(Bloomberg Opinion) -- For the past few weeks, Israel has been experiencing raucous street demonstrations against Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. The rallies have no organized leadership, but the protesters share a goal: Fed up with the prime minister’s scandals and mismanagement of the coronavirus, they want to bring down his coalition and get him out of office. Netanyahu may be in serious political trouble.
His response to the unrest has been to incite his admirers against the protesters, the courts, the media, the parliamentary opposition and anyone else who stands in his way. On Sunday, at the weekly government meeting, he labelled the demonstrators “anarchists” whose gatherings “trample on democracy” and spread the dreaded coronavirus. He also accused the media of collaborating with the extremist left to bring down a legally elected prime minister.
Usually such incitement goes unchallenged in the Netanyahu government. But this time, Defense Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Benjamin “Benny” Gantz, begged to differ. Public demonstrations, he said, are not only legitimate, they are the lifeblood of democracy.
Gantz, a former army chief of staff and leader of the second-largest faction in Bibi’s government, has been hesitant to rock the boat since joining the coalition government in May. His boldness is a sign that the prime minister may be losing his mojo.
The Covid crisis has been a clarifying moment. After so many years in office, many citizens — even those who don’t like Bibi personally — have come to regard the prime minister as Israel’s indispensable man. Indeed, his tenure has been a time of prosperity and relative peace. Israelis routinely report high levels of happiness and satisfaction on international surveys, and they’ve rewarded him at the polls.
But Netanyahu has failed to rise to the challenge of the coronavirus. Distracted by his trial — for criminal charges relating to bribery, fraud and corruption — he has been oddly detached and indecisive. Israel has one of the highest rates of infection in the world, but only now, after months of bureaucratic infighting, is there the glimmer of a pandemic policy. Economic aid has been too little and too late to save many small businesses and provide the working class (Netanyahu’s base) with a safety net.
A less egocentric prime minister might see this as an opportunity to cut a plea deal that would keep him out of jail, retire from electoral politics and spend the rest of his days defending himself in a memoir, raking in six-figure lecture fees and exploiting his many international connections for influence and profit.