He brought a rare package, especially for politicians: wisdom, poise, and conviction.
The wisdom fed a meteoric political career that began as cabinet secretary at age 32 and proceeded to the Knesset, where at age 36 he was chairman of Ariel Sharon’s coalition, and then to the government, where at 42 he became education minister, thus managing the government’s biggest ministerial budget.
In all these positions, as he would do in his subsequent stints as Benjamin Netanyahu’s interior minister and Naftali Bennett’s justice minister, Gideon Sa’ar displayed an ability to study complex issues, set goals, go down to details, and get things done.
A bespectacled and soft-spoken lawyer who worked for former attorney-general Michael Ben-Yair, and before that was a political correspondent for the Hadashot daily, Sa’ar inhabited each of politics’ four planets – the judiciary, the legislature, the government, and the press – a feat achieved by no one else in Israel, maybe even worldwide.
Having at the same time gathered power in Likud, so much so that in 2008 he came out first in its national primaries, Sa’ar became Benjamin Netanyahu’s consigliere, or so he thought. Whatever happened between them, in 2014 Sa’ar took a sudden and unexplained turn, forfeiting his cabinet and Knesset seats, saying cryptically that he was “taking a break.”
Just what that was all about is not fully clear to this day, but it clearly was an unorthodox move that enhanced the impression that Sa’ar, at 48, was both ripe and eager to storm the top.
It was a quest that would be tested sooner rather than later, a test that initially made Sa’ar display courage and instill hope, all of which this week made way for moral collapse.
HAVING RETURNED to the Knesset in 2019, Sa’ar soon met Netanyahu’s nastiness, as Likud’s leader accused Sa’ar – at 52 – of conspiring with then-president Reuven Rivlin to unseat him. The insulted Sa’ar decided to challenge Netanyahu in Likud’s prime ministerial primaries.
Netanyahu won handily but still saw in Sa’ar a threat, and left him out of the government he formed in 2020.
Condemned to the political margins, Sa’ar now had reason, and time, to cook his career’s next major decision: to field his own party. That happened as he turned 54, the midlife point at which he seemed ready to emerge as a national leader.
External circumstances helped this ambitious aim, despite the modest electoral harvest – six seats – that Sa’ar’s gambit yielded. Netanyahu’s inability to form a coalition led Sa’ar to cross the Rubicon and become a pivot in the Bennett government, despite Netanyahu’s offer to rotate with him as prime minister. Sa’ar was now respected nationwide as a man of principle.
The principled patriot now showed that being a right-winger should not mean cheering Netanyahu’s attack on the judiciary. Like all Middle Israelis, Sa’ar was appalled by that assault, and made no secret of his disgust.
Moreover, being a right-winger – he effectively said – should not come at the expense of the national consensus. There was a way for Israeli adversaries to work together on many issues, as he would now do by fielding a joint ticket with the centrist Benny Gantz.
The mature Sa’ar, now 57, emerged in full force when faced with last year’s constitutional coup.
Due to his legal expertise, legislative experience, and right-wing credentials, Sa’ar became a central voice in the protest movement that the coup sparked. Yes, he too was critical of the judiciary, but he thought change should be gradual and consensual. Adversaries thus looked at him and said: “Sa’ar is like Menachem Begin. We disagree with him, but we respect him. He is a man of principle, a patriot who puts the national interest above partisan agendas and personal gain.”
Consequently, when Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant after he warned of the constitutional coup’s military repercussions, Sa’ar tweeted: “Netanyahu’s decision … is an act of madness that reflects a total lack of judgment… Netanyahu is prepared to drive Israel into the abyss. Each additional day in which he is in office risks Israel and its future.”
What happens when joining Netanyahu?
That was last year. Now, with a vast majority accepting Sa’ar’s judgment of Netanyahu, and with Gallant leading Israel’s most testing war, the war that has Netanyahu’s name written all over it, Sa’ar decided to hop into Netanyahu’s bed and help him throw Gallant under the bus. What happened, one wonders?
What happened to the national interest that once guided Sa’ar’s moves? Well, what happened is that Sa’ar made one grandly failed gamble, breaking up with Benny Gantz, a divisive move that made Sa’ar’s voters abandon him, so much so that polls indicated he faced electoral extinction.
Now pushing 60, political disappearance was a price that the politician Sa’ar chose to remain would not pay the patriot he once was. And so, Sa’ar sheepishly lifted the pen the devil handed him and signed the mother of all Faustian bargains.
Having thus parted with morality, Sa’ar is now out to replace a worthy wartime defense minister for no fault on his part, and while at it help Netanyahu legislate ultra-Orthodoxy’s draft evasion, even as the mainstream Israelis this betrays go to war in droves.
Well, Gideon, your waltz with your old-new boss will end no better than his tangos with Yitzhak Mordechai, Ehud Barak, Moshe Ya’alon, Avigdor Liberman, Naftali Bennett, and Benny Gantz, all of whom were his defense ministers, only to end up his sworn enemies.
As he did with them, he will first use you, then abuse you, and then dump you.
And then, from your location under the bus, you will watch helplessly the pedestrians on the sidewalk ignoring your cry, the same cry Middle Israelis now cry, and you ignore: Help!
www.MiddleIsrael.netThe writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is author of the bestselling Mitzad Ha’ivelet Ha’yehudi (The Jewish March of Folly, Yediot Sefarim, 2019), a revisionist history of the Jewish people’s political leadership.■
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