“Something very, very big is happening here,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told 41 congressional Democrats who visited Israel on Aug. 7, his laser pointer sweeping across a map from Azerbaijan to Brazil, from Africa to Australia. “There is an exceptional revolution taking place in Israel's position in the world,” Netanyahu declared, complaining that the media were hardly reporting on these “revolutionary times.”

King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, cautioned against such boasting: “May a stranger praise you and not your mouth” (Proverbs 27:2). But he probably was not referring to Netanyahu’s “besties” Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Chad’s President Idriss Deby and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Netanyahu has already crowned Israel a “world power.” His minions, such as journalist Akiva Bigman from the freebie Israel Hayom, are even taking this modest title a step further. “How Netanyahu Turned Israel into an Empire” is the title of a new book (in Hebrew) Bigman published in late July. Bigman was the editor of a website called Mida, founded by Dan Baratz, formerly a Netanyahu spokesperson. Promoting his book on Facebook, Bigman complained that the media has ignored Netanyahu’s foreign policy achievements in recent years — “some of them of truly historic proportion.”

The timing of the chronicle detailing the empire leader’s feats — at the height of an election campaign — is presumably not a coincidence. Giant billboards showing Netanyahu posing next to warmonger President Donald Trump and Russian dictator President Vladimir Putin are part of Netanyahu’s effort to mobilize a foreign legion for his campaign.