Latest news with #ManuelTrajtenberg
Telegraph
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Why the ghost of Churchill is keeping Netanyahu awake at night
There are many broken souls who may end up haunting Benjamin Netanyahu, but right now it is the ghost of Winston Churchill keeping him up at night, say Israeli political analysts. The British wartime prime minister who, with the Americans, saw off the existential threat of the Nazis was a winner who became a loser almost overnight. On July 5 1945, he was unexpectedly and decisively turfed out of office in a general election held just two months after the euphoria of Victory in Europe Day – a triumph that he led. King George VI later offered him the Order of the Garter, the country's highest civilian honour, but a depressed Churchill declined it, saying that he could not accept, as voters had given him the 'order of the boot'. The Israeli prime minister, long a disciple of Churchill, is now said to fear the same fate after basking in Operation Rising Lion, the IDF attacks on Iran. It explains why he continues to prevaricate over ending the war in Gaza and why he is not rushing to the polls to capitalise on his military gains, say analysts. 'Elections are never about the past but about the future,' said Prof Manuel Trajtenberg, an Israeli economist and former member of the Israeli parliament, or Knesset. 'Bibi is a great admirer of Churchill and this lesson of July 1945 does not escape him.' Opinion polls reinforce this point. Mr Netanyahu's ratings have risen markedly from their nadir in the months after the Oct 7 massacre nearly two years ago, but they still suggest he would lose if he were to call fresh elections today. Dahlia Scheindlin, the Israeli pollster and political analyst, said the improvement in his numbers correlated well with his starting to strike Iran directly from April last year, but adds that they have not provided a 'decisive bounce'. Instead, the country remains more or less 'in stasis, divided between the Netanyahu and non-Netanyahu blocks', she says – groupings that have broadly defined Israeli politics for well over a decade now. Ms Scheindlin added that there was a 'sense of depression and exhaustion and anguish over the fate of the hostages' that was preventing people from becoming energised by politics. People had become 'despairing' of government generally. 'I think people feel very acutely that the only people who've come to the side of the citizens since this war began are other citizens,' she said. Nevertheless, elections must be held no later than October next year, and political manoeuvring is rapidly gathering pace in Israel. Naftali Bennett, who was briefly prime minister in 2022, has registered a new party under the name 'Bennett 2026' and is widely expected to lead the 'anti-Bibi charge' when the starting gun is finally fired. The millionaire businessman, who started further to the Right than Mr Netanyahu (he was the first modern mainstream Israeli politician to mainstream the idea of formally annexing parts of the occupied West Bank), is seen by many as more economically and managerially competent than Mr Netanyahu. A Clement Attlee he is certainly not, but in a country that has been fraught by division and where visitors often joke that the country 'will be nice when it's finished', he has a broad-based appeal and is currently leading in most polls. The blurb filed with his party's registration talks of restoring trust in Israel's ability to 'defend its borders' (a dig at Mr Netanyahu's failure over Oct 7) and the need to lead in a way that will ensure Israel's 'unity, continuity and prosperity as a model Jewish and democratic state'. It is possible Mr Bennett could be joined by Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF general, who last week parted company with Benny Gantz's Blue and White party and is now seeking a new political home. Mr Eisenkot, who lost a son and a nephew in the current war, is widely admired across the country and is a committed democratic. The Jerusalem Post recently described him as having become a 'symbol of Middle Israel's agonies'. 'Never self-important and always natural and humane, Gadi Eisenkot was not ashamed to sob in front of the whole nation while eulogising his 25-year-old son over his open grave. 'The general's tears, millions felt, were not only his. They were everyone's. So are his hopes,' wrote Amotz Asa-el, one of the paper's columnists. Yossi Shain, a professor of political science at Tel Aviv University and a former member of the Knesset, said Mr Netanyahu was currently focused on getting to the end of the month and the summer recess without his coalition splitting and the government falling. So long as he could keep his coalition partners onside for a few more weeks by equivocating over an end to the war in Gaza and the issue of Haredi conscription, it was likely he would get there, Prof Shain said. Once the Knesset is in recess, an election can not be called before it is reopened again in October. An announcement around the turn of the year that put the date of the election six months ahead – at or near the October deadline – was most probable, he said. The opposition was 'tired and confused and bifurcated' but still it made sense for Mr Netanyahu to play for time, Prof Shain added. The longer he could put between Oct 7 and the next election the better. Mr Netanyahu's strategy was to try and 'erase the public memory of Oct 7 and replace it with a new narrative in which he could present himself as the 'hero' over Iran', he said. Churchill suffered depression – his 'black dog', as he called it – after being ousted from Downing Street and took to his hobbies of painting and brick laying in the south of France in a bid to soothe that pain. Mr Netanyahu, however, has even more to lose than his mental well-being. He faces criminal charges for corruption in Israel and his ability to travel has been greatly curtailed by an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The moment has probably passed now for the ICC to be persuaded to drop its charges in return for the war in Gaza being brought to an end but, in Israel, the courts are still said to be open to a plea-bargain that would keep him out of jail. The trouble is he would have to pledge to leave politics forever to achieve it – something neither Mr Netanyahu nor his wife Sara are said to be at all keen on.
The Age
15-06-2025
- Politics
- The Age
How the clocks stopped for Netanyahu, allowing him to go ‘full Hezbollah' on Iran
Even after the October 7 massacre, Israel's military establishment feared it had only a limited window to deal with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in the north. Loading Manuel Trajtenberg, then executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, said at the time that the IDF was racing against 'several different clocks, all of them ticking down'. 'There's the military clock itself in terms of manpower and capacity but also the hostages, international pressure and even economic pressures,' he said. Looking back now, it's hard to determine what the worry was. While the 1967 Arab-Israeli War was famously wrapped up in six days, the latest conflict has been raging for nearly two years. Hamas has all but been blasted to extinction, ditto Hezbollah in Lebanon. The IDF is acting at will against anything it judges a threat in Syria and moves with impunity over Yemen. Now Iran – 'the head of the octopus' – is firmly in its sights. Part of what's changed things is the psychological shock of October 7 and the sense of existential crisis in Israel it has created. 'The diplomatic clock is a fraud, and Israel's leaders must see through it', urged Nave Dromi, director of the Israel Victory Project in the wake of the massacre. 'There can be no specific time limitations on responding to the murder, rape and butchery of 1200 people, the wounding of thousands of others and the vicious kidnapping and humiliation of 240 Israelis and foreigners'. Loading But as important in the destruction of the clock is Benjamin Netanyahu and his willingness to take on US presidents – a theme since he confronted Barack Obama over his 2015 nuclear deal with Iran from the floor of the US Congress. The Israeli prime minister then tied Joe Biden in knots over Gaza, and then Lebanon, for the final 15 months of his term. And he has now almost certainly cocked a snook at Donald Trump, who, by most accounts, wanted more time to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Tehran. 'Trump had sought additional time from Netanyahu for nuclear talks, and Netanyahu did not give it to him,' said Daniel Shapiro who served as US ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017, in an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. For Iran, Netanyahu's great foe of more than 30 years, this could be very bad news indeed, with nothing obvious to stop Israel's bombing campaign against it grinding on for weeks and months. Sima Shine, a senior researcher at INSS, said there was 'no significant international pressure' to wrap things up – quite a thing for a former Mossad official and Iran specialist who spent decades battling the clock. 'There is little sympathy for the Iranian regime', she said. 'Everyone recognises its negative role in the war in Ukraine, its involvement in the Middle East conflicts, its brutal suppression of protesters – especially women – and the fact that no one wants to see it possess nuclear weapons.' At a briefing for journalists on Saturday, a senior IDF official turned things around 180 degrees, conjuring up a very different figurative clock. 'We are prepared for more … an aerial road to Tehran has effectively been opened', he said.
Sydney Morning Herald
15-06-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
How the clocks stopped for Netanyahu, allowing him to go ‘full Hezbollah' on Iran
Even after the October 7 massacre, Israel's military establishment feared it had only a limited window to deal with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in the north. Loading Manuel Trajtenberg, then executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, said at the time that the IDF was racing against 'several different clocks, all of them ticking down'. 'There's the military clock itself in terms of manpower and capacity but also the hostages, international pressure and even economic pressures,' he said. Looking back now, it's hard to determine what the worry was. While the 1967 Arab-Israeli War was famously wrapped up in six days, the latest conflict has been raging for nearly two years. Hamas has all but been blasted to extinction, ditto Hezbollah in Lebanon. The IDF is acting at will against anything it judges a threat in Syria and moves with impunity over Yemen. Now Iran – 'the head of the octopus' – is firmly in its sights. Part of what's changed things is the psychological shock of October 7 and the sense of existential crisis in Israel it has created. 'The diplomatic clock is a fraud, and Israel's leaders must see through it', urged Nave Dromi, director of the Israel Victory Project in the wake of the massacre. 'There can be no specific time limitations on responding to the murder, rape and butchery of 1200 people, the wounding of thousands of others and the vicious kidnapping and humiliation of 240 Israelis and foreigners'. Loading But as important in the destruction of the clock is Benjamin Netanyahu and his willingness to take on US presidents – a theme since he confronted Barack Obama over his 2015 nuclear deal with Iran from the floor of the US Congress. The Israeli prime minister then tied Joe Biden in knots over Gaza, and then Lebanon, for the final 15 months of his term. And he has now almost certainly cocked a snook at Donald Trump, who, by most accounts, wanted more time to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Tehran. 'Trump had sought additional time from Netanyahu for nuclear talks, and Netanyahu did not give it to him,' said Daniel Shapiro who served as US ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017, in an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. For Iran, Netanyahu's great foe of more than 30 years, this could be very bad news indeed, with nothing obvious to stop Israel's bombing campaign against it grinding on for weeks and months. Sima Shine, a senior researcher at INSS, said there was 'no significant international pressure' to wrap things up – quite a thing for a former Mossad official and Iran specialist who spent decades battling the clock. 'There is little sympathy for the Iranian regime', she said. 'Everyone recognises its negative role in the war in Ukraine, its involvement in the Middle East conflicts, its brutal suppression of protesters – especially women – and the fact that no one wants to see it possess nuclear weapons.' At a briefing for journalists on Saturday, a senior IDF official turned things around 180 degrees, conjuring up a very different figurative clock. 'We are prepared for more … an aerial road to Tehran has effectively been opened', he said.
