Throughout his years at the helm, Netanyahu has surrounded himself with kowtowers and sycophants who praise his every word, and has distanced himself from independent-minded politicians who thought it was their civic duty to “speak truth to power”. He doesn’t debate those who oppose his views, as might be expected of the leader of an ostensibly democratic country, but prefers to incite against them and delegitimize their views, and, in the case of the media, to try and destroy them outright. The longer he is in power, the more he is successful in stifling his critics and seizing total control of the discourse in his party, his government and among large parts of the public, first on the actual political, defense and economic issues of the day and now on his own personality and behavior.