Jotam Confino gives his readers both the best and the worst of the man in a work that throws light into some dark corners and is very well worth the study.
Despite Jotam Confino’s obvious distaste for the political stance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the effect on Israel of his long periods in power, the author of Netanyahu’s Israel: Rise of the Far Right describes him as “one of the most influential prime ministers in Israel’s history,” unique among modern political leaders.
Confino was born in Israel in 1990. His grandparents had founded a kibbutz and his father served in the IDF, but the family moved to Denmark and that is where he grew up. His connection to Israel remained strong, however, and it was at Tel Aviv University that Confino studied for his MA in security and diplomacy. Subsequently, based in Denmark, he became an internationally respected journalist and broadcaster, known especially for his expertise in the Middle East.
In 2018, he decided to move to Israel “embarking,” as he put it a few years later in a piece in Haaretz, “on what I thought would be a journey to explore my roots, and to live and work in the country in which I was born.” However, he found himself out of sympathy with the mood and tone of Israel at that time.
The career and influence of a pillar of Israeli affairs for 30 years
In Netanyahu’s Israel: Rise of the Far Right, Confino traces the career and influence of the key figure in Israeli affairs for the past 30 years – Benjamin Netanyahu. The author sees the Netanyahu era as resulting in a “deep societal rift,” as he puts it – even “the threat of civil war continuing to loom over the country.” He perceives the liberal values of Israel’s founding fathers eroded, and extreme right-wing views gaining ground.
Keeping his focus tightly concentrated on Israel, Confino does not relate this trend to the rise in right-wing politics increasingly evident in Western society as a whole, in the United States and across swaths of Europe such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.
Confino shapes his book as an examination in depth of the years between the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995, and the Israel-Gaza war that followed Hamas’s barbarous assault on Israel on October 7, 2023.
In the 1996 election, Netanyahu, reiterating his opposition to the Oslo Accords that Rabin had accepted, appealed specifically to religious and ultra-Orthodox voters. He managed to beat his opponent, Shimon Peres, by a hair’s breadth and became prime minister for the first time.
Thus began the incident-packed years during which Netanyahu demonstrated a remarkable ability to ride out any storm, and in which, Confino perceives, Netanyahu’s hunger for political power and instinct for political survival eventually led him to head a coalition dependent on the support of extreme right-wing politicians. Netanyahu has so far served as Israel’s prime minister for 17 of the past 30 years.
His capacity to weather the storm was perhaps most evident in the eight years of the Barack Obama presidency in the US. When he came into power in 2009, Obama made it plain that he wanted to reset America’s relationship with the Muslim world in general, and with Iran in particular. He laid out his intentions in a speech in Cairo in June of that year.
NETANYAHU, ANXIOUS to maintain a good working relationship with the US, found himself under increasing pressure to offer concessions that stretched his domestic political credibility to the limit. Confino reminds his readers of how, 10 days after Obama’s Cairo speech, Netanyahu responded with an address at Bar-Ilan University in which he called on the Palestinian leadership to restart peace talks and declared that Israel was willing to accept a Palestinian state, provided it was demilitarized.
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Widening the chink in Netanyahu’s armor, Obama next pushed hard for a freeze on settlement construction in order to pave the way for peace talks. Netanyahu managed to persuade his coalition cabinet (which included the Labor party) to agree to a 10-month suspension of building. The Palestinian Authority (PA) leader, Mahmoud Abbas, wasted nine of the 10 months in attempting to get an extension of the freeze, and the subsequent talks soon collapsed.
This was the high- or low-water mark, depending on political perception, of Netanyahu’s flirtation with centrist policies. The Labor party as such left his coalition in January 2011, though a rump [remnant], renamed Atzmaut, led by Ehud Barak, stayed on.
Confino sees Netanyahu’s policy toward Hamas in the period leading to Oct. 7 as disastrous.
For years, he says, Netanyahu followed a totally misconceived strategy. Banking on the fundamental discord between Hamas and the PA, he allowed Qatar to send millions to Hamas on a regular basis, believing that the stronger Hamas became, the weaker the PA became, with its proclaimed objective of a two-state solution. He followed the universal view of political, security, and military opinion at the time – that Hamas could do little more against Israel than send rockets and missiles and suffer a military put-down from time to time.
Confino completed his book in the first half of 2024, with Netanyahu facing enormous pressure from the public to negotiate the release of those hostages remaining in Hamas’s hands. Public demonstrations charged him with responsibility for the situation, and opinion polls showed a majority wanting him to resign at once or as soon as the war was over.
Public opinion is notoriously fickle, and nothing can stop the onward flow of events. Who could have foreseen Israel’s outstanding success in decimating Hamas and Hezbollah, neutering their command structures, and eliminating both their leaders – Yayha Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah? Netanyahu’s public standing has undoubtedly recovered, though one of Confino’s main concerns – the divisive effect of the judicial review proposals – is still hovering in the background and could again split the nation.
ON ONE specific matter, Confino acknowledges that Netanyahu was correct. On more than one occasion, Netanyahu declared to the world that it was mistaken to believe that solving the Israel-Palestinian dispute was the key to establishing peace in the Middle East.
The reverse was true. If peaceful relationships between Israel and its Middle East neighbors were established, the Israel-Palestinian dispute could be resolved. It was on this philosophy that, in conjunction with President Donald Trump in his first presidency, Netanyahu was instrumental in establishing the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab states. What will Trump’s second period in power achieve?
In Netanyahu’s Israel: Rise of the Far Right, Confino takes his readers on a truly fascinating journey through Israel’s recent history, illustrated with 28 historic photographs, charting the story of the political genius with feet of clay who has led the nation for most of three decades.
Confino gives his readers both the best and the worst of the man in a work that throws light into some dark corners and is very well worth the study.
- NETANYAHU’S ISRAEL: RISE OF THE FAR RIGHT
- By Jotam Confino
- Vallentine Mitchell
- 200 pages; $32