down to slot<\/a> no. 37, Likud\u2019s members effectively said about her betrayal-for-office deal what a steady client might tell a prostitute when dumping her: this was never about love.\u00a0<\/p>\nThen again, Silman, an airhead whose campaign\u2019s highlight was a video clip of her making somersaults (I am not making this up), is no loss to Likud, much less to the rest of the political system. That cannot be said of Ze\u2019ev Elkin, a worldly intellectual and chess master who is clearly smarter than most people.<\/p>\n
Elkin and his friend Gideon Sa\u2019ar ran as the disillusioned prot\u00e9g\u00e9s of Benjamin Netanyahu who became his outspoken critics, a role they played with even greater relish after Likud had introduced its judicial reform. That was the ticket on which they were elected. But, alas, when they sank in polls, the duo betrayed their voters and fled to Netanyahu\u2019s bosom, for a pair of cabinet seats.<\/p>\n
Now, having sent Elkin to slot no. 32, Likud\u2019s members effectively said they see little difference between him and Silman. For that, too, these voters deserve applause, as they do for having ousted Finance Committee chairman Hanoch Milwidsky, a suspected rapist and documented misogynist who publicly disgraced his committee\u2019s legal adviser, nearly bringing her to tears.<\/p>\n
You would think, then, that this primary election was a corrective act that cured the ruling party of its ailments.<\/p>\n
If only it were that. In fact, at a time when Israeli politics begs heroism more than ever before, Likud\u2019s new candidate list brandishes, salutes, and prizes the hero\u2019s exact opposite: the coward.<\/p>\n
Sa\u2019ar and Katz avoid Likud primary battle through reserved slots<\/p>\n
Coward number one is Foreign Minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar. The man whose political treason is second only to Delilah\u2019s betrayal of Samson did not have the guts to run in Likud\u2019s primaries. Yes, he had good reason to expect defeat. But in preferring disgrace and self-service over honor and the national interest, he unveiled a coward for all to see.<\/p>\n
The same goes for Defense Minister Israel Katz. No, he did not betray his voters, much less Netanyahu. On the contrary, he is where he is only because he has been servile to his party\u2019s leader, for decades. However, he too manipulated for himself an exemption from the primaries, as one of the eight slots the party decided to let Netanyahu personally handpick.<\/p>\n
Never mind that when Likud\u2019s members gave Netanyahu this power, they thought he would use it to bring in new faces from outside politics. The problem is that Katz, like Sa\u2019ar, did not have the guts to face his party\u2019s popularity test. Instead, he fled the contest that might have demoted him. That, too, is cowardice, as is Interior Minister Haim Katz\u2019s similar deal.<\/p>\n
Nir Barkat survives primary battle amid Netanyahu tensions<\/p>\n
Then again, these displays of cowardice dwarf compared with Economics Minister Nir Barkat\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Barkat seems to have survived the primaries, but he did so by the skin of his teeth. The reason is that Netanyahu himself pushed for his ouster. And the reason for that is that shortly after Hamas\u2019s October 7 attack, Barkat tried to have the Knesset remove Netanyahu. That is what Dan Illouz, until recently a Likud lawmaker, recently told TV\u2019s Channel 12. Barkat denied this, but no one believes him. And the best proof of this report\u2019s accuracy is Netanyahu\u2019s effort to push Barkat out, which is why he ended up on slot no. 24.<\/p>\n
And so, the question to Barkat is not why he wanted Netanyahu replaced, but why he didn\u2019t make that quest public. And the answer is that he, too, like Sa\u2019ar and Katz, is a political coward. Had he been brave, he would have made his revulsion with Netanyahu known, regardless of the risk to his political fortunes.<\/p>\n
Katz, Sa\u2019ar, and Barkat are not just another three of Likud\u2019s candidates. They are Netanyahu\u2019s aspiring successors.<\/p>\n
And so, the prime minister who did not have the courage to visit even one mourners\u2019 family of the kibbutzim Hamas molested; the man who did not have the courage to confront ultra-Orthodoxy\u2019s rabbis and demand their boys\u2019 enlistment; and the man who did not have the courage to face a judicial commission of inquiry \u2013 is leading a list of candidates molded in his own image: the image of the coward-in-chief.<\/p>\n
www.MiddleIsrael.net<\/a><\/p>\nThe writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of the bestseller, The Jewish March of Folly (Yedioth Books 2026), now available in English on Amazon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justice has been served. The ruling party\u2019s members, in their primary election Monday, removed some of its most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[41,1303,5740,37,30318,99,16705,39661,42487,37356],"class_list":["post-258885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-elections","tag-gideon-saar","tag-israel","tag-israel-elections-2026","tag-israel-katz","tag-likud","tag-likud-primaries","tag-may-golan","tag-nir-barkat"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117133235134739630","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}