Benjamin Netanyahu is the worst Jewish leader in history

Part I: personalized charismatic leadership, Bibism, messianism

Since about mid-January, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the worst leader in Jewish history. Some of Friedman’s critique focuses on the fact that Netanyahu, who is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, presided over the largest mass murder of Jews on October 7th since the Holocaust. Despite this catastrophic failure and the abandonment of Israeli hostages in Gaza, a Channel 12 poll from September shows Netanyahu is still receiving an approval rating of 32 per cent. The question is why.

Fortunately, leadership theory provides us with an analytical framework to assess Netanyahu. He is clearly a personalized charismatic leader. It refers to a “personalized need for power, negative life themes, and narcissistic tendencies of personalized charismatic leaders can lead to unethical and destructive behavior.”¹ Such leaders are “characterized by a high need for power with low activity inhibition (restraint), high Machiavellianism, high narcissism, external beliefs, and low self-esteem. Such leaders are also called pseudo-transformational leaders.”² That description certainly fits Netanyahu’s ethos of governance during his 2009-2021 years as well as 2022 to the present.

Throughout Jewish history, we can find leaders who embodied these similarly destructive traits. Simon bar Kosiba is one example. He led the rebellion in 132 CE against the Roman Empire for its strictures placed on the Jewish community in Jerusalem.

Reputedly of Davidic descent, he was hailed as the messiah by the greatest rabbi of the time, Akiva ben Yosef, who also gave him the title Bar Kokhba (“Son of the Star”), a messianic allusion. Bar Kokhba took the title nasi (“prince”) and struck his own coins, with the legend “Year 1 of the liberty of Jerusalem.”³

However, the rebellion ended badly for Bar Kokhba. The Romans brought reinforcements to crush the rebels, hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed and the would-be messiah was killed in 135 outside of Jerusalem.

Roughly 1500 years later, in the 17th century, Shabtai (or Shabbetai) Zevi (or Tzvi) emerged. A student of the Kabbalah, he declared himself the messiah at the age of 22.

With a retinue of believers and assured of financial backing, Shabbetai triumphantly returned to Jerusalem. There, a 20-year-old student known as Nathan of Gaza assumed the role of a modern Elijah, in his traditional role of forerunner of the messiah. Nathan ecstatically prophesied the imminent restoration of Israel and world salvation through the bloodless victory of Shabbetai, riding on a lion with a seven-headed dragon in his jaws. In accordance with millenarian belief, he cited 1666 as the apocalyptic year.⁴

Like Bar Kokhba, his messianic mission did not last long. Rabbis in Jerusalem threatened to excommunicate him, forcing him to return to Smyrna. While there, his movement spread to multiple cities. But when the would-be messiah reached Constantinople, he converted to Islam to save his life and lost his most of his followers over his abandonment of Judaism.⁵

What’s important to understand is that a personalized charismatic leader would not exist without the perception and belief of their followers. It’s a symbiotic relationship as the followers’ faith is needed to drive the leader. This is certainly the case for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A 2022 opinion by David Ben Horin in Arutz Sheva, also known as Israel National News, confirms this affection.

Nobody calls him Mr. Prime Minister or Mr. Netanyahu. In Israel we are all family.

The cries were for Bibi.

He looked good. He looked rested, with a tinge of color animating his face. Up close, I didn’t realize what a Jewish face this hardened Israeli warrior had.

It was Pesach. The best comes out in all of us.

Chants of “Bibi Melech Yisrael” filled the air as his people escorted him to wherever he was going.⁶

For context, Arutz Sheva is a news outlet catering to religious Zionists, including members of Netanyahu’s current coalition government. However, as befitting any personalized charismatic leader, Netanyahu also inspires and benefits from an ideology known as Bibism. It is defined as:

“the political view which believes in supporting the Israeli PM's every decision, regardless of whether it fits a certain agenda or political direction. The most prominent expression of Bibism is reflected in the coverage of the commercial broadcaster Channel 14, which is seen as politically biased towards Netanyahu, where prominent Netanyahu supporters favorably analyze the prime minister's decisions.”⁷ 

To take Bibism a step further, it has taken over the Likud Party.

“His supporters regard him as a supreme leader and reject any challenge to his leadership as illegitimate. His personal fate is intrinsically intertwined with that of his party and of the right-wing government he heads. Anyone who tries to run against him in party primaries is considered a traitor.”⁸

Like Bar Kokhba and Zevi, Netanyahu believes that only he can lead and save Israel. This impulse is not unique nor exclusive to Netanyahu, nor is it necessarily messianic. When I reported from sub-Saharan Africa, autocratic leaders such as Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Paul Biya in Cameron, Teodoro Obiang Nguema in Equatorial Guinea and others believed that they were the only ones who could effectively rule their countries. (If anything, the belief in autocracy is enhanced by the years spent in office.)

Yet Netanyahu veers into the messianic terrain occupied by Bar Kokhba and Tzvi for two reasons. The first is the belief of others. One apocryphal story involves the long dead Lubavitcher Rebbe⁹ Menachem Schneerson. As the story goes, the Rebbe said, “he, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be Israel’s prime minister, who will pass the scepter to the Messiah.”¹⁰ This supposedly took place somewhere around 1993 to 1994 before Schneerson’s death; Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996 before his first government fell in 1999.

In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel’s prime minister for the second time and ruled until 2021. His voters, in part, saw in Bibi God’s anointed one, the Messiah and King David, a hero who has no competition among the people.¹¹

The second reason is based on Netanyahu’s beliefs. He considers himself a modern-day Churchill, who stands resolutely strong in against the threat of Shia Islamism, led by Iran.

The curse map shows that Syria, Iraq and Iran threaten peace-seeking Israel, which is trying to build infrastructure with its allies in the blessing camp.¹² True to form, the blessing map does not demarcate the West Bank or Gaza or where and how Palestinians may exist with democracy and equality. For years, Netanyahu has believed that the Palestinians should not or need not be an obstacle to peace agreements between Israel and Arab countries. A Times of Israel story from Sept. 22, 2023 illustrates Netanyahu’s delusions, as he declared that Israel was on the cusp of a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia.

“Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. It will encourage other Arab states to normalize relations with Israel. It will enhance the prospects of peace with the Palestinians. It will encourage a broader reconciliation between Judaism and Islam, between Jerusalem and Mecca, between the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael.”¹³

In theory, the idea is great because Jewish-Muslim harmony would be wonderful for our planet. In practice, it is fantastical not unlike the messianism of Zevi or Bar Kokhba because it offered (and continues to offer) the impossible to devout followers: peace with Arab states without Palestinians.

Bar Kokhba imposed himself as Nasi (prince), inspired his followers to believe that he was a Jewish messiah and that the rebellion would still succeed, despite the Roman military force that it faced.¹⁴ Zevi promised his followers that he was a new messiah who could supplant the established rabbinate.¹⁵ We already know neither vision was recognized. A similar conclusion can be reached about long-desired Netanyahu’s Middle East fantasy of Israel establishing peaceful relations with its neighbours while permanently occupying Palestinians.

Netanyahu, according to Shalom Yerushalmi last October, views himself as a “secular messiah, holding Israel up with his two giant hands, its fate dependent entirely on him. If he leaves it, it will fall. If he stays, it will survive and prosper.”¹⁶ Alon Pinkas, a Ha’aretz columnist and former diplomat, described Netanyahu this September as a “vile messiah, leading a cult of lies and death.”¹⁷

Back in January, when Friedman made his declaration about Netanyahu, David Stromberg wrote an essay in The Hedgehog Review that compared Israel’s leader with Zevi. Both, in Stromberg’s view, are false messiahs. One particular passage stands out.

Similarly, Bibi continues to manipulate Israeli society with the support of his false prophets and accomplices, turning people against each other in ways they never would have imagined otherwise. He has destroyed the integrity of Israel’s national infrastructure without people realizing the extent of its disintegration. He has personally stoked the greatest internal rift between Jews, both inside Israel and across the world, since the time of Sabbatai Zevi. Not for three hundred and fifty years have so many Jews been thrown into such utter distress or despair because of a single person and his unhinged personality.¹⁸

What we can conclude in this first installment on Netanyahu is that his personalized charismatic leadership dominates Israeli politics — to the detriment of Israelis and Palestinians. While he is not a messiah and has never been, his followers or cult believe him to be extraordinary. Lastly, like Bar Kokhba and Zevi, Netanyahu’s fall from grace is inevitable. What’s unknown is when that will happen and what will be its full consequences for Israel and Jews around the world.

1. See the dark side of charismatic leadership here: https://aps-journal.com/index.php/APS/article/download/104/101?inline=1

2. See Science Direct’s note here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/leader-charismatic

3. This information comes from Britannica.com: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bar-Kokhba-Jewish-leader

4. This information comes from Britannica.com: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shabbetai-Tzevi

5. Ibid.

6. David Ben Horin: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/en/news/326316

7. The information on Bibism comes from DW.com: https://www.dw.com/en/israel-hamas-war-netanyahus-legacy-hangs-in-the-balance/a-69987967

8. See the Foundation for European Progressive Studies: https://feps-europe.eu/the-israeli-right-authoritarianism-and-ethnic-supremacy/

9. There are messianic Chabad members who believe Schneerson is still alive. See here: https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/after-the-death-of-chabads-messiah/

10. Here’s one account that details the Schneerson angle. https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/lubavitcher-rebbe-after-bibi-comes-the-messiah/

11. Ibid

12. The Times of Israel has story: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-holds-up-maps-illustrating-the-blessing-and-curse-facing-mideast/

13. David Horovitz in Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-predicts-an-israel-transformed-in-mideast-has-no-words-for-internal-israeli-peace/

14. Information taken from The Prophecies of Daniel, 2 here: https://books.google.ca/books?id=_lfSnZiVLpsC&pg=PA174&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

15. Britannica.com on Zevi: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Shabbetai-Tzevi

16. Shalom Yerushalmi is here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-self-styled-peerless-leader-refuses-to-accept-he-presided-over-catastrophe/

17. The headline from Alon Pinkas’ analysis is here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-02/ty-article/.premium/benjamin-netanyahu-the-vile-messiah-leading-a-cult-of-lies-and-death/00000191-b286-d93f-a5bb-b3967ae70000

18. Here’s Stromberg’s article: https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/return-of-the-false-messiah