Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made many mistakes during the election campaign he led, which resulted in a humiliating defeat at the polls. One of the most significant among them was his attack on the chairman of the HaBayit HaYehudi Party, Naftali Bennett, after the latter expressed support for disobeying military orders on ideological grounds.

Against the advice of many of his aides, Netanyahu mounted frontal attacks on Bennett, giving special interviews and threatening that anyone who mentions insubordination would not have a seat in his cabinet. The message was clear. Netanyahu was certain that this attack would cause grave damage to the leader of HaBayit HaYehudi, who had eaten away at chunks of the Likud electorate, but in the following days he realized that all of the damage was to his side. Bennett, his nemesis, continued to soar at his expense.

Last Saturday night, when Netanyahu asked the president for a 14-day extension to form his coalition, he made the exact same mistake, once again: he blamed his failure to form a government on the “two rising stars” of the recent elections, Bennett and [Yesh Atid leader] Yair Lapid, and accused them of “boycotting the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel”. Once again, Netanyahu got dragged into an unnecessary fight, which bore no gains for him, only losses. Once again he contributed to the strengthening of the already strong alliance between Lapid and Bennett, who announced on his Facebook page, this time, that he would not join the government without Lapid (until then, he had only been quoted indirectly on the subject). At the same time, Bennett also reminded Netanyahu that he was the one who boycotted him first, when he refused to conduct coalition negotiations with him. The kindergarten atmosphere continued the next morning on the width and breadth of the radio talk programs, with representatives of Bennett and Netanyahu arguing who had started the fight.

Toward noon on Sunday, when Netanyahu understood that the attacks on Bennett-Lapid were useless, he went back to his old, most beloved spin: the Iranian threat.