This week marks four months since the day Benjamin Netanyahu left power, and it is easy to see that after 12 consecutive years in office, the political-media-public system is still struggling to recover.
To strengthen the thesis, if anyone needs, you can bring the new edition of Ben Caspit's biography of Netanyahu, which is currently being distributed to bookstores near your place of residence.
With the formation of the government, Caspit, who is considered, in his words, the "guru" of the anti-Bibi camp, he hurried to write nine new chapters and update the book, which was published in early 2018 by Yedioth Ahronoth.
The hostile relationship between Netanyahu and Caspit, one of Israel's most senior and veteran journalists, is known and familiar to all, and every morning, at the beginning of his and Yinon Magal's program on 103FM, the daily debate sometimes comes to the question "yes or no Bibi."
He does not hide the feelings of joy and relief at the end of his rule, and he defines the new government as nothing less than a "miracle" that saved Israeli democracy.
Still, as soon as he was removed from the chair, he ran to write a book about him again.
"I admit that rehab here is difficult," he says in an interview with Walla !.
"Admits rehab is hard."
Mercury (Photo: Reuven Castro)
According to him, already with the publication of the original book it was agreed in advance to update to another edition "because it is a biography, it can not be left open. Not only has Netanyahu not gone anywhere, but sometimes it seems to me that his danger has only increased, because he continues to undermine the foundations of democracy. There is no precedent for the opposition party not recognizing the government as legitimate, there is no precedent for dozens of Knesset members calling the prime minister a crook. He continues to incite all the time 24/7 - Caesarea villa not only from the office of Leader of the Opposition. "
All the more so, you publish a second edition if it's the end of the path, but it does not seem so.
" If he comes back to be prime minister in two years, can be That it's a book for life. This is a series that never ends, like Grey's Anatomy. We call it Bibi's anatomy. "
Maybe you also do not really want him to go. He provides you with a livelihood, and you live it and the argument around it every morning. The ordinary person on the street, if he does not accidentally hear Ben Winon, may be able to forget about him, but with you he is very present in life.
"This is a point that has occupied me in the past, if I do not miss it. A kind of fear of the day after, a huge void that will open up in my life. With Netanyahu, my columns wrote themselves, I never broke my head what to write. I admit I was afraid the part would be normal. I have hundreds of thousands of readers who want me to challenge them every Friday and Bibi may have cost me a lot of health, but he is always there and he is kind of a tribal bonfire. But we are not the day after - we are only in the middle. Not in the middle of his career. "Than at first, but he's still here."
Even the arguments with Sickle, he says, are not going anywhere.
"My and Yinon's argument will survive even after Bibi because it is not just Bibi - this is the watershed of the current political controversy, which has long been not right and left, but religious conservatives against secular liberals, so it may not be so passionate, because Netanyahu is The biggest instinct maker, but the debate will continue. "
The case at the President's House was engraved in memory.
Ezer Weizmann and Netanyahu (Photo: Walla! NEWS system, National Photo Collection)
"Netanyahu is a great personality, I will not reach his abilities for another 200,000 generations"
Caspit has been behind more than 35 years of journalistic work, but in the last decade his career has skyrocketed, thanks in part to Netanyahu. "I agree that I grew up very much with the Netanyahu phenomenon, but I was a journalist before him and I will also be after him," he says. "Apart from two books about Netanyahu, I also wrote two about Barak and one about Peres. My existence does not depend on him. Although, I admit, he is a good livelihood for me and all of us. It is clear that Netanyahu's disappearance from the political map will damage the media. But, he adds, without elaborating, "he also hurt my livelihood. Note that I am a person who has done television intensively in the past, and has not done television for several years, and in any way he could through a messenger or personally inspired by the lady, he tried to hurt me that way. Offsets ". Last night, after years of absence, Caspit attended a panel of Studio Six.
In the back cover of the book you write that "it is difficult to find Israelis indifferent to Netanyahu" and that "the very mention of his name evokes strong and conflicting feelings."
In many ways you can put these descriptions on you too.
Maybe you're a little Bibi too?
"First of all I am petty, I thank you for the compliment, Netanyahu is a great personality, I will not reach his abilities for another 200,000 generations. And the secret of my success is that I never took myself too seriously, and in that I really do not resemble Netanyahu. To love or hate, but I'm not two-dimensional. There are those who swear by my name because they despise Netanyahu, there are sworn bibists who despise me, but there is another genre - the Likudniks love me. I invite you to hang out with me and see. In the end I know the "The language, I come from there, and the Likudniks are guys of the belly, they know how to feel it. The ultra-Orthodox are also dying for me."
The weird case of the typist in the evening
Today he sells and sells himself as Netanyahu's chilba, but in the past, Caspit testifies, there was a "good relationship" between them.
Two events were engraved in his memory from his first tenure.
"Once I flew with him in a helicopter to an American aircraft carrier that patrolled here and a second time I went with him to the funeral of the seven girls from Nahariya in a car."
On that trip, in March 1997, he even found himself in a strange position where he functioned for Netanyahu as no less than a keyboardist.
"On the way to the funeral, we passed President Weizmann, Bibi brought a handwritten speech and he asked Ezer to give it to a typist.
"Since then everyone knows her name is Lady."
Sarah Netanyahu (Photo: Reuven Castro)
"Netanyahu asked me to step down. I said - 'If she leaves us, we will leave her.'"
In 1999, when Netanyahu lost power for the first time, there was also a reconciliation meeting, in which he "asked me to resign. I told him - Bibi, if she leaves us - we will leave her. If there is nothing to write, we will not write." Relationships have experienced ups and downs over the years, in line with critical publications of Netanyahu's and his family's exploits. Even when he returned to the Prime Minister's Office in 2009, he says, their relationship was normal, until the last explosion, which occurred following a column he published about the Netanyahu couple's trip to the luxury hotel "Conot" in London, entitled "The Lady". "Since then everyone knows her name is Lady, and since then he has not spoken a word to me, but a great many of his speakers and associates have told me that he appreciates me and my opinion is important to him."
Did you try to contact him, or normalize the relationship at some point?
"I'm a guy with very great pride, I never asked for forgiveness with anyone, do not want to talk to me do not have to, there were all kinds of attempts that I did not initiate, but I was not bothered by it, because I believe that beautiful times in a journalist's life are times when the government does not talk "
And now you have access again, to the Bennett-Lapid government, after so many years.
"I do not take advantage of the access too much. Bennett has spoken to me twice since he was prime minister. "They ask why we do not criticize the new government enough, but I do not think there is an etrog. I hear the editions with difficult questions, they are constantly told what they promised and did not keep, they are not made assumptions, and if so, it is an end-of-season assumption and it is Many people, myself included, believe that this government saved democracy in Israel. We all know what would have happened here if Netanyahu had reached 61, I'm not sure we would have been sitting on this balcony. I do not think I have been in administrative detention, but in the last two years, "Since the investigations were accelerated, things happened that we never dreamed would happen, so I feel a miracle happened, and it really is a miracle - it was about 20,000 votes. Saar's sixth seat and Abbas' fourth seat swayed until the last second."
Maybe in the next edition.
The signing ceremony of the Avraham agreements (Photo: AP)
The chapters added to the new edition have quite a few new revelations about small and large events that have taken place in the political turmoil of recent years.
For example, for the picantry, without doing too many spoilers, Caspit reveals a surprising phone call in April 2019, when Netanyahu negotiated coalitions with Avi Gabay, then chairman of the Labor Party, to enter the government. According to the book, one of the people who called to persuade Gabay to leave it - was former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in recent years led to an all out war against Netanyahu over all airwaves.
previously been exposed to the negotiations with Gabai, Netanyahu pledged to pose a video which meet all his promises. book turns out that there is also an audio recording from -2019, recorded During attempts at reconciliation with Gideon Saar, in which Netanyahu pledged to give Saar a significant portfolio in the next government and a place on the negotiating team, history has already revealed to us that this commitment has never been fulfilled.
You do not mention at all in the book the normalization agreements with the Emirates. Is it not appropriate to be in Netanyahu's biography? The most significant achievement he will leave behind?
"A lot of things did not go into the book, there are a few pages that can be put into the book, but I get the comment for the next edition. I have said a thousand times that I think that as a crazy paradox, Netanyahu will eventually be remembered as a man of peace. In both cases, he did not intend to go there - he received the normalization because he gave up annexation and the goal was not to integrate the Arabs but to survive politically, and that happened because of Netanyahu's investigations, but the end result is great. I think the event "With a historic Abbas, it is irreversible. Even if they leave tomorrow in a rage, it has already happened in consciousness, the country has not been destroyed and the sun has risen, and that has tremendous significance."
There are people who, in the name of these achievements, are willing to forgive Netanyahu for the rest.
Can you forgive him?
"I do not hate Netanyahu. I have a lot of feelings but I do not think hatred is one of them. I have a huge appreciation for him, he is not an ordinary person but he has superhuman abilities and powers. I also have compassion for him. He is a tragic figure, a son A person with almost no friends, unable to enjoy anything, unable to spend a penny on anything, unable to relax. And there is also a great deal of contempt because I think he knows what he is doing to our inner fabric and yet he does it. Regarding forgiving? I'm not a measure of forgiveness at all. I hope history will forgive him, and if it does, I will accept it, because she is smarter than all of us. Netanyahu has achievements, his bill is not empty. More learned. "