For Trump, Hamas, and Bibi, it is always January 6th.
By Thomas Friedman
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/opinion/israel-netanyahu-hamas.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Just as a mob was unleashed by President Donald Trump to ransack our Capitol on Jan. 6 in a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results and prevent a healing unifier from becoming president, so Bibi and Hamas each exploited or nurtured their own mobs to prevent an unprecedented national unity government from emerging in Israel — a cabinet that for the first time would have included Israeli Jews and Israeli Arab Muslims together.
Like Trump, both Bibi and Hamas have kept power by inspiring and riding waves of hostility to “the other.” They turn to this tactic anytime they are in political trouble. Indeed, they each have been the other’s most valuable partner in that tactic ever since Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in 1996 — on the back of a wave of Hamas suicide bombings.
No, Hamas and Bibi don’t talk. They don’t need to. They each understand what the other needs to stay in power and consciously or unconsciously behave in ways to ensure that they deliver it.
The latest rerun of their long-running nasty show is happening now because both were staring at an amazing breakthrough shaping up between Israeli Jews and Israel Arab Muslims — and, like the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, they wanted to destroy the possibility of political change before it could destroy them politically.
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