Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has requested a pardon from President Isaac Herzog. He claims he is “obligated to do everything in [his] power to mend the rifts, achieve unity among the people, and restore trust in state institutions….”
Strange: the national arsonist applies to be the fire chief. Nevertheless, I say “pardon away!” – as long as Netanyahu takes substantive steps to unite the nation.
While requesting a personal reset, he should spearhead a national reset. Israel deserves a legitimate October 7 inquiry and new elections, amid dramatic efforts to make amends and heal wounds.
This “reconciliation” should begin immediately, not as a quid pro quo but as acts of good faith, whether or not he’s pardoned.
In 2017, I was the first Israeli columnist to propose that Netanyahu resign with a presidential pardon – to spare Israel assaults on its national institutions from its supposedly nationalist party.
I didn’t have the gift of prophecy – just a sense of history. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, president Bill Clinton, fighting for his life, assailed the judicial system he headed, undermining America’s democratic legitimacy. I feared Israelis would experience the same – underestimating how much worse it would be.
So, yes, President Herzog should end this prolonged national nightmare – I have no need to see Netanyahu jailed. Still, just as our prime minister has missed multiple opportunities to unite the nation since October 7, we the people should demand that he not miss that moment now.
How can Netanyahu unite the nation?
Netanyahu should follow this six-point program, which starts concrete and goes abstract.
• Launch an unimpeachable commission of inquiry regarding October 7, filled with characters of unquestionable integrity, and without partisan players.
Netanyahu’s strategy is embarrassingly obvious. If a future government forms a proper commission, he will blast it as reflecting the “deep state,” blah, blah, blah.
If his government, however, appoints retired politicians, judges, generals, and community leaders, who transcend politics, it will be harder to undermine any embarrassing conclusions.
Netanyahu’s testimony should begin with commissioners asking two questions: “Did you write Bibi: My Story published in October, 2022?” and “Can you read page 519?”
Netanyahu will read his boast that instead of trying to topple Hamas in 2014, “I had my gaze fixed on Iran” and that “the blood and treasure” required “was not worth it.” Then we can begin…
• Call for elections immediately, letting the people judge if he should remain prime minister.
In his plea, Netanyahu invokes the people’s mandate. But he’s pressuring the president to violate the tradition of granting pardons after sentencing.
Presidents also lack the mechanism to interrupt ongoing trials. The voters should judge such leaps immediately, so Israelis can own their decision, collectively.
• Vow not to touch the judicial system unless he is re-elected with a specific mandate to make those changes.
In his pardon request, Netanyahu again undermined public faith in the judiciary, mocking the charges. Even supporters of reforming the judiciary must acknowledge that the judicial reforms were unbearably divisive.
No politician, let alone one appealing for extraordinary extra-judicial indulgence, should further those changes without a clear mandate from the people, by detailing the reforms during a political campaign.
• Speak around Israel, including the Gaza corridor, appealing to reservists and soldiers who have sacrificed so much, while defining “day after” visions militarily, diplomatically, economically, socially, and ideologically.
Netanyahu is correct. Israel has experienced extraordinary triumphs since October 7 and faces complicated questions domestically and globally, including ongoing threats from Gaza, Palestinian terrorism, Lebanon, and Iran.
We need a full-time prime minister. But we also need a more functional government, and a prime minister ready to address pressing questions while meeting the people, including harsh critics.
Rather than reacting, excusing, demeaning – rinse, wash, repeat – Netanyahu must start leading rhetorically and tonally again, truly uniting our nation.
• Abandon the right-wing poison machine, ending his seething, demagogic rhetoric against the “deep state,” while punishing allies who polarize and demean others.
Even if left-wingers don’t reciprocate, Netanyahu’s the prime minister and his party rules.
They have done too much to divide Israel, using social media, bots, sweetheart relationships with partisan journalists, and attack-dog coalition members who think their job is to stir their base, not lead the nation. And finally,
• Set a new tone in his public statements, reaching out beyond his political base.
Israelis can hear when a prime minister calls for unity to score cheap political points or secure a Get Out of Jail Free card.
And they’ll respond if a leader genuinely builds bridges, respects differences, tones down rhetoric. Netanyahu hasn’t even tried it during this searing war – a new approach is overdue.
Two Bibis
There seems to be two Bibis. Mr. Security is a world-class statesman, an impressive orator, a shrewd military strategist, the visionary behind the stunning assaults on Hezbollah and Iran, and the tough negotiator who resisted Biden administration pressure and crushed Hamas while defying the odds to bring 168 hostages home alive.
Mr. Insecurity is a craven outsider, still licking the wounds from the Establishment’s rejection of his father and his father’s rejection of him. Mr. Insecurity succumbs to flattery, pink champagne, cheap attempts to secure good media coverage, and his worst, demagogic, impulses.
Mr. Security wants a pardon for Mr. Insecurity’s petty indulgences. He should only receive it by being as bold, wise, and statesmanlike domestically as he has been internationally – at least usually.
In short, if Benjamin Netanyahu cannot give the pardon Israelis seek from his divisive demagoguery, he should not get the pardon he seeks from President Herzog.
The writer, an American presidential historian and Zionist activist, has published To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath. His latest E-book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred, can be downloaded on the Jewish People Policy Institute website.