Most weeks I get to choose the topic of my post. However, some weeks the topic chooses me. This is one of the latter weeks.

One news story of the last week defines for me so clearly the best and the worst of Israel in September 2024 that, difficult as it is to write about, I feel I have to write about it.

A shiva call is rarely an easy thing to make. If I am not particularly close to the mourners, I often feel awkward about finding something suitable to say. However, if I take my lead from the mourners themselves, as we are required to do by Jewish law, and allow them to initiate and lead the conversation, then some way will usually suggest itself for me to offer comfort to them, which is, of course, the object of the call. At the very least I can offer a listening ear.

I do not envy public figures who are expected to make regular shiva calls as part of their duties. Some clearly have a natural empathy that is clear to see; Israel’s President Herzog seems to be such a person, Others clearly don’t.

One of the noticeable features of the last eleven months has been the fact that Prime Minister Netanayahu has not made shiva calls to the families of those, civilians and soldiers, killed on October 7 and in the war. Clearly, this is a conscious decision on his part to avoid situations that will potentially expose him directly to the anger of bereaved families who feel that he has at best let the country down badly, producing scenes that will play very badly in the media.

However, last week, Netanyahu, and his wife, chose to pay a shiva call. They visited the family home of Ori Danino z”l, one of the six hostages executed underground by Hamas. Ori had been at the Nova party, and, after he managed to escape the party unharmed on October 7, he chose to return to try to help others escape, and managed to save three others. He himself was then captured and taken hostage.

Why did Netanyahu choose this particular shiva house? It is difficult to think of any reason other than the feeling that Ori’s father, Rabbi Elhanan Danino, and his family, whose roots lie in Morocco, represent part of Netanyahu’s core constituency. Netanyahu must have felt that he would be among friends.

If this was his reasoning, then it was a severe misjudgement, because, some time into the visit, Rabbi Danino informed Netanyahu that he had some hard truths to tell him. He suggested that Netanyahu might prefer not to hear them, but rather to cut short his visit. However, Netanyahu chose to stay.  

Rabbi Danino then criticised Netanyahu’s long-term response to the rise to power of Hamas in Gaza and his handling of the war. The appropriate way for Netanyahu to respond to this criticism would have been in humbled silence. Instead, he responded with the following self-pitying comments.

“I won’t tell you what happened behind closed doors. It’s not very interesting anyway.” (Here Sara Netanyahu interjected: “You were pretty much alone.”) “Alone.” (Sara: “Facing the whole world.”) “Exactly. Facing the whole world. Facing the US President. I went into the room every day and asked myself: ‘Why am I here? What am I here for? For what? For the perks of office?’” (Sara: “What perks?”)

I don’t want to understand this response in the way I’m going to explain it, but I cannot see any other explanation. Netanyahu is here appealing for sympathy from the family of a 23-year-old man who was kept prisoner underground for 11 months and then shot in cold blood. He is asking for their sympathy for him because, surrounded by his adoring family and his loyal supporters, commuting between his home in Jerusalem, his luxury home in Caesarea, and the White House, given standing ovation after standing ovation while addressing the US congress, he felt alone: while their son was rotting, underfed, starved of fresh air, urinating in a bottle, in a tunnel in Gaza so low-ceilinged that he could not stand upright.

Contrast the content of this (and, if you listen to the recording on YouTube, contrast the tone of voice) with the content and tone of Rabbi Danino’s response.

“You didn’t do this for 15 years. Don’t come now, when they are there, to do this. 15 years you sat quietly. You didn’t do anything.”

After R Danino accused Netanyahu of equipping Hamas with swords, tunnels and dollars, Netanyahu politely asked if he could reply. R Danino said that he didn’t intend to get into this. He asked whether Netanyahu had come to listen or to be heard, because what Netanyahu had to say we had been hearing for 15 years.

Rabbi Danino later begged Netanyahu to stop wasting time and energy on what he called nonsense. He then explained that he was referring to the endless pursuit of mandates and studying of opinion polls – what’s going to yield political results and what isn’t.

At one point in the shiva call, Sara Netanyahu accused Rabbi Danino of repeating what others had told him to say. She couched this in an apologetic tone, but it is, obviously, a deeply insulting observation. This elicited a wry laugh from Rabbi Danino, and a response that asserted, as was very clear from his whole manner and dignity throughout the visit, that he was his own man and beholden to nobody.

Eventually, Netanyahu referred to the fact that he too is one who has suffered bereavement, citing his older brother Yoni, who was the only Israeli fatality during the dramatic rescue of 102 of the 106 hostages from Entebbe in 1976. There is a way to introduce a reference like this into a conversation like this and to make it a way of recognising, and identifying with, the depth of the grief of the newly bereaved family. When Netanyahu refers to his brother’s death, and he certainly refers to it very often, it is with something of a sense of competing for sympathy, rather than expressing empathy.

After this shiva call, Netanyahu addressed the nation, stating: “I hear the cry of the families of the hostages. I hear. I listen. I don’t pass judgement either.” I can’t imagine a more patronising comment, a greater demonstration of Netanyahu’s total incapacity to understand the relationship between one paying a shiva call and the mourner, than that reference to not passing judgement.

Rabbi Danino urged Netanyahu to rewind to the time of Yoni’s death and to recapture his true Zionist self from that period, forgetting the distractions of the last 50 years. He also urged him to reflect on the fact that he has been charged by God with the welfare of the Jewish state, and he recommended that he close his office door for 10 minutes each day and ask himself what the Jewish value is that he is bringing.

The contrast in human dignity between the two men in this exchange is as stark as it could be. To empathise with Rabbi Danino and his family is very easy. To empathise with Binyamin Netanyahu is more difficult. However, there is one sense in which I feel very sorry for him. As a young adult, he lost the older brother he adored. He then set out, I believe, to devote his life to matching his brother’s achievement. However, this was always going to be a hopeless task. Yoni z”l paid the ultimate price in a truly heroic and magnificent military operation. Nothing that Bibi could do could match that. He has, I fear, spent his whole life measuring himself against Yoni and, inevitably, finding himself wanting. Eventually, such an effort takes its toll on a person. Along the way, he has lost his way, and is in danger of dragging the country after him. I can only hope that some of Rabbi Danino’s measured, quietly impassioned, words found their mark, although, sadly, all the evidence to date suggests not.

I pray that next week I may have something more uplifting to write about. At the time of writing, sadly, all the evidence suggests not.