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This week we complete the story of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s most politically successful prime minister — and its most divisive. 

We pick up the story in 1996, with Netanyahu’s first term in office, clashing with both President Clinton and his hard-right coalition partners over the future of the Oslo peace process. We follow his subsequent decade in opposition, as the dwindling of hope and the misfortunes of his rivals enabled him to make yet another unlikely comeback in 2009.

Apart from 18 months of political chaos, he has been in power ever since, growing more hostile towards the Palestinians and Iran and more authoritarian at home — some say Netanyahu was Trump before Trump. The Israel that suffered the blow of October 7 was outwardly strong and prosperous yet more divided, corrupt and unpopular than ever. Its conduct of the subsequent wars demonstrates the costs of Netanyahu’s self-serving machinations, his embrace of the far right and his unforgivingly bleak worldview. Even as a majority of voters want him to step down, he hangs on.

Is Netanyahu just an extraordinarily canny operator or the true representative of a new Israel, a long way from its founders’ intentions? How did peace with the Palestinians go from a real possibility to a broken dream? Why does everyone from foreign leaders to members of his own cabinet have such contempt for Netanyahu? And how can Israel recover from his ruinous leadership? To understand where the country is now, you need to understand the man.

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Reading List

Books

Neill Lochery - The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu (Bloomsbury, 2016)

Benjamin Netanyahu - A Place Among the Nations: Israel and the World (1993)

Benjamin Netanyahu - Bibi: My Story (2022)

Anshel Pfeffer - Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu (2020)

Ari Shavit - My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel: Updated edition (2015)

Avi Shlaim - The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000)

Articles

David Margolick - ‘Star of Zion’, Vanity Fair (1996)

David Remnick - ‘The Outsider’, New Yorker (1998)

Joshua Leifer - ‘The Netanyahu doctrine’, Guardian (2023)

David Remnick - ‘The Price of Netanyahu’s Ambition’, New Yorker (2024)

Donald McIntyre - ‘How Netanyahu gambled with the Fate of Israel’, Tortoise (2024)

John Jenkins - ‘Netanyahu’s all-out war’, New Statesman (2024)

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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