https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/benjamin-netanyahu-israels-longest-serving-prime-minister/He persisted.
On July 20, Benjamin Netanyahu becomes Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. His first tenure lasted from 1996 to 1999. This second stint began in 2009. Bibi has won five elections since. The most recent victory, in April, was Pyrrhic. He failed to form a government. An unprecedented rematch is set for September.
Whatever the result, Netanyahu’s historical legacy is assured. He has proven to be not only a skilled and charismatic political operator, but also a remarkably effective steward of Israel’s prosperity and safety.
“A successful democratic statesman,” Irving Kristol wrote in 2001, “is one whose tenure in office is seen by his countrymen as representing a permanent contribution to the shaping of our democratic destiny. He is viewed as having expanded democratic horizons while nourishing the democratic spirit and reinforcing the popular commitment to self-government.” Kristol was describing Ronald Reagan. When interpreted through the fractal lens of Israeli politics, his words also apply to Netanyahu’s achievements in economics, diplomacy, and security.
Beginning with his first premiership, and continuing through his tenure as finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government, Netanyahu has encouraged the modernization and reform of a once sclerotic economy. What Dan Senor and Saul Singer called Start-up Nation has to a great extent replaced the Israel of labor, cartel, and kibbutz. Today Israel is an entrepreneurial, high-tech economy with a highly educated workforce.
“There is nary an economic indicator that doesn’t look good,” Melrav Arlosoroff wrote in Haaretz last December. “Gross domestic product has risen an average of 3 percent or more annually, unemployment is at a record low, employment is at a record high, more ultra-Orthodox and Arabs are joining the labor force, and the national debt has fallen to 60 percent of GDP.” (We should be so lucky: America’s debt is 105 percent of GDP.)
