Netanyahu, also known as Bibi, is Israel’s longest-serving minister, with a first term from 1996 to 1999 and an unprecedented 12-year era until 2021.
In “Bibi: My Story,” the 72-year-old said he was “forever grateful” for the time he spent in opposition that allowed him to complete his memoirs, as a motley coalition of parties ousted him but did not suspend his term. .
Published just two weeks before Israelis go to the polls, the 650-page autobiography made headlines in Israel and abroad, not counting the explosive revelations presented in the memoirs of some politicians.
But they are new blows against former U. S. President Barack Obama, with whom Netanyahu had a notoriously tense relationship.
After his first meeting with Obama in 2007, when the then-U. S. senator was running for president, Netanyahu wrote that he was confident in their long-term relationship.
“I can paint with this guy,” he recalled telling an aide, before the two men took over in 2009.
But his perspectives temporarily changed, blaming in part on Obama’s “tendency to see the global world as an anti-colonialist lens” and wrongly, according to Netanyahu, seeing Israel as a colonial aggressor opposed to the Palestinians.
When Obama left office in 2016 and Donald Trump won the presidency, Netanyahu was convinced his policies would align.
“I learned that I would now have a best friend in my war against Israel’s enemy est,” Netanyahu wrote, referring to Iran and Trump’s opposition to the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated through the Obama administration.
Trump then announced a series of policy adjustments welcomed by Israel, its popularity of Jerusalem as its capital, which overturned foreign rules.
The Palestinians cut ties with Washington over what they saw as its obvious bias toward Israel.
Netanyahu in his memoirs boasted of his influence on U. S. domestic politics.
“I knew Trump would come to appreciate the wonderful Israel and I had it in the evangelical community, the ultimate vital detail of his political base,” Netanyahu wrote.
Israel’s November 1 elections are the fifth in less than 4 years.
That could simply oust centrist Prime Minister Yair Lapid and see the return of the hawkish Netanyahu, but polls suggest inconclusive end results remain possible.