Neither an angel nor a seraph. Contrary to the caution he adopted in the previous round of elections, and without repeating his unequivocal promise that Itamar Ben Gvir won't be a minister in his government, Benjamin Netanyahu came to the understanding that the two rivals won't manage to overcome by themselves the obstacles in the way of a reunion between the Kahanist faction, Otzma Yehudit, and Bezalel Smotrich's messianic Religious Zionist Party.
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Netanyahu understood that unless he holds separate talks with each of them and employs his political experience to find a compromise, no one will do it for him. His analysis was that he doesn't have another option to reach 61 Knesset votes for his camp. He also has concluded that the only way for him to get a plea bargain that will prevent him from going to jail is by sacrificing the premiership.
Netanyahu is far from being a fool. He hasn't changed his opinion about Smotrich's delusions, about his dreams of a state ruled by Jewish law, a state where sacrifices will be offered at the temple to be founded in place of the mosques. Neither has he changed his opinion about Ben Gvir who wishes to rid Israel of the Arabs but says he only means "terrorists," which, of course, only he will determine.
Netanyahu is willing to take any measure to avoid incarceration. He believes the whole world is against him and that in view of this "conspiracy" he can do things he wouldn't have imagined when he still played by the rules. He is convinced that because of this it is permissible for him to invite the two opponents of democracy to Caesarea.
If he succeeds, and his camp gains 61 Knesset seats, Israel will be a very different place, different even from what it was during the period when he was prime minister. It will become like Hungary, and if he doesn't succeed he will go down in history as someone who, to paraphrase the Biblical exegesis, both took a beating and ended up being thrown out.
Responsibility is in the eye of the beholder. In his testimony last July before the committee of inquiry into the Meron disaster, Netanyahu, who was prime minister at the time of the tragedy, explained that he can not be held responsible for something he did not know about. He wasn't aware of the State Comptroller reports that warned of the situation at Meron on Lag BaOmer, and therefore, in his words, he can not be blamed, for anything.
Netanyahu tries, time after time, to set new legal norms that have no basis. For example, he has repeatedly explained that it is permissible to receive gifts from friends (relying on the opinion of his late attorney Dr. Jacob Weinrot), while purposely ignoring the issue of the financial value of said gifts.
Now, in view of the letters of warning issued by the committee of the Meron commission of inquiry, his confidantes are repeating the message that everything is political and that the probe was established for political reasons, that its members are political opponents of Netanyahu and that everything has been done before the elections so that the warning letters can serve as a political tool to harm the Likud and its chairman.
The political context is, almost always, the last refuge of the political suspect, and there is no point in conducting a debate about it. But not being aware of a major issue that falls under your purview is a colossal failure and in any case, not knowing does not exempt you from responsibility. It is part of the job to know what falls under your authority even if you had no direct connection to a particular problem or calamity. Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law excuses not.
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The Meron disaster, in which 45 people were killed and 150 injured, is the worst civil disaster in Israeli history. Despite that, the Netanyahu government did not plan to establish a state committee of inquiry. There is not a single person in Israel who was not aware of the existence of the annual event and the terrible crowding there. The decision to give in to the demands of the ultra-Orthodox and not limit the number of participants in the gathering, especially with the coronavirus pandemic and previous reports by the State Comptroller, was reckless. When it transpires who was responsible they won't be able to get away with just a slap on the wrist.
