular person. A regular person has a functioning grasp of reality, even if only to recognize himself when he looks in the mirror. But Bennett, and the rest of Yamina with him, still believe they are a ruling party led by a prime minister of unparalleled ability, and they won't budge from that belief. Their Superman flies, and keeps waving his arms even when he runs into a wall.
It's hard to believe that Bennett is capable of understanding the discrepancy between his self-image and how he's doing with getting COVID under control. Obviously, he's practicing his speech to the UN, the one that will change the world's attitude toward Israel for the better.
Will he succeed with that like he succeeded with COVID? Deri isn't sure: "After I heard your speeches from this podium, I've very concerned that even the people who support us will take it back," he said.
