Netanyahu's Endgame Is the End of Us All
HBO has made a movie about Bernie Madoff, the greatest Jewish American conman of all time, who carried out the largest Ponzi scheme in history. It's called – and does this remind you of anyone? – "The Wizard of Lies." In one scene, Madoff is interviewed in prison by Diana B. Henriques, the journalist on whose book the film is based. She asks, "If you didn't plan on killing yourself, or going into hiding, how did you think it would end?"
His answer is astonishing: "It sounds terrible to say this now, but I just wanted the whole world to come to an end. When 9/11 happened, I thought this was the only way out. The world will come to an end, I'd be dead and everybody would be gone. But I mean, I could have kept it going, I could have covered everything. Even after the fall of '08, I had enough commitments of cash coming in."
We recall the immortal words of Sara Netanyahu: "Bibi is a leader who is too big for this country. … Why should he work so hard? We'll move abroad. Let this country burn."
Such a threat, that if we annoy Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he'll let the country burn, has loomed over Israel ever since, haunting it like a curse. When Hamas attacked on October 7, 2023, after a long year in which Bibi was annoyed – and then some – in court and by the protest movement, and the country did go up in flames, it was impossible not to see the disaster as a threat that was realized, even if not "intentionally."
But ever since I watched that movie and learned about the sick logic of swindlers on the scale of Madoff and Netanyahu, it has been clear to me that when we thought that the worst that could happen was for this country to burn, we were thinking small. When it comes to their caliber of fraud, it absolutely wasn't enough. Covering their acts of fraud required "the whole world to come to an end."
That's the context in which Netanyahu's moves should be understood since his national-security pyramid scheme blew up: His only way out is for the world to end. And if not that, then at least a global maelstrom should be created, a "clash of civilizations" kind of Armageddon, so that the needle of October 7 can't be found in the haystack of the historical ruins.
The world war for which Netanyahu has been agitating ever since is not motivated by future political considerations, as many assume (such as an attempt to prevent the election, to remain in power or to cancel his trial). This is a war that, by definition, has no "day after" (unless it's the replacement of populations and/or regimes across the Middle East and the Persian Gulf). His warmongering for nearly three years now is driven by a desire to cover all of the tracks of his historic fraud, a fraud that is epitomized in the idea he's been selling to us for his entire political career: that he will make the Palestinian issue disappear. The trick he used to make that happen was to confront us with "the Iranian threat."
If before October 7 it was enough for Israeli "investors" – all of us – to buy into his scam and entrust their lives, their children's lives and their future to him, since October 7, when everything collapsed, he has needed to double the investment to keep the pyramid going, by bringing in much bigger players.
While Israel can maintain absolute control over the Palestinians on its own, it cannot wage a war against Iran on its own. It needs a superpower, the United States, to wage such a war. And while the Palestinians attract little real interest from the world, a war with Iran is liable to cause global chaos. But what does Netanyahu care? If he's successful, he'll say all's well that ends well. If he isn't, then the world will come to an end – and with it, all his troubles (unless the American investors demand their money back, in which case the collapse of the pyramid is inevitable).