End of the road for Netanyahu – the man they call ‘the magician’ has run out of tricks
Benjamin Netanyahu, the ever-present figure in Israeli politics for three decades is down and out.
“Bibi”, to give him his near-universal nickname, has been written off so many times, but now, the man they call “the magician” has run out of tricks and run out of road.
After four elections in just two years, 24 months of political stagnation, a new dawn has broken for Israeli politics. It heralds the beginning for a remarkable coalition and the end for an extraordinary political operator.
Anshel Pfeffer, Netanyahu’s biographer, said Netanyahu ‘was Trump before Trump’
Trump before Trump
Benjamin Netanyahu has been Israel‘s prime minister for the last 12 years: the longest serving leader in the country’s history. That wasn’t the start though. He was also prime minister between 1996 and 1999. In opposition before then and between those two stints, he was in the wings, plotting and driving his form of populist nationalist politics.
Bibi, the secular Jewish populist, cast himself as the defender of the nation against Iran, the defender of the Jewish State against the Palestinians, and most recently, as the saviour of the nation against coronavirus.
He is a politician who was channelling Trump while the former American president was still building casinos.
“He was Trump before Trump,” Netanyahu’s unofficial biographer, Anshel Pfeffer told me.
“He is a constant campaigner, he’s basically running for re-election the whole time. He doesn’t take a break between elections. So many of the populist politicians we talk about today – Orban in Hungary, Boris Johnson; Netanyahu was doing a lot of what they are doing now long before they were on the scene.
“Probably the only politician who was doing this in the television era before Netanyahu is Silvio Berlusconi in Italy,” Pfeffer said.
A survivor not a winner
Curiously Netanyahu was never actually a landslide politician. While often compared, as a savvy political operator, to Blair or Clinton, he only ever scraped in, but he did it consistently and that’s what mattered.
Israel is a country that functions on coalitions and Bibi was always the man who managed to form them. Critics, though, say he did it through exploitation rather than consensus.
Ehud Olmert was Netanyahu’s predecessor as prime minister. The two men were once in the same party, Likud. But as it tacked to the right, Olmert remained a centrist.
Mr Olmert told Sky News: “We never we were never friends. I never liked him. I never felt close to him. I never felt that he is a genuine human being [but] I thought it was a highly talented performer, the greatest that I’ve met in modern politics… He’s a genius. I mean, there there will be no one that can compete with him in on television. Laurence Olivier?”
He continued: “He’s a great performer, but when you look at the substance of things, the divisions within the Israeli society today are greater than ever before.”
Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu’s predecessor as prime minister, said ‘we were never friends’ but Netanyahu is ‘a genius’
Pfeffer agreed: “Netanyahu is the most divisive prime minister in history, he has exploited every divide in Israeli society between Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, left and right.
“All these all these divides have been exploited and the communities have been played off against each other to keep him in power. That’s something that Israeli society will be paying the price for for years to come.”
Danny Danon has been a close confidant of Netanyahu for decades. He is a former Likud party politician and a nationalist who doesn’t believe in a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Until last year he was Netanyahu’s ambassador to the United Nations.
He told Sky News: “Many Israelis were born knowing only Netanyahu as the prime minister of Israel.
“He is one of the greatest leaders in Israel’s history and his dedication to our security, I think that the most important thing in his legacy.”
Under Netanyahu, Israel enjoyed the longest period of economic growth in its history; an achievement only damaged by the coronavirus pandemic which ‘the magician’ managed still to turn to his advantage. From the beginning he was the consummate communicator.
Describing his early political years, Pfeffer, author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life & Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “He had literally sat at home over weekends with a rented video camera and trained himself how to do sound bites, how to do have strong, strong interviews on television.
“And when he came along in the late 1980s, he literally blew everyone away and he’s kept that advantage ever since.”
The lights have gone out on Netanyahu’s tenure as Israel’s prime minister
Bibi the peacemaker?
Despite his persona as a tough-man, the former captain in the Israeli special forces actually presided over a period of relative calm, in Israeli terms.
He has been risk-averse while building up the nation’s defences and moulding a stalemate with the Palestinians precisely because it played to his advantage.
Pfeffer said: “He has this warmongering image which he which he builds up himself, but he never pushed the button and he never launched the big attack on Iran… He didn’t launch another war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, as his predecessors did. So all these things have been talked about, but never actually happened. He’s been risk averse and that is to his credit.”
But it was all to the detriment of the Palestinian people. Netanyahu’s politics, combined with splits and failures in the Palestinians’ own leadership, have stalled the peace process.
Olmert believes the impact of this failure on the reputation of the Jewish State is huge: “The lack of political solution for the Palestinian issue is the greatest threat to the status of the State of Israel. We need to separate from the Palestinians. We need to end the occupation. We can’t be seen in the international community as occupiers because this will destroy the image of Israel, the status of Israel.”
The latest round of fighting in Gaza hinted at a consequence of the stalemate. The Palestinian cause seemed more united than ever before, but it was a street-level unity. The politicians on all sides remain intransigent.
Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi said Netanyahu’s legacy was ‘one of the most, if not the most destructive legacy for Israel, for the whole region’
Hanan Ashrawi, a central figure over decades in the quest for Palestinian statehood has a scathing assessment of Netanyahu’s legacy.
She told Sky News: “I think Netanyahu’s legacy has been one of the most, if not the most destructive legacy for Israel, for the whole region, and I think in many ways, by legitimising fascism and violence and manipulation and control as well as corruption, he has created a situation where the chances of peace have become all that more difficult, if not impossible.”
Confronting Iran
After 12 years in power, Netanyahu as been central in reminding western nations of what he sees as the malign behaviour of Iran. Yet in that time, Iran has come closer and closer to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Mr Danon doesn’t see this as a failure.
He told me: “I think the fact that he put Iran on the spotlight in the last decade and everybody today sees the real threat coming from Tehran… maybe some people see different ways to deal with the threat, but he exposed it and he mobilised our intelligence agencies to bring information. And today the Iranians cannot work quietly, continue with their ideas. All the spotlights on them.”
The last few years of his premiership have been dominated by his corruption trial – three cases of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. The trial is ongoing.
Netanyahu is said to have used Trump-style tactics long before the former US president came to power
The legacy?
Netanyahu presided over a prolonged period of peace within Israel, but even that was in doubt with recent sectarian violence between Arabs and Jews which he did nothing to calm.
He signed unprecedented and laudable diplomatic normalisation deals with Gulf Arab nations, but on that core issue which defines the land he’s ruled for so long, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, something which many Israelis seem oddly oblivious to, there are no solutions.
Netanyahu failed to bring about a lasting peace and chose instead the status quo which works for Israelis but does not for the Palestinians.
In his final interview before he died in 2016, former Israeli president and prime minister Shimon Peres was asked if he still thought there was a chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
He said: “I don’t think there [is] another alternative. Neither for the Palestinians, nor for us. The only alternative is an ongoing war. But contrary to what people think, in war there are no victories, only victims. No war is ever finished unless its being replaced by peace.”
Netanyahu and his supporters will claim he achieved many victories. But he did not replace war with peace.
All of Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and notebooks that were requested by the COVID inquiry have been handed to the Cabinet Office in “full and in unredacted form”, his spokesman has said.
The spokesman said the former prime minister wanted the Cabinet Office to “urgently” disclose the material to the inquiry.
A statement from the former PM’s spokesman said: “All Boris Johnson’s material – including WhatsApps and notebooks – requested by the COVID inquiry has been handed to the Cabinet Office in full and in unredacted form.
“Mr Johnson urges the Cabinet Office to urgently disclose it to the inquiry.
“The Cabinet Office has had access to this material for several months. Mr Johnson would immediately disclose it directly to the inquiry if asked.
“While Mr Johnson understands the government’s position, and does not seek to contradict it, he is perfectly happy for the inquiry to have access to this material in whatever form it requires.
Reaction as Johnson hands unredacted WhatsApps to Cabinet Office – politics latest
“Mr Johnson cooperated with the inquiry in full from the beginning of this process and continues to do so. Indeed, he established the inquiry. He looks forward to continuing to assist the inquiry with its important work.”
The intervention by Mr Johnson’s team will heap pressure on the Cabinet Office which has come under pressure for holding on to the documents requested by the inquiry chair, Lady Hallett.
Lady Hallett had ordered the government department to hand over the former prime minister’s messages – alongside diary entries and notes – by 4pm on Tuesday 30 May.
However, the deadline was later extended and now stands at 4pm on Thursday 1 June.
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The Cabinet Office has reiterated its refusal to hand over some of Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages to the COVID inquiry
It has been confirmed to Sky News that the inquiry has not asked Mr Johnson directly for the material and is waiting for the Cabinet Office to hand over the requested documents by the official deadline tomorrow.
Despite facing accusations of a cover-up, the Cabinet Office last night stuck by its refusal to hand over the documents, arguing that it was “firmly of the view that the inquiry does not have the power to request unambiguously irrelevant information that is beyond the scope of this investigation”.
The department said it has already provided “upwards of 55,000 documents, 24 personal witness statements, eight corporate statements” and that “extensive time and effort” had gone into assisting the inquiry over the last 11 months.
But it added: “However, we are firmly of the view that the inquiry does not have the power to request unambiguously irrelevant information that is beyond the scope of this investigation.
Boris Johnson strikes the first blow
Boris Johnson has struck a decisive blow to the government with his decision to hand his full and unredacted WhatsApp messages and documents to the Cabinet Office.
The former prime minister has moved swiftly ahead of the deadline for handing over the material to the COVID inquiry, most likely to the embarrassment of Rishi Sunak and the government.
And opposition MPs are now likely to turn their fire on to Downing Street – who have stood by their decision to refuse to hand over all the material.
Mr Johnson has decided to strike, he has handed over his material and it is up to the government how they respond.
This is a blow struck by Mr Johnson against those who claim he is holding things up and involved in some form of cover-up.
The pressure is now on Rishi Sunak to act.
“This includes the WhatsApp messages of government employees’ which are not about work but instead are entirely personal and relate to their private lives.”
If the government does not abide by the new deadline on Thursday, Lady Hallett has ordered that a statement be sent by a “senior civil servant” confirming the Cabinet Office does not have the requested information, as well as a chronology of the government’s contacts with Mr Johnson about the requests and whether the government has ever had the data.
Breaking a section 21 order could see the government face criminal proceedings, and there is also potential for a court battle over whether the information should be passed to the inquiry.
Speaking shortly before the inquiry’s announcement, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the “government is carefully considering its position, but it is confident in the approach that it’s taking”.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have criticised Mr Sunak for hesitating over the order, with shadow health secretary Wes Streeting accusing the prime minister of being “slippery”.
On Tuesday Mr Streeting said Mr Sunak should “comply with the inquiry and do it today”.
“One minute the government says the messages they have are immaterial; the next minute they’re saying they don’t exist. Which is it?”
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Rishi Sunak gives his response to speculation surrounding Boris Johnson’s messages being given to the COVID inquiry
He said the prime minister’s “slipperiness” gave “the impression of someone who is not fully committed to transparency, openness, accountability”.
Asked whether he was concerned about a potential “cover-up”, Mr Streeting said: “I think the fact the prime minister looks so slippery today will be a cause of deep anxiety to people who are following the inquiry closely – not least those families who have suffered bereavement and just want some honesty and some answers.”
The independent COVID inquiry, chaired by Lady Hallet, was announced by Mr Johnson in May 2021 and will examine the government’s handling of the pandemic.
Read more:
How Boris Johnson was ‘doorstepped’ in US – and the key question he failed to answer
Government stands by refusal to hand over Boris Johnson’s ‘private’ WhatsApp messages following criticism
The battle between the parties centres on messages Mr Johnson sent and received, as well as his diaries and his notebooks from during the pandemic.
The row started when the inquiry issued a legal notice to the Cabinet Office last week for not handing over the full contents of Mr Johnson’s messages.
While the government believes it has no duty to disclose “unambiguously irrelevant” material, Lady Hallett disagrees -and under the Inquiries Act 2005, she has the final word.
In her response to the government, she rejected their argument about the Cabinet Office deciding what or what isn’t “unambiguously irrelevant”.
She said in her ruling that all these documents “contain information that is potentially relevant” to how decisions were made during the pandemic.
World
Ukraine war: Workers at deteriorating Zaporizhzhia plant fear ‘devastation’ on a scale ‘worse than Chernobyl’
Sitting on the Dnipro River in Russian-occupied Ukraine is Europe’s largest nuclear power station – on the frontline of a worsening war.
Over a period of a few weeks we spoke to two workers at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
And the warnings they gave of what could happen should send a cold chill around the world.
The interviews were conducted on the condition of anonymity and at great personal risk to them. They told us that if they were caught, they could be tortured, imprisoned, or worse. They know the dangers but still wanted to be heard.
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Neither of the technicians knew that we were talking to the other. But their testimony of the possibility of a major nuclear catastrophe was worryingly familiar. One of the men, who we will call Serhii, warned the consequences could cause devastation across much of Europe, Russia and the Mediterranean.
“The level of radioactive pollution, and most importantly the area of contamination, will be thousands of square kilometres of land and sea… it would be much, much worse than Fukushima and worse than Chernobyl.”
While some nuclear experts think that such an eventuality is unlikely, others have told us it’s a possible worst case scenario.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was captured by Russian forces in March last year at the beginning of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Since then there have been major concerns about safety at the plant. Not least of all because heavy weapons, including shells and rockets, have hit the buildings.
Both sides blame each other. But our sources told us that Russia has been deliberately targeting power lines to disrupt the flow of electricity to Ukraine. These lines are essential for plant safety and the cooling mechanism of the reactors.
For 30 years, workers at Europe’s largest nuclear power station couldn’t imagine that there could be a power outage.
Since Russian forces occupied the site last year it has happened seven times.
The back-up generators we were told are also not being properly maintained, the other man, Mykola, told us that this was because of staff shortages.
He says that before the war there were 11,000 staff at the plant and now there may be as few as 3,500.
“There is the same deficit of workers for repairs who can actually do the servicing and fix problems. The quality of the workers is lower because the qualified staff left. So generally the situation here is deteriorating.”
Five of the six reactors are now in cold shutdown, but there are fears Russia may use the power plant to stage a false flag attack.
Ukraine’s defence ministry alleges Moscow could be about to simulate a major accident, such as a radioactive leak, as a way of stopping any Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south of the country.
Satellite view of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on fire
Ukraine is expected to order its troops to reclaim territory lost at the beginning of the war in the coming weeks.
The power station has been under occupation now for 15 months and the technicians have told us that in the last few weeks the level of military activity has increased dramatically.
They’ve witnessed Russian forces, moving more armour, more ammunition and more guns into place as they fortify their positions.
Serhii says that he thinks it’s because they know the nuclear plant is safe from Ukrainian strikes.
“Ukrainian armed forces will not shell the station. That’s why they are multiplying the numbers of troops and vehicles here because if they did it in another place they would definitely get shelled by the armed forces of Ukraine.
“The thing is, one month and half ago there were two times less troops on the power station and now there are two times more which means they are definitely preparing for the counteroffensive.”
The men spoke to Sky News about their experience at the plant
It is hard to know what is exactly going on inside, but we understand technicians are routinely intimidated to keep them silent – effectively held as hostages.
Mykola told us it’s a frightening place to work, but he has no choice.
“Everyone has their own story. And I think the most important thing is not to get into their hands because it’s unlikely you will get out and still be the human you were when you went in.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency is carrying out inspections, but it continues to express grave concerns about the nuclear plant and is calling for the area to be demilitarised immediately.
But there is no sign that will happen. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
China’s Communist Party has warned about the potential risks of AI, a day after experts said it posed a similar risk as nuclear war and pandemics.
A meeting headed by President Xi Jinping called for “dedicated efforts to safeguard political security and improve the security governance of internet data and artificial intelligence”, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
With artificial intelligence advancing rapidly, the president urged officials to be “keenly aware of the complicated and challenging circumstances facing national security”.
President Xi said China needed a “new pattern of development with a new security architecture”, according to Xinhua – apparently reflecting concerns that AI could be harnessed for sabotage and spying.
The risk of human extinction from the technology “should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”, AI pioneers warned this week.
The boss of the firm behind ChatGPT and the head of Google’s AI lab all signed the open letter, as did several of the “godfathers” of the technology.
The director of the Center for AI Safety, which published the statement, told Sky News that human intelligence would eventually be overtaken by the power of AI.
“That could put us in a more fragile position and we could possibly go the way of the Neanderthals or the gorillas,” said Dan Hendrycks.
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AI could put us in a fragile position – Dan Hendrycks
Tesla boss Elon Musk joined another group of experts in March to call for a pause in the training of large language AI models – the type used by ChatGPT and similar chatbots.
That letter warned of “profound risks” and said powerful systems should only be developed when it could be assured “their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable”.
The spread of disinformation, the loss of millions of jobs, through to existential threats are often cited as potential dangers if AI continues to evolve rapidly.
Though still in its infancy, it has already received attention for its ability to produce convincing fake images and video, as well as cloned music tracks.
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Will this chatbot replace humans?
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China’s warning comes despite its usual laissez-faire attitude to developing and using new technology.
An article in the Foreign Affairs journal this week warned its “blithe attitude toward technological risk, the government’s reckless ambition, and Beijing’s crisis mismanagement are all on a collision course with the escalating dangers of AI”.
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China has been criticised by many in the West for using tools such and facial and voice recognition – and even walking gait analysis – to monitor the population.
Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region have in particular been subject to such monitoring, with more than a million held in “re-education” camps.
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