How confronting Germany bolsters Netanyahu’s status

ISRAEL PULSEבעבריתישראל פולס

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel speaks during his meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem, April 25, 2017. (photo by REUTERS/ Ronen Zvulun)

How confronting Germany bolsters Netanyahu’s status

What was going through Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mind when he forced German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel to choose between a meeting with him and one with the B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence human rights groups? Hard to believe that Netanyahu assumed a senior politician of a major European power would bend his will to that of a foreign leader and give into the prime minister’s ultimatum by scrapping his planned meeting with the human rights groups.
SUMMARY⎙ PRINTIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no limits in his battle for personal popularity; he attacks anti-occupation groups, foreign friendly leaders and even the State Comptroller.
AUTHORAkiva EldarPOSTEDApril 27, 2017
TRANSLATORRuti Sinai


How would German Chancellor Angela Merkel have explained such a surrender to her citizens? After all, Gabriel did not ask to meet with any law-breaking settlers from illegal West Bank outposts who attack Palestinians, beat Israeli peace activists and pelt Israeli troops with stones (actions about which Netanyahu is stingy with his posts and tweets). The members of B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence are law-abiding citizens. And Netanyahu has, after all, championed the approach whereby anything not proven to be illegal is legal. That includes a steady supply of cigars and champagne to the Netanyahu household by business people, to cite an unrelated example (a scandal currently under police investigation).

While treading on safe ground in Israeli public opinion, as my colleague Mazal Mualem wrote here, Netanyahu and his band of merry men and women are trampling on Israel’s foreign relations. With their other foot they are crushing Israelis’ right to protest, which is the very life and soul of a democracy. The crisis over the Israeli human rights organizations operating in the occupied territories is one of the inevitable side effects of the occupation, with which Netanyahu has not only learned to live, but also to take advantage of them for his personal political benefit. But the disagreement over the meetings with Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem disguises dangerous trends, exceeding short-term electoral considerations in both Jerusalem and Berlin.

The last line of the announcement by the prime minister’s office on the cancellation of the meeting with Gabriel says that “our relations with Germany are very important and they will not be affected by this.” Obviously, Germany will not sever ties with Israel over this incident and others like it. Nonetheless, the strident clash with the German foreign minister joins a series of troubling signs in the Jerusalem-Berlin relationship. In February, Germany canceled a meeting between Israeli ministers and their German government counterparts, scheduled for May in Jerusalem. Official sources in Germany told reporters that the cause was not a “scheduling conflict,” as reported by the German side, but rather Germany’s growing frustration with the recently adopted Regularization Law legalizing wildcat Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, and the prime minister’s declarations about plans to expand the settlements.

Reuters reported at the beginning of March on a top German official’s warning that relations with Israel had sunk to a record low in recent years, for the same reasons.

Gabriel presumably expected that meetings with B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence would stir controversy and a media storm; less than three months ago, in February, Netanyahu instructed the Foreign Ministry to “rebuke” Belgium’s ambassador to Israel over a meeting by visiting Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel with representatives of those same organizations. This begs the assumption that Merkel and her advisers concluded that a public clash with Netanyahu would not harm her standing in German public opinion. Germany under Merkel’s leadership has been Israel’s chief advocate in Europe, blocking numerous initiatives against the Israeli occupation in the European and international arenas.

This week, another crack appeared in this protective armor. Try telling the Germans that a state whose leader boycotts their foreign minister because he met with human rights advocates is a shining example of democracy. Try convincing them to oppose European boycotts against products manufactured in Israeli settlements because boycotts are an unacceptable weapon.

The competition with the chairman of the far-right HaBayit HaYehudi Party, Naftali Bennett, for the hearts and minds of the West Bank settlers and of the radicalizing right wing is pushing Netanyahu into inventing fresh enemies at home and abroad. The “leftist” label has worn thin. Tacking it onto Yair Lapid, the chairman of the centrist Yesh Atid Party who walked the streets of Stockholm urging passersby to shout after him “We love Israel,” is a source of ridicule (as Lapid does everything in his power to distance himself from a "leftist" image). The new blood pouring into the Labor Party with its new recruits, Gens. (Res.) Amiram Levin and Yom-Tov Samia, is eroding its distinctly shaky leftist brand, with the generals more center-left than left.

The prime minister did, indeed, score points with Israeli public opinion for defending Israel’s honor against the non-Jew who wished to humiliate it. Gabriel’s landing in Israel was a godsend. Since President Barack Obama left the White House, the prime minister has not had a similar opportunity to “prove his manhood” as an intrepid leader daring to stand up to world leaders in defense of his homeland. The timing was perfect: On the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Gabriel arrived in Israel on April 24 to participate at Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies. Netanyahu could not have wished for better enemies: a German politician on one side and “the radical Israeli left” on the other. And there is no nobler goal: defending the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), “an army made up of all our children,” as President Reuven Rivlin told Gabriel at their meeting, which did take place. When it comes to the children/troops, even the State Comptroller isn’t given any leeway. “Contrary to the Comptroller's report — I back those heading the IDF,” Netanyahu said shortly before the recent publication of the Comptroller’s special report on the military and political shortcomings of Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.

The prime minister’s close associate, Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, also probably generated some additional support for himself within the Likud Party’s influential Central Committee when he linked between Israeli peace activists and the relatives association of the Basque underground prisoners in Spain. A member of the Israeli government felt it appropriate to equate a terror organization (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna [ETA]) that has murdered 829 people using bombs and bullets with Israeli reserve soldiers whose only sin is the publication of testimony, based on personal traumatic experience, about Israeli abuses of Palestinian civilians. Among the activists of Breaking the Silence are young people who more than once shielded radical settlers with their bodies against Palestinians when serving in the West Bank.

As Mazal Mualem wrote for Al-Monitor, incitement against human rights activists and outspoken criticism of Germany are sure bets in Israeli public opinion. This gamble may not end with invective against Breaking the Silence on social media and an exchange of verbal blows between Jerusalem and Berlin. Gabriel was well-advised to refuse to take a phone call from Netanyahu after Netanyahu canceled their meeting. I bet that if the call had taken place, the pro-Netanyahu mouthpiece — the Israel Hayom newspaper owned by gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson — would have reported that Netanyahu gave the German guest a “scolding.”

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