A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Bibi and Donald, Growing Even Worse

Some serious scholarship (and some Springsteen and Sinatra)

**** Haaretz's Amir Tibon notes that "Just as America forcefully
rejects Trump, Israel doubles down on Trumpism
<[link removed]>,"
and Isabel Kershner, writing in the Times, has a rundown
<[link removed]>
of (just) some of what Tibon has in mind. For starters, even before his
government is fully formed, Bibi Netanyahu has "agreed to hand control
over Israel's internal security to an ultranationalist. Then he
pledged to give a party that opposes gay rights and liberal values wide
powers over some programs taught in public schools. Finally, he promised
a religious party that seeks to annex the West Bank authority over much
of daily life in the occupied territories." Naturally, just as it does
with Trumpism, the Times is deploying language designed to downplay what
ought to be appropriate small-d democratic alarmism over these
developments. Netanyahu is doing much of this because he needs these
parties to defenestrate Israel's judiciary-otherwise, he'd likely
be found guilty of multiple counts of corruption, would not be allowed
to serve as prime minister, and could also be looking at slammer time.
(Here
<[link removed]>
is a rundown of some of those corruption charges.)

Does any of this sound familiar?

As I write in my awesome new book We Are Not One: A History of
America's Fight Over Israel
<[link removed]>,
of the time both Trump and Netanyahu led their respective nations:

While the Israeli leader did not indulge all of Trump's most bizarre
beliefs and personality quirks, the two men shared a remarkable number
of both personal and political prejudices. Both politicians were
profoundly corrupt, even compared to their respective colleagues and
predecessors, and each sought desperately to cling to power while faced
with the possibility of being imprisoned in the event of political
defeat for the various crimes they appeared to have committed (in
Netanyahu's case, while in office, and in Trump's both in and out of
office). Both leaders also displayed degrees of racism, nativism, and
ethnocentrism that were considered extreme even by the standards of the
racist, nativist, and ethnocentric parties they led. Politically, both
were aspiring authoritarians who were eager to forge alliances with
fellow illiberal politicians consolidating power based on
ethnonationalist appeals in places such as Russia, Turkey, Poland, the
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, Oman,
Azerbaijan, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. Neither
evinced any patience, much less respect, for democratic niceties such as
freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or the separation of powers.
The fact that so many of the regimes they courted engaged in the
exploitation of antisemitism at home for political gain was, at least
for Netanyahu, more than offset by their more intense focus on the
Islamic threat they believed they faced from their own citizens, the
refugees flooding their borders, and the fiery rhetoric emanating from
Iran and elsewhere that led those regimes to wish to work with Israel.
Common enemies bred friendships of convenience. Netanyahu repeatedly
excused Trump's antisemitism and that of his political allies. So did
Trump's Jewish Republican supporters, who were willing to make the
same tradeoff that had appealed to the neoconservatives of a previous
generation, when they had chosen to embrace antisemitic but pro-Zionist
evangelical preachers beginning in the 1970s. As long as Trump was
willing to indulge Netanyahu, they were willing to indulge Trump.

Something else the two leaders had in common was the incredible largesse
of the late right-wing Republican funder and "pro-Israel" extremist
billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Israel has tougher corruption laws than the
U.S. does, and so he could not as easily just shower legal bribes on
Netanyahu as he did with Trump. Among the many hundreds of those was
apparently, as Maggie Haberman reported in her book
<[link removed]>
(long after it happened), a straightforward promise of $20 million to
Trump's campaign if he would agree to move the U.S. embassy in Israel
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (Man, I gave a talk in May of this year to
what remained of the staff at the now mere consulate in Tel Aviv, and it
was one sad place.) Adelson also went to the trouble of starting an
entirely new newspaper in Israel for the express purpose of supporting
Netanyahu's career and made it free to readers, as Adelson was more
than willing to lose what for him was chump change on it.

The paper, Israel Hayom, paid journalists so well that many good ones
went to work for it, and people actually wanted to read it: an extremely
rare occurrence in the history of newspaper giveaways. Its circulation
skyrocketed and put many more legitimate publications either out of
business or on the rocks. (One of the Bibi scandals noted above is a
direct outgrowth of this relationship
<[link removed]>,
though Bibi lucked out when Adelson died-because "dead men don't
testify <[link removed]>.)
Now, as just discussed in this Nikita Lalwani/Monkey Cage analysis and
interview published by The Washington Post about a new paper
<[link removed]> in The Journal of
Politics by the political scientists Guy Grossman, Yotam Margalit, and
Tamar Mitts, we learn (as the Post puts it in its headline): "Rich
people who own newspapers can shift elections. Israel shows how
<[link removed]>."

Obviously, I need only say the words "Rupert Murdoch" or "Elon
Musk" or "Mark Zuckerberg" or "John Malone" to see how
nefariously this phenomenon has warped our politics and therefore our
country, as I discussed here
<[link removed]>,
back in June. Adelson got into this particular act as well, vastly
overpaying (in secret) for the Las Vegas Review-Journal
<[link removed]>
in order to try to play kingmaker in Nevada; though this represents an
all-but-insignificant share of his contributions (in this case, de
facto) to the Republican Party over the years.

If there's an afterlife, Adelson is likely looking up from below with
a sense of extreme satisfaction, at least as regards Israel. (I have
pages and pages [and pages] on Adelson and his effect on the discourse
in both Israel and the U.S. in the book
<[link removed]>.)
For instance, he once told Jewish Week that "the two-state solution is
a stepping stone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people
<[link removed]>."
And, as he said in a 2014 address, if "Israel won't be a democratic
state, [s]o what?
<[link removed]>"

Whether the United States, and more specifically American Jews, will go
along with what looks to be a more and more illiberal, theocratic,
aggressive, and oppressive Israel under Netanyahu's new government is
an open question. Antony Blinken played it coy on this question in his
address to J Street on Sunday
<[link removed]>.
But as this AP story
<[link removed]>
made clear, and as I discussed with Mehdi Hasan on MSNBC last Sunday
<[link removed]> (much to the
consternation of these folks
<[link removed]>),
I think we're just looking at a period of relative calm before what
might just be an endless storm. I almost feel sorry for the folks at the
large, donor-driven legacy Israel organizations as they try to pretend
that all of this is somehow going to be OK.

[link removed]

Kudos to my friend Tom Edsall for asking what he calls "the larger
question that supersedes all the ins and outs of the maneuvering over
the [2024] Republican presidential nomination and the future of the
party" in his recent Times column
<[link removed]>:
"How, in a matter of less than a decade, could this once-proud country
have evolved to the point that there is a serious debate over choosing a
presidential candidate who is a lifelong
<[link removed]>
opportunist
<[link removed]>,
a pathological and malignant narcissist
<[link removed]>,
a sociopath
<[link removed]>,
a serial liar
<[link removed]>,
a philanderer
<[link removed]>,
a tax cheat
<[link removed]>
who does not pay his bills
<[link removed]>
and a man who socializes with Holocaust deniers
<[link removed]>,
who has pardoned his criminal allies
<[link removed]>,
who encouraged
<[link removed]>
a violent insurrection
<[link removed]>,
who, behind a wall of bodyguards, is a coward
<[link removed]>
and who, without remorse, continually undermines
<[link removed]>
American democracy?"

****

I listened to the audio version of Bono's memoir and I really enjoyed
it, but I also appreciated this excellent interview
<[link removed]>
with him by the Times Magazine's terrific interviewer David Marchese
(especially for his footnotes). My favorite part was this question:
"Isn't citing Thomas Piketty a little dicey for you, given what he
says about fairer taxation?" Its excellence notwithstanding, I don't
think the piece quite lives up to the standard set by this Encyclopedia
Britannica entry on Bono <[link removed]>by
then-nine-year-old Eve Rose Alterman (and her co-author). It was weird,
moreover, that this great mentioner, who impressed even Jann Wenner with
his name-dropping cred
<[link removed]>,
found barely a word for Bruce Springsteen. Hello, Bono, you ingrate,
remember this
<[link removed]>?
Or this
<[link removed]>? Or
this
<[link removed]>?
Or this <[link removed]>? I
mean, in a book that takes fully 20 hours and 25 minutes for you to read
(and sing), you did not notice? I mean for goodness' sake, George W.
Bush gets like a whole hour to himself. Sheesh ... I waited and waited
but I still haven't found what I was looking for.

****

Speaking of great questions, kudos also to Terry Gross for asking Steven
Spielberg if he had seen the documentary about porn films entitled
Shaving Ryan's Privates <[link removed]>.

Also, I'd never heard of James Austin Johnson before, but all Dylan
fans will relish, if they have not already, this shtick
<[link removed]>
he did on the Jimmy Fallon show.

Back to Bruce-wasn't this a weirdly touching version of "Born to
Run"
<[link removed]>
he played at the genuinely moving and quite funny tribute to Jon Stewart
at the Mark Twain awards?

Finally, finally, here's
<[link removed]>
my song for the man to whom Christian Walker offered this advice late
Tuesday night: "Don't beat women, hold guns to peoples heads, fund
abortions then pretend your pro-life, stalk cheerleaders, leave your
multiple minor children alone to chase more fame, lie, lie, lie, say
stupid crap, and make a fool of your family ... And then maybe you can
win a senate seat
<[link removed]>."

****

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!
<[link removed]>

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 12 books, most
recently

**We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel** (Basic
Books, November 2022). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal
Media" column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman
<[link removed]>

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