Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a lengthy speech Aug. 30 at the traditional Likud toast marking the forthcoming Jewish New Year. The most significant part of the address was not his attack on Meni Naftali — the former caretaker of the prime minister’s official residence who has sued Netanyahu's wife, Sara, and is at the forefront of anti-Netanyahu protests — nor was it his harangue against the left-wing media for allegedly agitating to unseat him. Rather, addressing thousands of riled-up Likud activists, Netanyahu laid the political groundwork tying their destiny to his personal fate.

After talking about the weekly protests by “the left” near the home of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, claiming that they were designed to “pressure law enforcement authorities to indict me, at any cost,” he added the following: “Look at the contempt and the arrogance with which they [the left] mock us. They don't just despise us, they despise something much deeper. They are actually contemptuous of the people's choice. They despise the democracy for which they supposedly speak.” The media, Netanyahu added, do “everything to hurt me and my wife, because they think that if they take us [the Netanyahu family] down, they will take us all [the Likud, the right] down.”

This political strategy of claiming the Likud itself is targeted is intended to provide Netanyahu with a safety net in the stormy period ahead in light of the police investigations he is facing, under caution, and the debates in the attorney general’s office that will determine whether he is prosecuted. Netanyahu is, in fact, attempting to sear into Likud members' consciousness that he and they share the same fate. He is telling them, “It’s not just me they’re after. They’re after every one of you.”

In short, Netanyahu is turning them into hostages, knowing that no one in the Likud — not senior members, not Knesset members, nor government ministers — will likely dare oppose him, even if he gets served an indictment. No one, that is, except Knesset member Benny Begin. None of the party members who aspire to one day inherit Netanyahu's post wants to take part in a plot to unseat a strong incumbent prime minister who has brought the Likud to power time after time.