Photo: Channel 13/Reshet
Even after 16 months of war, no one has any idea what the PM’s strategy is
With no other choice, the Israeli TV commentators and interviewees have been forced to fill the void with speculation about what might happen in a meeting between the two bullshitting heavyweight champions of the world — the crook from the Levant and the Empire’s chaos agent.
By Yoana Gonen • Translated by Sol Salbe
“I see all the commentators writing about Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump, as if they know what’s going to happen at the meeting. No one has a clue about any of it,” Channel 14 anchor Boaz Golan said yesterday in a mocking tone. Golan’s remarks were drafted as an indictment of the media, but in fact they reflect the deep uncertainty experienced by the citizens of Israel under Netanyahu’s rule. Even after 16 months of war, no one has any idea what the prime minister’s strategy is, and what are the aims for which he is demanding his citizens to continue killing and being killed.
With no other choice, the commentators and interviewees have been forced to fill the void with speculation about what might happen in a meeting between the two bullshitting heavyweight champions of the world — the crook from the Levant and the Empire’s chaos agent. At times, it seems that the meeting in the Oval Office will become a kind of Rorschach test, on which each speaker projects their entire fantasies and anxieties, from Transfer [the Zionist euphemism for ethnic cleansing] of the residents of Gaza to peace in the Middle East. Judging by the people sitting in the studios, both scenarios are equally plausible. On the other hand, judging by “let’s stop swallowing every spin that is thrown at us” — none of those scenarios will materialise in the foreseeable future.
In the absence of solid information, the coverage focused mainly on the excitement that Netanyahu was the first head of government to be invited to meet with Trump. “The fact that the new president of the United States chooses to meet with him first, I think says enough,” aserted [Likud] Knesset member Hanoch Milwidsky in an interview on the Knesset Channel. Milwidsky has the face of someone who stabs people who ask too many questions, and perhaps that’s why the interviewer, Moran Azoulay, didn’t make an effort to pressure him to explain what this in fact means. In the meantime, our prime minister, holding the First Invitee’s title, has already recorded a significant achievement even before take-off — when he managed to climb the aeroplane’s stairs without falling apart on the way.
However, the real challenges still lie ahead of him, including a hair-raising meeting with senior terror figure “my spouse,” [She who must be obeyed] who is obviously not happy that he did not accept her instructions regarding the appointment of the new Army chief of staff. Later, Netanyahu will have to perform a spectacular manoeuvre of artistic evasion, and will have to navigate between the contradictory promises he made to Trump and Bezalel Smotrich — two people who hold him tight by the prostate, each pulling in a different direction.
When our fate depends on an encounter between a compulsive liar and a demented millionaire, instead of listening to the commentators, it is better to turn to an exact science such as astrology. Netanyahu, like me, is a Libra man — and any novice stargazer will tell you that we suffer from a serious problem of chronic procrastination. The forecast for the coming week: Netanyahu will continue to drag the Americans, his coalition partners and the Israeli public in order to buy time. Anyone who expects a dramatic change is probably not reading the political map correctly — sorry, the map of the heavens.
