Benjamin Netanyahu – Part two – Divide and conquer

Origin Story

Podmasters

Society & Culture, News, News Commentary, History

4.8 • 655 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2024

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week we complete the story of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s most politically successful prime minister — and its most divisive. We pick up the story in 1996, with Netanyahu’s first term in office, clashing with both President Clinton and his hard-right coalition partners over the future of the Oslo peace process. We follow his subsequent decade in opposition, as the dwindling of hope and the misfortunes of his rivals enabled him to make yet another unlikely comeback in 2009. Apart from 18 months of political chaos, he has been in power ever since, growing more hostile towards the Palestinians and Iran and more authoritarian at home — some say Netanyahu was Trump before Trump. The Israel that suffered the blow of October 7 was outwardly strong and prosperous yet more divided, corrupt and unpopular than ever. Its conduct of the subsequent wars demonstrates the costs of Netanyahu’s self-serving machinations, his embrace of the far right and his unforgivingly bleak worldview. Even as a majority of voters want him to step down, he hangs on. Is Netanyahu just an extraordinarily canny operator or the true representative of a new Israel, a long way from its founders’ intentions? How did peace with the Palestinians go from a real possibility to a broken dream? Why does everyone from foreign leaders to members of his own cabinet have such contempt for Netanyahu? And how can Israel recover from his ruinous leadership? To understand where the country is now, you need to understand the man. • Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory • Get exclusive extras like supporter-only Q&A editions when you back Origin Story on Patreon. Reading List Books Neill Lochery - The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu (Bloomsbury, 2016) Benjamin Netanyahu - A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World (1993) Benjamin Netanyahu - Bibi: My Story (2022) Anshel Pfeffer - Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu (2020) Ari Shavit - My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel: Updated edition (2015) Avi Shlaim - The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000) Articles David Margolick - ‘Star of Zion’, Vanity Fair (1996) David Remnick - ‘The Outsider’, New Yorker (1998) Joshua Leifer - ‘The Netanyahu doctrine’, Guardian (2023) David Remnick - ‘The Price of Netanyahu’s Ambition’, New Yorker (2024) Donald McIntyre - ‘How Netanyahu gambled with the Fate of Israel’, Tortoise (2024) John Jenkins - ‘Netanyahu’s all-out war’, New Statesman (2024) Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, welcome to origin story. In each episode, we take a word, idea or figure from history. We
0:13.9	explain its origins and talk about how it influences political discourse today. I'm Doreen
0:18.2	Linsky, author of Everything Must Go and co-author of the origin
0:21.2	story books with this guy. Ian Dunst. No, I hate that. I hate the way I just said my name.
0:27.5	And I'm a economist with the eye newspaper and I'm also the author of the origin story books. Right,
0:31.2	let's crack on and talk like adults. Welcome to part two of the story of Benjamin Netanyahu.
0:37.1	In part one, we talked about his family background, you know, how he sort of inherited this
0:42.5	very bleak, hard view of life, and particularly life for Jews and the state of Israel.
0:50.2	We talked about his largely American upbringing, how he first came to prominence as a great
0:55.5	communicator on television.
0:58.4	This led to his political career as a member of the right-wing party, LeCood.
1:03.7	And then how his opposition to the Oslo peace process in the 90s, particularly after the assassination
1:09.3	of Yitzhak Rabin, found him really sort of demonised
1:14.0	in sections of Israeli society and really sort of deeply unpopular with American presidents,
1:20.1	not just Bill Clinton, but George H.W. Bush.
1:24.1	I think that will continue.
1:25.3	And if we were with him, Andy, he like sort of members of his own party.
1:30.2	And sort of successful despite all of that.
1:35.0	And that is the remarkable thing.
1:37.6	You know, that election in 96 when he first becomes prime minister and he gets 50.5%.
1:42.0	And this is like a really rare occasion in which you can say,
1:46.8	oh right, he really did win the popular vote. He really did win a mandate. A lot of the time,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Podmasters, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Podmasters and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.