The humbling of Israel’s prime ministers

It is not easy being Prime Minister of Israel. The job is a demanding one. The reward is questionable. The experience is sometimes humbling. Surely, the Prime Minister is powerful. But he is less powerful than it seems. Two Israeli Prime Ministers have leaned this lesson in the last couple of days.

1.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is going to jail today – starting to serve his 18 month sentence.

Olmert recorded a message to the public on this occasion. It was well crafted and well thought through. Like most convicted felons, Olmert still insists that he is innocent. But he acknowledges “mistakes,” takes responsibility “with a heavy heart,” and, more importantly, reminds the public that “no man is above the law.”

Olmert was combative during his long investigation and trial, and he did not shy away from criticizing the legal system. As was his habit for many years, he was often arrogant and condescending, occasionally blunt. So it is clearly a choice on his part to begin his prison term by sending a conciliatory message. One assumes that the former Prime Minister, in making that choice, is thinking about his legacy as an Israel leader. Does he want to be seen in retrospect as a corrupt Prime Minister that was dragged to jail kicking and screaming and battling his own country – or to be remembered one day as a man that made a significant contribution to Israel’s well-being and humbly went to jail when he was accused of wrong doing?

It was “important” for Olmert to say in his message that the allegations against him did not include any item concerning his term as Israel’s Prime Minister. That is another way of saying: I may have been a somewhat shifty public servant, but when I got the top job I behaved as you would expect the leader of the country to behave. Olmert wants to be remembered as an honest, hard working, efficient, worthy Prime Minister. When you get to hold that job, all other jobs from the past become a footnote.

2.

The court found last week that Sara Netanyahu, the wife of the current Prime Minister – Israel’s “first lady” (she is actually second lady, Israel’s official hierarchy puts the President before the PM) – acted in a way that was abusive towards a worker at the Prime Minister’s house:

Judge Dita Pruginin of the Jerusalem Labor Court ruled that the Netanyahu couple had violated the employee rights of Meni Naftali, the former caretaker, and awarded him 170,000 shekels in damages.

The PM’s house has been, in recent years, a place about which there is rumor and ridicule. Living in a glass house is never easy. Neither for the PM, nor for his spouse. Looking at this glass house is also not easy for the observer. The PM’s house does not function is a way that makes all of Israel’s citizens proud. It does not function in a manner that makes Netanyahu more endearing to the public.

A Prime Minister has a job: to take care for Israel. He also has a family that he wants to protect. For some leaders – Netanyahu is hardly the first such leader in Israel or elsewhere – these two roles are not always compatible. The job has its demands, the family has its different set of demands, and navigating between the two – while easy in theory for the observant punditry – could become tricky (as any person with a husband, a wife, or children knows).

3.

Netanyahu appeared yesterday before Israel’s High Court. He was there to convince the justices that the “contentious natural gas deal” his government has reached should stand.

The issue at hand is complicated, and while the government is certain that the gas deal is crucial to the future well-being of Israel’s economy, its critics – and they are many – describe it as sloppy, one sided, irresponsible and harmful to the public.

Clearly, the government is displeased with the court’s decision to ponder the complaints made against the deal. Clearly, it is even more displeased with the court’s hint that it might nix one of the main clauses of the deal. The government has good reason to get upset: it needs to govern, and the opposition, the courts, the press, the hysterical public debate, make it increasingly difficult to govern. Not even a gas deal – a significant deal, no doubt – can be completed without someone overruling it, questioning it, second guessing it.

As if there is a pie in the sky ideal deal that is the only deal the government is allowed to sign.

As if the court is the institution that is more capable of defining such a deal than the government.

So yes, it is easy to see why the Prime Minister wants the court to get out of his way as he makes policies. And it is easy to see that while wanting such a thing, the Prime Minister needs to go to the court, lay out his case, and later learn that the justices were not necessarily swayed by his arguments. He is the powerful Prime Minister. Yet in Israel, no man is above the law.