סודות הממשל - פרק 1: העימות האחרון של נתניהו

Saturday night, January 23, 1999. Reserve Major General Yitzhak Mordechai is still the Minister of Defense of the State of Israel. For weeks, senior Likud figures have been talking about the possibility that he might leave Netanyahu and join a new center party, but Mordechai has not yet announced his decision. Netanyahu decides to decide for him and sends him a dismissal letter. That your personal ambition is stronger than any other consideration, therefore our paths must part. We declare with pride. The government, the dramatic and defining events that shaped Israeli politics. Host: Israel Yoskovitch. A short time later, Yitzhak Mordechai appears in a live broadcast on Channel 2. He looks shocked, breathing hard from a storm of emotions, and is especially agitated. He calls the Prime Minister a petty politician, talks about the fact that he did not intend to leave the Likud, and promises that he will announce his decision in a short time. Less than three months later, the two would sit across from each other, and Yitzhak Mordechai would settle scores with Benjamin Netanyahu in front of the entire nation. Shamir, who was Prime Minister and head of the Likud, told him: "Go away, you angel of sabotage." From his perspective, this was not just a dismissal from a position; it was a public political humiliation. He was still Minister of Defense, still a member of the Likud, and had not yet announced his departure. Netanyahu presented him as someone who had already betrayed the camp, and Mordechai, for his part, left the event angry and hurt. But also free to compete against Benjamin Netanyahu and use everything he knows about him from the years he worked by his side. Netanyahu sent me a letter tonight full of lies, smears, and inanities that befit a petty politician. Itzik Mordechai didn't actually plan to resign or run away from the Likud. He was simply testing the waters and was afraid. But Netanyahu, as always throughout the years, whenever something seemed a certain way to him, when he feared something, he immediately made decisions. That's how it was with Gideon Sa'ar, with Reuven Rivlin, with Avigdor Liberman, with Moshe Kahlon, with a long line of other people who could have been an inseparable part of his party and are today standing and competing against him for one reason only: because he feared, because he was told. At that moment he lost them, but he also lost their electorate. Within days, Mordechai joined the Center Party. At the head of the party now stood four very well-known people: former Chief of Staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Dan Meridor, and Roni Milo. Later, Uri Savir, Dalia Rabin, David Magen, Hagai Merom, Nissim Zvili, and others also joined. The idea was to establish an alternative that wasn't Likud but also wasn't the Labor Party, and to attract voters who were fed up with Netanyahu but also afraid to vote for Ehud Barak. It looked promising. The polls gave the Center Party a double-digit number of mandates and presented Mordechai as a candidate who could force a second round. And the moment the elections became a battle of "for or against Netanyahu," many of the center's voters began moving to Barak. By the way, a similar situation we are in these very days. Here comes the truth. It happened on April 13, 1999, on Nissim Mishal's program on Channel 2 at the Herzliya studios. It's been a long time since you shook hands. The three main candidates were invited. Netanyahu and Mordechai chose to attend. Ehud Barak decides not to show up; an empty chair was intentionally placed in the studio in the spot meant for him. This chair was supposed to be Netanyahu's weapon. His campaign staff prepared him to attack Barak, to claim that he was running away from a debate, and to turn the evening into a story. About the candidate who didn't dare to come. Netanyahu himself said at the beginning of the broadcast that the most powerful thing in the studio was, in his view, the empty chair. The most powerful thing in this debate is that this chair is empty. Barak was absent. Mordechai was supposed to sit beside him, but the truth is the real target was Barak. Mordechai and his people realized this beforehand. His advisor, Eyal Arad, later recounted that their goal from the start was to disrupt Netanyahu’s flow of messages and make him respond to Mordechai, shaking his stability. That is indeed what happened . It cannot be determined that Arad scripted the exact phrase "look me in the eyes" in advance. What can be determined is that this was the strategy and Mordechai executed it with that phrase. Look me in the eyes. I will not give up on the security issues. Wait. What does that mean? Look me in the eyes. He knows. Mordechai opened with a direct attack. He told Netanyahu that the elections were moved up because he failed, and mentioned the people who left him and turned against him: Dan Meridor, David Levy, Benny Begin, and others. This was no longer a normal debate between candidates; it was a personal settling of scores between a Prime Minister and his minister. And then comes the argument about Syria and the Golan Heights. Here one must understand what lies behind Mordechai’s phrase: "Look me in the eyes." Netanyahu was elected in 1996; he presents a firm stance against a withdrawal from the Golan, as part of his government's basic guidelines. And when Yitzhak Mordechai says to Netanyahu, "Bibi, look me in the eyes," he is not talking in general terms. When you said to him, "Look in the eyes , look me in the eyes." Meaning, was there something in the negotiations with the Syrians that was missed? You lost the willingness to reach a permanent settlement. That is exactly where the debate was. And when Yitzhak Mordechai says that, Netanyahu is shaken. Netanyahu loses his composure. He had planned to talk only to the empty chair of his rival, Barak. And suddenly, Mordechai comes at him and hits him with something he didn't plan for and wasn't prepared for. Ariel Sharon said about you that you endanger the State of Israel; he doesn't believe a word you say. Shamir, who was Prime Minister and head of Likud, called you an "angel of sabotage ." Ze'ev Binyamin Begin says you win and Likud loses. Do you remember what Limor Livnat said? That this leadership needs to be replaced. What did they say ? Your good friends—that Bibi won, the Likud lost. And when Benjamin Netanyahu leaves the studio, he says one sentence to his people: "I made a mistake by coming." Since then, he hasn't returned to debates—not with Benny Gantz, not with Bougie Herzog, not with Shelly Yachimovich, not with Gadi Eizenkot. Now, Yitzhak Mordechai’s scar hurt him deeply, but at the moment of truth, at the ballot box, the real results: Yitzhak Mordechai, his party only receives six seats. The public, in the end, didn't run to Mordechai as everyone expected, as everyone thought. Those who oppose Netanyahu go to the opponent, Barak. Ah, Barak wins in a truly dramatic, unusual way, unplanned, unforeseen. This is the dawn of a new day. In retrospect, even though Yitzhak Mordechai himself was not elected prime minister—on the contrary, he received six mandates and later resigned from the Knesset due to various investigations and criminal suspicions. The one who benefited from that confrontation, from that embarrassment of Benjamin Netanyahu, was the one who was not there, the one who was absent from the studio: Ehud Barak. Ehud Barak beats Benjamin Netanyahu by an extraordinary, dramatic margin. He defeats him, only for him to lose a year and a half later by an equally dramatic margin to Ariel Sharon of the Likud. Many things, many lessons—both the campaigners and the strategists, but especially the candidates—learned from that confrontation and the debacle for Netanyahu. They learned that just because of your rhetorical ability and because you are a media virtuoso, it does not mean that you will certainly win the confrontations. They learned that confrontations are not always— the way you enter them is how you exit them. But they also learned the most important lesson of all: you can be a drab candidate, a candidate who is truly uncharismatic by all means, but if you are facing a candidate with virtuoso skills who is not prepared properly, if you shock him, if you surprise him, if you come at him with things he is not prepared for—that is exactly where you can take him down and that is exactly where an election campaign can be decided.