As Trump Goes, So Goes Netanyahu

U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be in an enviable position. His approval rating is at record lows. The indictments stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation have obvious implications for Trump’s presidency. And that’s just the latest piece of sobering news for an administration hobbled by incompetence from the start. So it’s a bit surprising that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, a savvy political survivor who is poised to become the country’s longest-serving prime minister, seems to be consciously conducting himself in ways that are strikingly similar to Trump.

Netanyahu, who also is under investigation for a variety of suspected infractions, has lashed out at Israel’s press and its reporting on the scandals in distinctly Trump-like fashion. He recently claimed that Israel’s political left and the country’s ruggedly independent press have become one and the same, and that their shared objective is “an obsessive, unprecedented witch-hunt against me and my family, seeking to overthrow the government.” As in the U.S., members of the judiciary have chastised the prime minister. “Making the press into the enemy of the nation is anti-democratic,” warned Dalia Dorner, a retired associate justice of the Israeli Supreme Court.