MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : BIBI WILL NEVER GO !Netanyahu: What caused the downfall of Israel’s legendary prime minister?

MIDDLE ISRAEL: Historians will agree that Netanyahu’s downfall was caused not by any event, idea or trend, but by his character. –  By AMOTZ ASA-EL   JUNE 3, 2021 – JERUSALEM POST

This is not a eulogy. Even if these days’ drama indeed results in Bibi Netanyahu’s departure from the prime ministerial residence on Balfour Street, his shadow will still hover above us, possibly for years.

Even if the Bennett-Lapid government materializes, chances of a Netanyahu comeback will remain high: The coalition will be fragile, Iran might attack, and the court might acquit him, to mention but a few of the circumstances that could make Netanyahu spring back like a Jack-in-the-box.

Still, Netanyahu this week emerged as a leader in vertigo, if even one still living in denial and refusing to accept his fate. Historians will likely mark 2021 as the year his star fell, even if someday his career will rebound. After 12 straight years of political mastery, the wiz who habitually built coalitions, floored opponents and toyed with rival and allied parties – has run out of tricks.

Having thus agreed concerning this year’s significance, Netanyahu’s biographers will then turn to the much trickier question: What caused his downfall?

THE DOWNFALLS of powerful leaders are always complex, but they have often revolved around a massive event, or the rise of a new idea.

Lyndon Johnson, for instance, was finished off by an event – the Vietnam War, which he had no idea how to end. Similarly, Menachem Begin’s premiership ended because of the Lebanon War, whose mounting casualties he could not digest, and David Cameron’s premiership was felled by the Brexit referendum’s result, with which he did not agree, and for which he did not prepare.

Czar Nikolai’s career was buried by an ascendant idea – communism – whose potency he failed to assess, much the way Erich Honecker, Nikolai Ceausescu and the rest of the last communist leaders were dethroned by freedom’s drive.