The Israeli elections could see Netanyahu lose more than just his premiership. | The News Agents

Netanyahu is this towering figure. I mean, he was the original Trump before Trump. He understood the power of the Internet in the 70s to control the political message. He understood how to essentially take away, destroy the democratic norms in a country so that you gave people fewer places to oppose. I mean, one of the things he was trying to bring in before October 7th was these judicial reforms, which essentially meant taking power away from independent judges. There were many, many protests on the streets in the summer before October 7th, and arguably a lot of that argument got lost in the tragedy of what happened three months later. But what you have to understand is that if Netanyahu does lose, if he disappears from power, and it would be really for the first time in about three decades if he goes, then he also faces corruption charges. He faces a potential spell behind bars. He faces ignominy amongst the voters of Israel for everything that they could argue he let happen on October 7th as well. And so there is quite a lot at stake for him personally to make sure that he clings on for dear life to whatever happens here. It will ultimately be the president, Isaac Herzog, who calls upon the party with the biggest majority to try and form the government. And they have this kind of period of 28 days which can be extended. And in a way, this is when Netanyahu's work will probably start, because he has shown himself to be quite a dab hand at reaching out and making peace with the parties, if not the country. Yeah, look, we said before Donald Trump's election in November 2024 that this was he was either going to end up in the White House or the jailhouse. And it's exactly the same thing for Netanyahu now. The stakes could not be higher for him personally about whether he goes down as, you know, this great figure of Israeli politics or whether he goes down as this crook who ends up behind bars serving a long term in prison.