A tale of three ‘anybody but Bibi’ stooges

One the issues that puzzles those people abroad who consider Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu a great leader is what appears to be the widespread, deep-seated hatred for him at home. It’s a relevant question, given the fact that he’s the longest-serving premier in the history of the Jewish state—which means that he’s actually popular among voters.

TV host Sharon Gal, who presents an eponymous daily show at 7 p.m. on i24News, set out last week to get to the bottom of the conundrum. Or, rather, to illustrate that the loathing stems more from the gut than the head.

Over the course of two days, Gal conducted three separate interviews with well-known figures: Eyal Megged (on July 27), Ronen Tzur (also on July 27) and Dan Shilon (on July 28). Ironically, the conduct of each during the Zoom appearances spoke volumes about the nature of “Bibi Derangement Syndrome.”

A taste of how each reacted when Sharon dared to ask them to unpack their animus is telling.

Let’s start with Megged. Gal invited the poet, novelist and opinion writer—who’d been friends with Netanyahu decades ago, until making a U-turn to the opposite camp—to clarify comments he’d made on a podcast earlier in the week.

Gal began by airing the exchange, in which Megged said, “The left doesn’t forget and mainly doesn’t forgive. They didn’t forgive my friendship with Bibi, even when I came out against him. … As I’ve mentioned before, it’s worse than having been friends with Hitler—in their eyes.”

Rather than expounding on the slur, Megged proceeded almost to justify their stance, arguing, “The situation today is completely different. In the meantime, Bibi’s dictatorial personality has come to dominate every other part of his personality. And he suffers from that syndrome in which he doesn’t distinguish between himself and the country.”

Here, Gal jumped in to accuse Megged of sucking up to those who compared Netanyahu to Hitler.

“What makes him a dictator?” he challenged.

Megged replied: “What makes him a dictator is that he thinks that if the State of Israel tells him ‘no’ and removes him from office, the country’s of no interest to him. On the contrary, he wants it to be destroyed. … He wants to destroy the country! Look around you! And he’s doing it!”

Gal pressed him to be specific about what, exactly, Netanyahu has done, other than have successes in Iran and elsewhere. Megged made fun of the mere suggestion of Mideast achievements, then asserted that Bibi not only won’t accept a loss at the ballot box in October, but “will not allow for elections” altogether.

“Anyone who remained friendly to Bibi after Oct. 7, [2023] is an idiot,” he bellowed, going on to insult Gal. “You’re an idiot. If you still support Bibi, you’re an idiot. … Your channel [i24News] is dirty; it’s filthy. And you don’t have a bit of respect for your profession. Are you even a journalist? You’re pathetic. A zero!”

Like Megged, PR strategist/political consultant Ronen Tzur ended up doubling down on anti-Netanyahu sentiment after having expressed hesitation about the extremism of fellow leftists.

Tzur was a prominent face of the protest movement against the government’s attempts to reform the judicial system. In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion and massacre, he took it upon himself to lead the campaign on behalf of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. His anti-Netanyahu politicization of the effort was so polarizing that he was pressured by many relatives of the 251 abductees held in Gaza to step down in February 2024.

In mid-June this year, Tzur declared that he’d be running in the primaries for Yair Golan’s far-left party, The Democrats. Ten days later, he announced that he wouldn’t be submitting his candidacy, after all. The party, he said, was going through a process of “Mamdaniazation”—likening it to the radical character of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Yet, when discussing his decision with Gal, he went on to attack Netanyahu for deserving the left’s wrath. One way he did this was to defend having equated the Israeli premier with Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu who—along with his wife, Elena—was executed by firing squad in December 1989, thus ending 24 years of brutal communist rule.

Tzur insisted that he was only making the parallel between two leaders due to the fact that both were put on trial. Yeah, right. As though the implication emanating from the Israeli left about Netanyahu and the fate that ought to befall him and his wife, Sara, wasn’t obvious, not to mention intentional.

The false Ceaușescu parallel was also the topic of Gal’s chat with Dan Shilon, an aging, has-been icon of Israeli television talk and variety shows. Following the prime minister’s latest visit to the White House, Shilon shared a social-media post referring to Bibi as “Ceaușescu-yahu.”

Shilon described the summit as “one of the crappiest meetings—EVER—of any leader with a president of the United States.”

“It was a good meeting, with smiles and agreements that neither you nor I know about,” he said. “But comparing Netanyahu to Ceaușescu, a dictator who was executed….”

“Leave me alone, leave me alone,” Shilon shot back. “You’re becoming hysterical right now.”

“I also know who owns your station,” Shilon said, without naming French-Israeli telecommunications billionaire Patrick Drahi and family.

“What does this have to do with the owner of my station?” Gal asked, pressing Shilon about the Ceaușescu analogy.

All Shilon could come up with was that Netanyahu has “unclean hands”—that he’s morally tainted. Oh, and corrupt.

Gal’s insistence that he answer why it’s OK to conflate Netanyahu and Ceaușescu spurred Shilon to smirk.

“Enough, enough,” he said. “You’re a bunch of idiots. That’s it.”

So, there’s the phenomenon in nutshell. Perhaps foreigners shouldn’t be wondering about a certain swath of Israelis’ Netanyahu-derision. They’d do better to ponder why so few of his loudest detractors are able to articulate their criticism without descending into invective.

Indeed, the inability of the above three “illustrious” stooges to make a coherent case against Israel’s longest-serving prime minister reveals far more about his opponents than it does about him.

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