In Bibi’s Image

Binyamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu can hardly complain he lacks public attention. Rather, he seems the political embodiment of Oscar Wilde’s maxim: ‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’ In Bibi’s case, portrayals are rarely positive, whether domestic or international; typical accusations include corrupt egomaniac, Machiavellian manipulator, and even genocidal monster. 

Literature on the man isn’t scant. Yet commentators cannot account for the set of traits —or tricks—through which this singular seventy-six-year-old politician has kept a whole country under his spell for sixteen years.

A combination of three seemingly obvious features reveals what image Israel’s Prime Minister is projecting on the country he runs. 

Spotlight on Bibi

Presumably, not very many Israeli PMs would have been featured on a Vanity Fair cover. Netanyahu did so as early as in June 1996, after his first electoral victory. 

A recent video interview, released on 14^th July, suggests why. As he outlines his vision for the current conflict with Hamas and its aftermath, Bibi’s soothing voice explains how military and diplomatic pressure must be applied jointly. As he mentions the former, his left fist closes; the right one follows as he completes the sentence. He constantly looks straight into the camera, slightly from the bottom up. His equally disquieting and mesmerising feat of choreographic consciousness reminds one of Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump. The latter, not surprisingly, is evoked at the end of Bibi’s remarks. 

This performance is the result of a long-standing, seldom appreciated experience as a TV personality. Having been educated and having worked in the United States did earn Netanyahu a damning reputation of foreignness and artificiality. Yet, one can hardly forget that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, before his political career kicked off properly, he had featured regularly as a commentator for CNN and Nightline. He then quickly turned these rhetorical skills into political capital; first as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, then as Israel’s spokesperson addressing Western audiences during the first Gulf War, when he was serving as deputy foreign minister. 

Netanyahu’s media prowess offers an answer, however partial, as to how he’s kept atop Israel's chaotic political system for fifteen of the last sixteen years. He is trained in persuasion. 

Grieving Zealot Bibi

Political survival is no doubt another great ability of Bibi’s. Many of his detractors, including the New York Times, argue that the Gaza war and its prolonging are closely tied to his desperate holding onto power. Netanyahu, they argue, has cynically given in to the political pressures of his radical-right and nationalistic allies, preventing them from sinking his fragile parliamentary coalition. As likely as that sounds, less attention is devoted to Bibi’s ideological background as explaining why he has been so hard-handed in the current conflicts. 

The Israeli PM was raised in a militantly Zionist family, subscribing to a ‘great Israel’ arrangement that would see all Palestinian lands handed over to Israel, and their ethnically Palestinian inhabitants relocated to Jordan or Egypt. It so happens that that family ranked high in both intellectual rigour and military heroism. 

His father Benzion was a prominent historian of Judaism and remained a guiding light to his politically successful son until he passed away, aged 102, in 2012. From him, Bibi drew the conviction that the 2005 relinquishing of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank depended on a lack of moral resolve in most of Israel’s political establishment, which he felt called upon to make right. He started by resigning as finance minister in Sharon’s cabinet. And then there is Bibi’s older brother, Yonatan, whom he adored and who in 1976 was the sole military casualty in the much-celebrated Operation Entebbe. 

Even though one can indulge in only so much psychological speculation, one does wonder whether Netanyahu, as a devoted son, grief-stricken brother, and former captain in Sayeret Maktal, the IDF’s special forces, might actually have deep-seated reasons, however controversial, to believe in the political vision his government is pursuing. These might motivate him far more than crude political calculus. 

Shoulder-Shrugging Bibi

Ideology and psychology aside, Bibi is certainly ruthless. While the country he leads has been fighting on seven different fronts in the past two years, domestic politics in Israel has also been in turmoil. That includes calls for PM Netanyahu to scrap his plans of judicial reforms as well as the public debate over who is to blame for not having foreseen—or taken the necessary precautions to avoid—the October 2023 massacre. 

As early as in July of last year, a survey conducted by the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research assessed the desire for a public inquiry concerning the October 2023 military catastrophe. The prospect of a formal investigation is supported by broad public consensus (90% of respondents) as well as by Israel’s history. In fact, since the 1974 Agranat Commission investigated the Yom Kippur War, no military defeat has gone unscrutinised in the Zionist state. 

Yet Bibi has deflected all claims that he enabled Hamas to massacre and kidnap several hundred Israelis by allowing Qatari funds into Gaza and by neglecting repeated military warnings of an imminent attack. Not only has he put that blame onto the then military leadership (most of which he fired), but has rallied his parliamentary majority to resist a judicial inquiry; as with post-war plans for Gaza or his ongoing trial for corruption, he postures as a leader whose time and attention is needed for more pressing matters. 

Whether this attitude is motivated by ideological conviction and shielded by what is left of his mediatic charisma is less noteworthy than him keeping his priorities straight with singular, brutal dexterity. It makes him look like an almost invincible figure.  

Statement

A master of rhetoric, Binyamin Netanyahu wields his charisma as a shield. Critics lament his cynicism, yet beneath the surface lies a profound ideological inheritance, blending family mythology, historical grievance, and Revisionist Zionism. While calls mount for accountability over October 2023 and other scandals, Bibi sidesteps them with studied indifference. What looks like a talent for political survival may after all be disguised conviction, while present-day Israel continues to be entwined with Bibi’s unique saga. As per Benedetto Croce’s lesson, history is tasked with making sense of it, rather than delivering justice.