Old white men have run Israel far too long

Maybe what Benjamin Netanyahu is betting is that nothing really changes in Israel. Not him, and not the public. Maybe he’s betting that Israelis have yet to share one of the central messages sent by the American public to the Republican Party:

By Bradley Burston | Nov.14, 2012 | 4:16 AM

It’s only natural for children of centenarians to have a certain lack of perspective on their own aging process. Take Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The prince among princes in a party ruled for decades by the aging commanders of the pre-state Irgun and Lehi militias, Bibi grew accustomed to basking in the status of the permanent boy wonder.

And it’s only natural, under the circumstances, for someone like Netanyahu to believe that he has unlimited resources of time and popular support. So vast a reservoir of remaining youth, so deep a pocket of reliable votes, that he has no foreseeable need to make the kinds of historic (which is to say, profoundly courageous and unexpected, and thus hugely risky ) diplomatic moves that predecessors like David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon did.

Maybe he’s right. Or maybe, as is his wont of late, he’s betting.

Maybe what Benjamin Netanyahu is betting is that nothing really changes in Israel. Not him, and not the public. Maybe he’s betting that Israelis have yet to share one of the central messages sent by the American public to the Republican Party:

This place has been run by old white men for far too long.

Maybe he’s betting that this public will be fine as always with its leaders being a uniform version of Pale-of-Settlement white and, often as not, past retirement age, as they have been since 1948.

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http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/old-white-men-have-run-israel-far-too-long.premium-1.477547