Joel Rosenberg: Israeli Election Way Too Close to Call and Netanyahu Faces Legal and Political Trouble

(Naples, Florida) — As I write this, I’m preparing to board a series of flights to get me home to Israel after a six week book tour for The Persian Gamble. I’m eager to see my wife and sons, and eager to join millions of my fellow Israelis who will turn out to vote on Tuesday in one of the most fiercely-contested and potentially most-consequential national elections in a generation.

No one really has any idea who will win, but many political analysts and most in the media believe we are about to enter a “post-Bibi era.” I certainly have no idea what the outcome will be, and I take the media’s predictions with a grain of salt. Most in the Israeli media hate Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and have for years. They are rooting for Bibi’s chief rival, former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz and his centrist Blue & White Party.

That said, let’s be clear: Netanyahu does, in fact, face serious legal and political jeopardy that could bring his long and storied political career to an end sooner than most on the Israeli right (or American Evangelicals) think.

Here’s the short version…..

LEGAL JEOPARDY

1. Netanyahu has been indicted in three separate corruption, bribery and fraud cases.
2. Sara,  his wife, has been indicted in a fourth and completely separate case.
3. Bibi and his closest friends and supporters dismiss this all as a “witch hunt” and say they will eventually be exonerated. Hopefully. But the indictments came not from a political enemy but from Netanyahu’s hand-chosen Attorney General Avichai Mandelbilt. He’s widely regarded in Israel as a fair and able lawyer. What’s more, he took a full year to review the initial recommendation by Israeli police authorities to prosecute Netanyahu based on some 800 pages of evidence.
4. Worth noting: In 2014, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was convicted on corruption charges and was sent to prison.
5. Also worth noting: In 2010, Israeli President Moshe Katsav was convicted on multiple charges of raping a woman on his staff, and he was sent to prison.
6. Yes, we absolutely should give the Netanyahus the legal presumption of innocence. I hope and pray that they are exonerated. Bibi has been an excellent prime minister in so many ways. But I want my readers to be aware of just how serious are the charges and how seriously Israeli courts deal with senior officials if they are convicted.

POLITICAL JEOPARDY — TWO SCENARIOS

1. For months, polls have indicated that Bibi and his Likud Party have been losing to the Blue & White Party, led by Benny Gantz.
2. Some late polls suggest Netanyahu and Likud have closed the gap and are neck-and-neck with Gantz. However….
3. The final published poll suggested Gantz’s team would win 32 Knesset (parliament) seats, while Bibi and his team would win only 27.
4. If Gantz and his party do, in fact, win the most seats on Tuesday, Gantz will likely be tapped by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin with the opportunity to form a coalition government. If Gantz can cobble together a coalition of 61 or more seats of the 120-seat Knesset, then he will become the country’s next premier. This would be a nightmare scenario for Netanyahu, and would likely spell the end of his political career. He would likely step down from Likud and enter private life.
5. However, there is a second nightmare scenario for Netanyahu. He and Likud could eke out a victory and win more seats than Gantz. But what happens if even one leader of a right-wing party — one of Bibi’s natural coalition partners — says, “Bibi, we love you. We’re sure you and Sara are innocent of all these charges. However, we can’t sit in a government with an indicted Prime Minister who needs to spend as much time thinking about how to defend himself and his family as about defending the country. You need to step aside, fight these charges, clear your name, and then re-enter the political arena”? If one or more center-right party leader refuses to sit in a Netanyahu-led government, this could block him from becoming Prime Minister, and this, too, could potentially spell the end of his career.

I’ll be providing updates and analysis on Twitter. In the meantime, please pray for all of Israel’s leaders, our people, and our future. Never a dull moment in our part of the world.

Full disclosure: I worked on Bibi’s “come back campaign team” in the year 2000 for a few months. However, I don’t work for him now, and haven’t met with him personally in at least ten years.