Israeli politics is experiencing the Dell Rule for Losers
Michael Dell is quite an extraordinary fellow. While other billionaires get more airtime due to their political or ideological activities, the computer maker is a true revolutionary. As IBM was selling six-month-old components, Dell had his people take parts directly out of supplier trucks so as to always give the customer the newest chip or the most recent RAM. Dell tore up the field and effectively clobbered far older computer makers. IBM personal computers are all Chinese today and many of the names from the 1980s are no longer around.
While Dell was delivering computers within 24 hours of order, his competition tried to figure out how to contain him. Compaq and HP decided to merge, assuming that size would help even the playing field against the Texas tornado. When Dell was asked about the two big computer makers merging, he said that both companies were losing money: what would putting two losing companies together help in making a much bigger loser?
Israeli politics is now entering the Dell phase of history. Anyone not named Bibi is joining forces with similar folks to make a super “We’re not Bibi” party. They don’t seem to have any new or original ideas on Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, a super-charged shekel (which hurts Israeli exporters), or internal challenges with the ultraorthodox and the draft. Their only purpose is to put together their ragtag followings, with the hope that they somehow cobble together 61 seats in the Knesset and send Netanyahu home and his Likud Party to the opposition. The last time Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett ran the government, they inconveniently had to add an Islamist party to round out their majority. And while Israeli Arabs are bus drivers, doctors, pharmacists, nurses, judges, and professors, nobody thought that state secrets would ever be shared with people who might—might—share them with Israel’s enemies. One Knesset member (not in the government) from an Arab party fled to Syria when it was discovered that he had been passing information to Hezbollah. They hope to have 61 seats on their own—without Likud, the religious Zionists, the ultraorthodox or Arab parties.
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The four principals who are working to be “anybody but Bibi” all have lovely resumes and have shown themselves to be utterly undistinguished in leadership positions:
- Yair Lapid. His father was a Knesset member who helped his son get a plum position in local media. The younger Lapid was a reporter for the IDF newspaper. While he apparently did not kill any terrorists with his pen, he never stops talking about serving in the military while sticking it to the ultraorthodox for not wanting to do the same.
- Naftali Bennett. If this were Gilligan’s Island, he would be the millionaire. He had solid exits from tech companies and ran as a right-leaning Zionist. He swore that he would never sit in a lefty government, until they offered him to be prime minister, and he had an immediate case of amnesia. The problem for him is that his former voters did not suffer the same fate and remember him one day as a fire-breathing Zionist and the next as the head of a lefty government.
- Gadi Eisenkot. Former general and Chief of Staff. Like many generals before him, he entered politics but has not distinguished himself with any signature policy or political leadership skills. He is a brand name, but I doubt that a single Israeli could tell you any of his official positions and how they would differ from those of the present prime minister.
- Benny Gantz. Seems like the nicest guy in politics. If he were my neighbor, I would gladly loan him my ladder without fear of seeing it for sale on eBay. Diffident and not particularly political in nature, he joined the ranks of former generals who figured that they could be the next Ehud Barak. I don’t remember anything that he, Lapid, and Bennett accomplished while Bibi was in the opposition.
And in the other corner is the longest-serving prime minister of Israel. On the one hand, Bibi was prime minister when the October 7, 2023, pogrom occurred. Additionally, he ran the joint during most of the time when Hamas and Iran were actively preparing for the mass attack against southern Israel. He, like others, has muttered the words, “I take responsibility.” But he has not offered to resign. Even offers of leaving in exchange for dropping the multiple legal cases against him have not gotten Bibi to budge. To his credit, he has the beeper operation, the weakening of Hamas, the thinning of Hezbollah and multiple successful rounds against Iran. The guys trying to put the band back together have nothing on Bibi as to success in war and with the economy. The shekel is at a 32-year high against the dollar. In the past, Israel would buy billions of dollars to keep the currencies balanced. They don’t anymore and the dollar is sliding due to Israel’s resilient and growing economy.
As in the US, the “just not that guy” strategy can only take you so far. “Let’s make the ultraorthodox serve” is popular, but Lapid—like his father—has made a career of attacking the ultraorthodox for receiving government funds and not working to his satisfaction. As one in the community, I can say that when left alone, many young “charedim” go to the army and/or join the work force. The new charedi unit in the IDF is performing well in the field. When the politicians start screaming, the community circles the wagons and the growth of ultraorthodox participation in the army and workforce stalls. There is a program, Kod-Kod, which takes yeshiva students and trains them in programming for all different branches of the IDF. When my son and I were leaving the pool the other day, my boy told me that the young guy sitting behind the desk in the lobby programs for the Israeli navy during the day and works at the gym at night to make some more money. Other than attacking the charedim, the four wannabes don’t have any revolutionary programs that would make the IDF or Israeli life better than it is under Bibi. Just like the anti-Trump Democrats. Try to name one program or idea they have that would make America better.
Israelis are scheduled to go to the polls in late October of this year. Efforts to bring down the government prior to its term went nowhere. And while the Likud actually has a fairly deep bench of presently serving ministers, Bibi still plans to be at the top of his party’s list. Bibi’s close relationship with Donald Trump is a major plus, as the US is still the strongest supporter of Israel both in aid and in international forums. Bibi and others in top positions in government and the IDF have made efforts to either stall or water down potential investigations into failures leading up to the October 7th disaster. The Israel Air Force (IAF) head just retired, with US F-22s joining Israeli helicopters for a flyover in his honor. In his farewell speech, he repeatedly stated that the IAF was nowhere to be found during the critical hours of the well-planned Hamas attack. He did not elaborate as to why no helicopters or planes came to the rescue of citizens and soldiers for hours on end. The people want to know what went wrong before the attack and how the security services failed during the early hours of that Saturday morning. It is moving to read of an officer grabbing her rifle while still in pajamas in order to protect her fellow soldiers. The question is how we got to the point where she needed to do so.
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