“This has been the best decade in Israel’s annals,” Israel’s interim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted Dec. 29 at the final weekly government meeting of the year. “We have become hugely more powerful,” added the man who until recently also served as the country’s defense minister. The indicted Netanyahu, who has turned the Prime Minister’s Office into his personal buffer zone, also informed his assembled ministers and the media that he planned to lead the State of Israel in the coming years, as well, “to new and unprecedented security achievements.”
Indeed, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are rightly considered the strongest army in the Middle East. Israel is also the only state in the region armed with a nuclear bomb (according to foreign reports). Israeli intelligence enjoys a vaunted global reputation, as do the state’s state-of-the-art arms defense industries. So when all is said and done, can the past decade, which ran concurrently with Netanyahu’s term in office, be crowned “the best decade in Israeli annals” in terms of the state’s security?
