The first thing that needs to be said in respect of Israel’s decision to bring in Naftali Bennett as prime minister is that it marks a victory for the democracy of the Jewish state. That’s not because it brought an end, at least for now, to the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party, which lost by the narrowest of margins — a single vote in a 60 to 59 vote tally in a 120-member Knesset. Indeed, on many issues there might be little change.

Rather, it’s that despite the bitterness of the fray, Mr. Netanyahu and his party accepted their loss and moved aside with no talk of doing otherwise. There may have been a lot of shouting in the Knesset, but there were no mobs in the streets, no storming of Parliament, not even the fantasy of a coup. There’s even an Arab party in the coalition. After four elections within two years, the system came through with flying colors.

It’s not our view that it should have come to this. There is a good deal of bitterness at the methods through which Mr. Netanyahu was brought down. We speak of the way so many aspects of public life in Israel today are driven by the attorney general and Supreme Court, as Caroline Glick put it recently in a brilliant column warning that they have “devoured the powers of the Knesset and the government.”

This is related to an infection of which these columns have several times warned over the years — namely the “American disease.” That’s a tendency to fight political and ideological battles with ad hominem attacks. It leads to the use of petty and, sometimes, not-so-petty criminal cases to bring down politicians who would otherwise be able to survive the hard tests of democracy.

It is a testament to Mr. Netanyahu and his allies within Likud and the religious camp that they came within a vote of surviving this onslaught while their prime minister was on trial for criminal charges. We’re told the trial could go on now for many months or even years, and, while Israel’s longest serving prime minister could be found guilty, he could also be acquitted. Then what?

We’re inclined to resist easy comparisons of Mr. Netanyahu and President Trump, though the ad hominem politics and prosecutorial abuse levied against Mr. Trump are similar in some ways to what was unleashed against Mr. Netanyahu. The pursuit of Mr. Trump has been a classic case of his prosecutors looking for a crime to use against the man, a temptation warned against long ago by the great Robert Jackson.

One difference between the two is that the attacks on Mr. Trump were launched by the outgoing administration and the Deep State even before the 45th president acceded to office. They stalled him at the end of his first term. Mr. Netanyahu ended up convincing scores of doubters, including — the Editor of the Sun has recorded — Mr. Netanyahu’s own father, Benzion, to become Israel’s longest serving prime minister.

The attention and respect accorded Mr. Netanyahu is remarkable given the size of his country. Mr. Trump might note that Mr. Netanyahu was defeated after his first term (by a Labor Party war hero, Ehud Barak, who ran on a hawkish line but soon got voted out after abandoning his promises to eschew negotiations on Jerusalem). Mr. Netanyahu then served as finance minister under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

It was as finance minister that Mr. Netanyahu, in our view, showed his greatest vision, moving Israel toward a free market, pro-growth, high-tech economy that has astonished the world. That performance gained him a return as prime minister, where he has proved an adroit strategist and tactician in the twilight struggle with Iran. Mr. Netanyahu has shown daring and creativity in his conduct of Israel’s side of the war.

It also brought him into the van of critics of the Obama administration’s pursuit of an appeasement policy with the Iranian camarilla. This came to a head in 2015, when Mr. Netanyhu became only the second person — the first was Churchill — to deliver three speeches to a joint meeting of Congress. His warnings that the Iran deal was inadequate have proven to be prophetic.

All of which means that Israel’s new premier, Naftali Bennett, will have big shoes to fill. In some ways — all good, in our view — he is to the right of Mr. Netanyahu. He is a supporter, and veteran, of the settlers movement. He is also a successful businessman, and comes from a Modern Orthodox family. He’s agreed to cede power in two years to a more moderate leader, Yair Lapid, of Yesh Atid. We wish them all godspeed.

________

Image: Prime Minister Bennett, detail of government of Israel photo.