How typical it is for Israel to produce--at the same time--news that's so schizophrenic.
Just a week after Israel launched a spacecraft to the moon, the country's attorney general has announced that he is going to indict the prime minister for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Let's start with the good news. Israel made history at 8:45 a.m. Feb. 21 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. An Israeli moon lander was launched, making the tiny Jewish state the fourth country in the world to shoulder such an ambitious mission after Russia, the United States and China. If this were not impressive enough, the launch, carried out by the nonprofit organization SpaceIL, was the first-ever privately funded moon mission.
Yonatan Winetraub, one of the three founders of SpaceIL, mused at a news conference about three Israelis sitting in a cafe talking about landing a spacecraft on the moon. "It sounds like the beginning of a joke," he said, "but actually, this is exactly what happened."
This is another example of Israeli ingenuity, which has already enriched humankind with inventions such as drip irrigation, which provides food for millions of people in arid areas, and Mobileye, the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that save millions of lives on the roads.
If all goes well, SpaceIL will land on the moon April 11. Two days before, another event of great importance will happen: Israelis will go to the polls. While in the coming weeks we will watch SpaceIL's progress with pride, advancing along the parallel political path leading to Election Day will be rockier.
Since beating Shimon Peres in the 1996 elections, Benjamin Netanyahu has been in the forefront of Israeli politics, ruling the country, on and off, for 10 years. To his credit, he has navigated Israel prudently in a volatile Middle East, won international support and promoted a solid economy.
However, as Lord Acton said in the 19th century: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Netanyahu, like many rulers before him, has come to believe that he is indispensable.
In public appearances before his base and in his Trumpesque daily tweets, Netanyahu portrays an alleged conspiracy, or rather a coup, led by the sinister "left," hostile law-enforcement agencies and the untrustworthy media, all aimed at violating the will of the people and pulling him down.
In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was under a corruption investigation as well. Netanyahu, then the leader of the opposition, said on Channel Two TV: "We are talking about a prime minister who is up his neck in investigations, and therefore he doesn't have a public or moral mandate to decide about issues which are so critical for the state of Israel.
"There is a concern, a real one, I must say, that because of his deep distress, he will make decisions based on the basis of his own personal interest, of his own political survival, and not according to the national interest."
What goes around comes around. Recently, in a desperate move to guarantee his political survival, Netanyahu hit bottom. He canceled a strategically important meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and instead coerced the Jewish Home, a legitimate national-religious party, to ally with Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a racist successor to the banned Kach party of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who had this to say about Israeli Arabs: "My message is clear. We have a problem, and here's my answer: Throw them out."
Every decent Israeli should be disgusted by this. Netanyahu's vile act, however, has even broader consequences. Susie Gelman, chair of the U.S.-based Israel Policy Forum, told Haaretz that "Netanyahu's actions are feeding the estrangement of young American Jews from Israel, but they are also having an impact on people of my generation-- people who have supported Israel for their entire adult lives."
Though the Israeli attorney general has decided to indict Netanyahu, the matter should be decided at the polls, not in court. A new party was recently formed in Israel named Blue and White, headed by three former chiefs of staff of the IDF and Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid (There is a Future) Party.
Forget about their ideology--there is none, except the desire to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu. Let's keep our fingers crossed for them, before power corrupts even more.
Editorial on 03/10/2019