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The prime minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an interview with Beni Ziper on the 103FM podcast that "we must restore the balance" between the authorities, otherwise "democracy is in danger."
Netanyahu said these things in his first interview with the Israeli media after announcing the formation of the government - an interview that mainly dealt with the release of his autobiographical book "Bibi - The Story of My Life".
First, Netanyahu referred to the idea of writing the book and the deadline he set for himself, and also paralleled this to the building of the emerging coalition.
"I knew that as long as I'm in the opposition, I can write. Once I'm in the coalition, I can't," Netanyahu said, adding that this is a difficult test for a person who is involved in politics.
"You can't do it, you don't have the time to do it, so you compromise with it, or alternatively, you use other people who are supposed to shorten your time. This is the biggest mistake, it doesn't work, it will never pass the test Time," he claimed.
"When you have a deadline, you have a final date, things drain to the final date. Why? Like this. For example, in the Knesset, they always say, 'We, in order to enact certain lives, need a very long time.' It turns out that they don't need a very long time because they waste the time and get to the purposeful discussions, the whole thing, close to the deadline," he added.
"The same thing with putting together a coalition," he noted, adding: "It's a kind of operation of turning a Hungarian cube and you turn it more quickly towards the end, and at the end it comes, the last click and it works out. So the answer is, it will work out and it will be very soon."
"The big question before us is not how to trample the court, God forbid if we do that."
Netanyahu (Photo: 103fm)
Will there be another volume of the book?
"Depends on what will happen," Netanyahu admitted, adding: "I can say that those who are looking for a life of meaning can at least read in my book the partial answers I give to that. If it helps you form a life of meaning, then I think it will benefit you."
During the interview, Netanyahu was asked about the desire of some members of the emerging coalition to move the overriding clause to the Supreme Court, and said: "We need to think about how to do that. The big question before us is not how to trample the court, God forbid if we do that. The legislative authority , the executive and the judiciary, each has to balance the other. If you trample on one of them, then you won't get democracy. You can't trample on the court, as much as the court can't trample on the parliament and the government, the executive - you must restore the balance."
According to him, "there are excellent democracies that function through balance. If you don't have balance, if you don't have control over one of these systems and it stands above all of them and has no balances - then democracy is in danger."
"Yuni told me: 'My life is mine and my death is mine'"
Netanyahu also talked about the special relationship he had with his older brother Yoni, who was killed in the Entebbe operation.
First, he referred to the conflict between them before Operation Sabana.
"I was assigned one wing of the plane along with my soldiers. He was not the commander of a team, but the commander of several teams, and he suddenly came to me and said: 'I'm joining as well'. I said, 'How can you join? It's 16 people He said, 'Then I will replace you.' I said, 'But these are my soldiers,' so he said, 'Then we will both go,' and I said to him, 'Say, do you hear what you are saying? Think about father and mother. What will happen If one of us, both of us, gets killed?'
A possibility that was completely realistic," he said.
According to Netanyahu, "Then he told me a sentence that I will never forget. He told me: 'Bibi, my life is mine and my death is mine.' going'".
Netanyahu noted that following the debate,
The brothers went to the commander of the unit at the time, Ehud Barak.
"He ruled in my favor and Yoni stayed behind," he shared.
"I'm not sure I could find words to describe what happened next."
Yoni Netanyahu (Photo: GettyImages)
During the conversation, Netanyahu recalled a childhood story of the two brothers who used to visit Prof. Klausner.
"He had such a small white beard, and round glasses, he would greet us at the entrance. Yoni was six years old, I was three, and there was a ritual - he would say, 'Hello children,' Yoni would say, 'Hello Prof. Klausner.'" Klausner He would always ask the same question, 'Tell me Jonathan, did you come to see me or did you come to get the chocolates?'
And he knew how to say, 'No, Prof. Klausner, we came to see you.' So Klausner would take us into the living room and take out some kind of European cabinet, he would open the drawer, take out a bonbonniere, give it to us and it worked every time."
However, there was one instance where not everything went smoothly.
"We came to him and he asked Yoni, 'Did you come to see me?'
And he said, 'Yes, I came to see you Prof. Klausner,' and then suddenly he turned to me, I was three years old, 'And what about you Benjamin? What did you come for?'
Well, I was three years old, I had no idea what to do. I raised one hand to cover my face, and with no other choice, I put my hand into my pocket and pulled out some crumpled flowers and shoved it in front of Klausner's face. I'm glad to tell you that we got the chocolates." Netanyahu shared.
In his book, Netanyahu also describes the difficult news, when he told his parents about Yoni's fall.
"You describe it in a restrained way and on the other hand it really sends a chill through the body, that you hear her scream and you cut the scene like in a movie and don't continue any more," said Benny Ziper.
Netanyahu replied: "I'm not sure I could find words to describe what happened next, that's why I didn't do it."
"When writing important speeches, books or articles, in the end I have to write it"
Later in the conversation, Netanyahu also explained the influence of his father Prof. Bentzion Netanyahu in his life and the things he learned from him, among other things on writing.
"Later, I found boxes of my notebooks from the 5th grade and opened a history notebook, I saw well-written and scholarly essays there on the Maccabees or the Hellenistic takeover of the Middle East and things like that. It's written in a child's handwriting, but obviously he dictated to me, and of course I accepted Excellent grades in history."
According to Netanyahu, "Over time he told me, 'Now write yourself and I will edit,' and later he would tell me, 'Now write yourself and you will edit,' and of course this is a huge training."
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He also said: "When writing important speeches or writing books or articles, in the end I have to write it, whether it's in Hebrew or whether it's in English. I find it easier for me to lay the foundations and then build the floors than to come up with a structure that someone else wrote And then to activate the... I would say, the careful editing that I inherited from my father."
He also conveyed a message to literary critics: "Usually, the books I publish, no one refers to them. Abroad they are referred to back and forth.
Please, attack, read, criticize, find the errors, where are you?
Why aren't you doing your work?".
For a review by a colleague of salons in Walla! Culture on Netanyahu's book
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