Sociopathology, Israel’s Netanyahu Part II

“Netanyahu spends at least as much of his time on media as he spends on security matters, including on matters an outsider would consider nonsense.” - Nir Hefetz

“It’s a political witch hunt. It has one purpose: To prevent the firing of the head of the Shin Bet … There is nothing. … A political investigation, a political witch hunt, that’s what this is.” - Benjamin Netanyahu

“A leader who portrays himself as one of the persecuted, the target of an incessant witch-hunt by the so-called deep state. A liberal media intent on revisiting an election gone badly. And a left-wing political machine supposedly out to get him.” - Natan Sachs

Instead of being a retreat, Netanyahu's seventeen months in opposition from June 2021 to November 2022 were a crucible of ego and paranoia. When he was indicted in 2019 on charges of corruption, bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, his trials by 2021 gnawed away at the illusion he had long nurtured of himself as Israel's indispensable God like authoritarian saviour.

Thousands of posts on social media in 2021–2022 criticized Benjamin Netanyahu as a "narcissistic sociopath," comparing his "complete lack of progress in acknowledging reality" to the pointless sessions of a therapist. His tenacity, however, was evident in his 2022 comeback through a far-right alliance, yet at the expense of increased social division that reflected his own psychological detachment splits which caused major social changes in Israeli society. It became totally acceptable due to Netanyahu's racist language against Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Even youth and young adults began showcasing very odd discriminatory behaviour against Christians and Muslims in Israeli society.