Netanyahu is like Nixon. He’s facing charges in a divided country, and he has eroded trust | Opinion

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself today in a similar situation to President Richard Nixon in the final phase of his presidency: facing criminal charges, leaving a nation bitterly divided and worrying about his legacy.

When examining Nixon’s legacy, some historians focus on his international accomplishments — the opening to China and the nuclear arms control agreements, which eventually led to the end of the Cold War. Others highlight his domestic achievements, like the desegregation of schools, environmental policies and more. Observers agree, though, that whatever legacy Nixon has left behind, it was marred with Watergate.

It is too early to speak about Netanyahu’s legacy, but it seems that it will be as complex as that of his American counterpart. In the international arena, Netanyahu succeeded with the Abraham Accords, which added more Arab countries to the peace cycle with Israel. However, he failed precisely where he had hoped to position himself: Israel’s savior from Iran’s nuclear threat. In addition, he will probably be remembered as the prime minister who has ruled us for too long and who has excelled in pitting one Israeli against the other.

Yet, on one issue the two leaders seem to have been on the same page: their aversion to the free press. Nixon remained bitter about the press long after his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial election, which prompted him to famously tell reporters that, “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

As Jon Marshall wrote in The Atlantic in 2014, Nixon was the first president who began labeling the press as “the Media,” aiming at belittling and discrediting it. In late 1972, he already used much harsher language, when he told Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig: “Never forget, the press is the enemy, the press is the enemy…Write that on a blackboard 100 times.”

Netanyahu has never been the darling of the Israeli press. This stemmed in part from his vitriolic incitement against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the fatal summer of 1995, his hedonistic lifestyle at the expense of the public and the fact that journalists discovered quite early the gap between his rhetoric and his accomplishments.

Here was a man, for example, who made a name by teaching the world how to fight terrorism and, upon becoming prime minister, made a turnabout and freed 1,000 Palestinian terrorists for one Israeli POW, Gilad Shalit.

If Nixon mainly ranted against the press in the Oval Office, banned some correspondents from White House press conferences (something Donald Trump would echo some 40 years later), sent the IRS to investigate tax returns filed by journalists whom the White House disliked and threatened to enact harsh libel laws against them, Netanyahu took a much more practical approach: If you can’t beat them, he reasoned, own them.

In 2007, after losing the election to Ehud Olmert, he persuaded right-wing casino mogul Sheldon Edelson to publish for him a free, mass-distribution daily, Yisrael HaYom (Israel Today), that would be open about its support for Netanyahu and would offset Israel’s most popular daily, Yedioth Aharonot, whose publisher, Arnon Mozes, was perceived as an opponent of Netanyahu.

Yisrael HaYom did help Netanyahu regain his political power, but at the same time implicated him in criminal activity: He was secretly recorded scheming with the same Arnon Mozes to change the tone of Yedioth Aharonot in his favor. In return, he promised to cut the circulation of Mozes’ competitor, Yisrael Hayom. Through “Bibi’s tapes,” Israelis — like Americans during Watergate — realized that their leader, allegedly, was a crook.

If this was not enough, Netanyahu, acting as communications minister, secretly offered the owner of Walla!, a popular news website, huge benefits in his bid for Bezeq, the Israeli state-owned communications company, in return for flattering coverage for Netanyahu and his wife, Sarah. This earned him another criminal charge. And finally, he endorsed Channel 14, the Israeli version of Fox News, where he doesn’t have to face truth seeking journalists but can propagandize freely.

In the final analysis, it seems that Netanyahu’s legacy will probably resemble that of Nixon: It won’t highlight political and international achievements only, but the fact that they have eroded the public trust in government in general, and in the media — the watchdog of democracy — in particular.

Nixon, at least, offered some apology. In his famed 1977 interviews with British journalist David Frost, he confessed, “I let down my friends. I let down my country. I let down our system of government.”

Only time will tell whether Netanyahu, when he finally leaves us alone, will do the same.

Uri Dromi was the spokesman of the Rabin and Peres governments, from 1992-1996.