There are a few reasons.
He's facilitate Israel's rise as an economic powerhouse:
He's fostered a new network of alliances and collaboration:Beginning with his first premiership, and continuing through his tenure as finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, Netanyahu has encouraged the modernization and reform of a once sclerotic economy. What Dan Senor and Saul Singer called Start-up Nation has to a great extent replaced the Israel of labor, cartel, and kibbutz. Today Israel is an entrepreneurial, high-tech economy with a highly educated workforce.
“There is nary an economic indicator that doesn’t look good,” Melrav Arlosoroff wrote in Haaretzlast December. “Gross domestic product has risen an average of 3 percent or more annually, unemployment is at a record low, employment is at a record high, more ultra-Orthodox and Arabs are joining the labor force, and the national debt has fallen to 60 percent of GDP.” (We should be so lucky: America’s debt is 105 percent of GDP.)
He's stayed on top of shifts in the array of threats to his country:There is a widespread assumption, especially in media, that Israel is isolated. This is a myth. Netanyahu has strengthened and expanded Israel’s alliances and relationships with world powers. Even in the midst of diplomatic daylight between his government and the Obama administration, Netanyahu could count on the support of leaders in the U.S. Congress and among the American people more broadly. His relationship with the current president, of course, has paid dividends. Finally, the U.S. embassy is located in Israel’s capital. And none of the candidates seeking to replace President Trump have said they would move it back to Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu has not limited himself to the U.S.-Israel relationship. He’s become close with the leaders of all the great powers, including Japan, India, Russia, and (most worrisomely) China. He has broadened the Israeli presence in Africa. And he has made remarkable diplomatic gains in the Arab world. “Israel is forging new diplomatic and economic ties with many countries, improving old ties with others, and expanding its trade and financial partnerships,” Elliott Abrams wrote in January 2018. Later that year, Netanyahu became the first Israeli prime minister since 1996 to visit Oman and meet with Sultan Qaboos.
The Palestinian issue has receded in importance. Iran has come to the fore. The Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, missile technology, proxy forces, terrorism, and malign behavior in the region concern not only Israel but also Sunni governments. Israel’s regional partnerships have strengthened as transnational nongovernmental organizations wage political and economic warfare against her. Global anti-Semitism threatens Jewish lives while serving as a reminder of Israel’s necessity. The Syrian civil war has made this picture worse by drawing Russia into a region from which she had been excluded for decades.
Netanyahu has endured because the Israeli public entrusts him with its security. The left discredited itself. It has collapsed as an effective political force. Its embrace of Oslo was a disaster that ended in bloodshed, separation, and stalemate. One of the secrets of Netanyahu’s success is that the alternatives to him are unpalatable. The Labor Party of Ehud Barak withdrew from Lebanon, and the Kadima Party under Ehud Olmert launched an unpopular war against Hezbollah whose outcome was ambiguous.He's set an example to the world's nations regarding how to shore up national sovereignty:
Netanyahu is an immigration hawk and has fenced Israel’s borders. At the possible risk of Israel’s deterrent, he has struck Hamas in Gaza only when rocket launches on civilian populations become politically unbearable. He has considerable room for maneuver, however, because of his strength on security and his solid relationship with the American president.While it's geographically situated in the Middle East, Israel is a Western nation. In fact, the West gets its moral and spiritual foundation from events that occurred there. But being Western also means that it is beset by forces of rot common to all modern Western societies. Pride parades and the like. Still, there must be a critical mass of Israeli society that still values actual economic vitality, national security, and, of course, freedom, which is the West's crowning contribution to humankind's inquiry into what ought to be valued.
Netanyahu is a fallible human being like all of us, but when it comes to being an effective national leader, he's proven himself.
That highly educated workforce was government subsidized, not free, but much closer to free than in the US where we forced our future to mortgage itself to get ahead even as we downsized, offshored, outsourced and automated at an accelerated rate. Health care in your benighted Israel? Single payer universal. Yet we will die defending them with socialist soldiers fighting for free government bennies for life, calling it our freedom that they live an maybe die for.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Israel would do well to move in the direction of a market economy, but, as I say, all Western nations have lost their moorings to some degree or another.
ReplyDeleteAnd here's a question I have: What kind of "fighting for" Israel has the US ever done? To my knowledge, it has achieved victory on its own in its 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars and kept subsequent intifadas and rocket barrages from becoming catastrophic ever since. No US presence in any of it.
You're right. I just see it happening down the road to Armageddon which many the fundies would support with ArchHuman St Donnie in command.
ReplyDelete