Israel’s Premier is Fighting Back

No one expected incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to sit back and allow his political foes or even the nation’s legal echelon to remove him from office willingly….and he’s not. On Tuesday night, somewhere between the estimates ranging from 8,000 to 15,000 Israelis poured into the street of Tel Aviv to rally against the indictments against the prime minister alleging bribery, and breach of trust. The well-attended “Bibi-Fest” follows weeks of Netanyahu railing against the investigators demanding that the justice ministers “investigate the investigators whom the Netanyahu camp accuses of staging a coup-d’état in the guise of a police investigation. Simultaneous to that rhetoric and the rally came the national elections, a process that for the first time in the nation’s history is taking almost a year to complete. What is unknown is the exact impact the prime minister’s scandals on that process: is the nation tired of the same leadership for more than ten years, or is the legal issue interfering with politics as usual. Netanyahu is alleged to have provided favors made possible by his office in return for easing editorial criticism in the run-up to an election. More and more, it appears that Israelis will go to the polls for a third time when the legislature proves unable to field a government during the next two weeks.