Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu was just sworn in for his fifth term as Israel’s prime minister. This week, at the District Court in Jerusalem, he went on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery.
In the last election, Netanyahu’s political detractors denounced him as a dictator, likening him to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan or France’s Louis XIV, who famously proclaimed "I am the state.” His supporters cheered him as "Bibi, King of Israel.” Netanyahu modestly compares himself to his hero, Winston Churchill.
There is some truth in all of these comparisons. But the figure he most resembles is Michael Jordan — the basketball superstar who led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships and became, by nearly all accounts, basketball’s GOAT (greatest of all time) player. "The Last Dance,” a 10-part documentary about Jordan, has become one of the most downloaded documentaries of the COVID-19 era.