Zev Chafets, Columnist

Why I No Longer Trust Netanyahu to Lead Israel

The Israeli prime minister has an impressive record, but his old willingness to risk violence and instability for political gain has resurfaced.

February 28, 2019 at 6:30 AM UTC

By Zev Chafets

Zev Chafets is a journalist and author of 14 books. He was a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine.

Whatever it takes.
Photographer: Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg

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One evening, in the autumn of 1995, I ran into Benjamin Netanyahu at a popular restaurant in downtown Jerusalem. On my way out, I stopped at his table. There was something I wanted to say to him.

Bibi was the recently chosen leader of the Likud, Israel's party of the right. For months, his party had been staging demonstrations against the Oslo Accords, the peace agreement between Israel and Palestinian Liberation Organization. Some of these events had been ugly. Crowds waved incendiary banners and chanted that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a traitor.