Netanyahu: How One Man Used the World to Serve His Personal Goals

A torn elections poster of Netanyahu in 1999. (Getty Images file)
A torn elections poster of Netanyahu in 1999. (Getty Images file)
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Netanyahu: How One Man Used the World to Serve His Personal Goals

A torn elections poster of Netanyahu in 1999. (Getty Images file)
A torn elections poster of Netanyahu in 1999. (Getty Images file)

Fifteen years ago, Benjamin Netanyahu’s father Benzion was asked to give an opinion about his son, the prime minister of Israel. He replied: “He is not an idiot.”

Amit Segal, the journalist who asked that question, prides himself as an admirer of Netanyahu. He asked his question not to cast doubt on the PM, but to understand a statement Netanyahu had made about the two-state solution at Bar-Ilan University in 2009.

Netanyahu had expressed his support for the two-state solution, to which his father clarified that he does not. “He imposed conditions that the Arabs would not accept,” he explained. “This is the land of the Jews. There’s no room for Arabs here.” The conditions were the Palestinians’ recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and that the Palestinian state be stripped of weapons. He also demanded that the issue of Palestinian refugees be resolved outside Israel’s borders.

Netanyahu’s remarks at Bar-Ilan were made just days after Barack Obama became president of the United States and demanded an end to Israeli settlements and expressed his support to the two-state solution. “Lasting peace requires more than a long ceasefire, and that's why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security,” Obama said at the time.

Obama became president in January 2009, Netanyahu became prime minister in March and the US president welcomed the PM at the White House in May that year. Visiting Cairo in June, Obama pledged to open a new page of relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds. Ten days later, Netanyahu made his comments at Bar-Ilan, effectively undermining Obama’s statements.

Six years earlier, Netanyahu was a finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government. His father Benzion was asked whether he would fit to become prime minister, to which he replied: “No, he’s better at being a foreign minister.” In his understanding, the position of foreign minister fits someone who is good at talking and delivering speeches, who enjoys cocktail parties and does not like to work. Who knows a person better than their father?

From selling furniture to politics

The problem today is that this son is leading a country at the heart of developments in the Middle East and world. People dealing with this son are heads of state, kings, commanders of armies and intelligence directors. He is controlling the lives of people, who have all had bitter experiences with Netanyahu.

You’ll find few people who have figured out Netanyahu. He always has the ability to surprise and often, to shock. There is one thing he knows how to do very well and that is to put his personal interests above all else. Nothing will stop him from getting what he wants. The most important weapon in his arsenal is his marketing skills.

Netanyahu started off as a furniture salesman in the United States. He was adept at selling worthless furniture by marketing them as something valuable. If the store owner wanted to get rid of some old stock, he tasked Netanyahu with the job. Netanyahu would market them as though they were the store’s best merchandise. He was a proficient liar, his face never betraying the truth. He took and never paid anything in return. And he succeeded because he was a good talker.

Before the owner could expose him, he quit to pursue a life in politics. He was named Israel’s representative at the United Nations, then deputy foreign minister, and later foreign minister. He assumed the post of finance minister before becoming prime minister, a post he has held for a record time in Israel.

Netanyahu announces his return to political life in 2000 after Barak’s election win. (Getty Images file)

Netanyahu brought all of his marketing skills and tricks to his political life. The best example of this is how he created the Philadelphi Corridor problem to obstruct any prisoner swap. Thirty-one years earlier, he created another problem which he used to become prime minister for the first time.

In 1993, when he was vying for the post against three rivals, Netanyahu requested airtime on Israel’s biggest state television at the time to divulge a major scandal. He admitted on television that he had committed adultery and that one of the candidates for the position of prime minister was blackmailing him about it. By choosing to admit to the extramarital affair and implicate a candidate in the process, Netanyahu successfully manipulated the public into supporting, rather than condemning, him. In the end, he won the race with 52 percent of the vote.

Exploiting weakness

Marketing is therefore in Netanyahu’s DNA. He sets a target for himself and sets out to obtain it through means of his own choosing or invention. He is good at reading people, whom he views as clients, and sniffs out their weaknesses, which he will exploit to achieve his goals.

It may be a dirty approach, it may be full of lies and deceit, it may cost his country, people and party, but it is worth it for Netanyahu if in the end someone still remains to cheer him on. A behavioral expert noted that one of Netanyahu’s best assets was his ability to deliver short and simple messages that resonate with the people. It’s not important whether these messages are true or not, but it’s important that they resonate and leave an impact. He also uses the language of “us” and “them”, always making sure to have a rival.

Ultimately, it has become evident that Netanyahu cares about himself more than anything else. He has become an expert in eliminating anything standing in his way. He built for himself a limited paradoxical base of right-wing supporters. The majority of them are from the poor class, even though his policies are often very capitalist.

Throughout his career, he has managed to destroy parties that competed against him. In 2009, he faced off against Ehud Barak. Barak had commanded Netanyahu in the army. In 1999, Barak defeated him in the elections, winning the position of prime minister. Later, Netanyahu, as PM, would persuade Barak to join his government as defense minister. Barak did and eventually Netanyahu saw to the destruction of the Labor party and Barak quit politics. He did the same thing to Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz and Moshe Kahlon.

Netanyahu and his wife Sara during a visit to Paris. (Getty Images file)

Love of money and gifts

Over his long career, Netanyahu’s weakness has been exposed to be his love of money and receiving gifts. He boasts a fortune of 23 million dollars and earns a monthly salary of around 20,000 dollars. He amassed his fortune from high wages and delivering seminars. He is in high demand to deliver them across the globe, especially the US.

More important than his income, which he collects through his hard work, are his expenses. Netanyahu is known to be frugal in his expenses and that all of them are actually covered by the state, as opposed to his predecessors, who paid out of their own pocket. Netanyahu has no friends, but he is keen on forging good relations with major capitalists. He judges how close his relations are with them according to the value of the gifts they give him. He is especially fond of lavish gifts. If an acquaintance were to gift his wife a gold necklace, he would unashamedly ask about the matching rings and earrings.

Such habits ultimately led to charges that he received bribes and that he exploited his position to solicit favors. Netanyahu is aware that if convicted, the corruption charges could land him in jail. It is political life and death for him. If he leaves his post, then it will be easy to convict and imprison him. If he remains in power, then his trial will continue at a very slow pace as it is today. The trial opened four years ago and it is still in the witness testimony phase.

If he remains on as prime minister, he will also be able to prevent the establishment of an official investigation commission to probe the October 7 attack by Hamas. He will be able to use his position to press for changing judges.

14 September 2024, Israel, Tel Aviv: An Israeli Protester holds up a placard showing the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with bloodies palm on it, during a demonstration. (dpa)

Coalition

Netanyahu has also managed to cobble together a strong government coalition of 64 lawmakers out of 120. It is comprised of members of his Likud party, as well as religious and settler groups. They all have an interest in sticking together. The religious groups are amassing massive funds for their schools and institutions, while the settlers are winning settlement expansions and aborting the two-state solution and erasing the Palestinian cause. The Likud, meanwhile, has managed to eliminate any internal opposition.

This coalition and around 20 percent of Israeli voters form Netanyahu’s still unshakable popular base. He primarily relies on this base and prioritizes it above all else – even the hostages in Gaza. The relatives of the hostages are in disbelief that their loved ones’ lives are being wasted because of Netanyahu’s political and popular interests.

The base is more important than the soldiers being killed for nothing in Gaza. It is more important than the leaders of security agencies and the military who believe that Netanyahu’s policy is causing Israel strategic security harm. It is more important than the American administration that still stands by the PM’s side despite the deep differences between them and even as he drags it towards major crises, and is still trying to lure it into regional war. Even with all of this support, Netanyahu is unhappy with Washington - which wants an end to the Gaza war – going so far as to voice his backing for Donald Trump as president just to spite the administration.



What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
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What to Know about the Tensions between Iran and the US before Their Third Round of Talks

The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)
The flags of US and Iran are displayed in Muscat, Oman, 25 April 2025. Iran and US will hold third round of nuclear talks on 26 April 2025, in Muscat. (EPA)

Iran and the United States will hold talks Saturday in Oman, their third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

The talks follow a first round held in Muscat, Oman, where the two sides spoke face to face. They then met again in Rome last weekend before this scheduled meeting again in Muscat.

Trump has imposed new sanctions on Iran as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign targeting the country. He has repeatedly suggested military action against Iran remained a possibility, while emphasizing he still believed a new deal could be reached by writing a letter to Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to jumpstart these talks.

Khamenei has warned Iran would respond to any attack with an attack of its own.

Here’s what to know about the letter, Iran’s nuclear program and the tensions that have stalked relations between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 revolution.

Why did Trump write the letter? Trump dispatched the letter to Khamenei on March 5, then gave a television interview the next day in which he acknowledged sending it. He said: “I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.’”

Since returning to the White House, the president has been pushing for talks while ratcheting up sanctions and suggesting a military strike by Israel or the US could target Iranian nuclear sites.

A previous letter from Trump during his first term drew an angry retort from the supreme leader.

But Trump’s letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term led to face-to-face meetings, though no deals to limit Pyongyang’s atomic bombs and a missile program capable of reaching the continental US.

How did the first round go? Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, hosted the first round of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The two men met face to face after indirect talks and immediately agreed to this second round in Rome.

Witkoff later made a television appearance in which he suggested 3.67% enrichment for Iran could be something the countries could agree on. But that’s exactly the terms set by the 2015 nuclear deal struck under US President Barack Obama, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew America.

Witkoff hours later issued a statement underlining something: “A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal.” Araghchi and Iranian officials have latched onto Witkoff’s comments in recent days as a sign that America was sending it mixed signals about the negotiations.

Yet the Rome talks ended up with the two sides agreeing to starting expert-level talks this Saturday. Analysts described that as a positive sign, though much likely remains to be agreed before reaching a tentative deal.

Why does Iran’s nuclear program worry the West? Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials increasingly threaten to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels of 60%, the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Under the original 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms (661 pounds). The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s program put its stockpile at 8,294.4 kilograms (18,286 pounds) as it enriches a fraction of it to 60% purity.

US intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, has warned in a televised interview that his country has the capability to build nuclear weapons, but it is not pursuing it and has no problem with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections. However, he said if the US or Israel were to attack Iran over the issue, the country would have no choice but to move toward nuclear weapon development.

“If you make a mistake regarding Iran’s nuclear issue, you will force Iran to take that path, because it must defend itself,” he said.

Why are relations so bad between Iran and the US? Iran was once one of the US’s top allies in the Middle East under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA had fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. The revolution followed, led by Khomeini, and created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the US Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the US severed. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s saw the US back Saddam Hussein. The “Tanker War” during that conflict saw the US launch a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea, while the US later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the American military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the US have see-sawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, with relations peaking when Tehran made the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Middle East that persist today.