Mitchell Plitnick talks to Scott about the dizzying state of the Israeli elections. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally formed a government after three rounds of elections that looked to be tilting toward his main rival, Benny Gantz. Plitnick theorizes that Gantz simply is not as savvy a career politician as Netanyahu is, and in part he just got tired of the endless fight. He may even have used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to call off his campaign. Now his coalition has supposedly entered a power sharing agreement with Netanyahu, in which the latter will serve as prime minister for 18 months with Gantz as his deputy, before the two switch roles. Scott and Plitnick are virtually certain that Netanyahu will find a way to avoid following through on this agreement, all the while avoiding prosecution for his corruption charges. In the meantime, Israel’s brutal subjugation of the Palestinians continues apace.

Discussed on the show:

“Israel’s unity government protects Netanyahu from prosecution, paves the way for annexation” (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft)

Mitchell Plitnick is president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. His writing has appeared in Ha’aretz, the New Republic, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many other outlets, and he has regularly offered commentary in a wide range of radio and television outlets including PBS News Hour and the O’Reilly Factor. Follow him on Twitter @MJPlitnick.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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The following is an automatically generated transcript.

Show TranscriptScott Horton 0:00

For Pacifica radio, April 26 2020. I'm Scott Horton. This is anti war radio.

Alright y'all Welcome to show it is anti war radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti war calm and author of the book fool's errand time to end the war in Afghanistan. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5000 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott horton.org. All right, you guys introducing Mitchell Plitnick. He is the president of rethinking foreign policy and he's got a new piece at the Quincy Institute for Responsible statecraft. And it's called Israel's unity government protects Netanyahu from prosecution paves the way for annexation. Welcome back to the show, Mitchell. How you doing?

Mitchell Plitnick 1:03

I'm doing all right. How are you?

Scott Horton 1:04

I'm doing great. appreciate you joining us today here. So first of all, can you take us back here? This is the third election or the fourth election that they've had in a row. They're trying to figure out who can form a majority in the Israeli Knesset, and they finally got it done by having the two major opponents compromise and join in a coalition government together. Is that it?

Mitchell Plitnick 1:26

Right. This is the third election in just over a year. And you know, in the end, what they came to was something they could have come to after the first election, if they, you know, had so chosen. It came about because some right wing parties, particularly the Israel as our home used to have a new party of Avigdor Lieberman decided they would not join a coalition with Netanyahu. So that sort of tipped a balance. The problem from the other side was that in order for the opposition led by Benny guns to form a government, they would have had to have the support of The joint list,