Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Why Mossad’s Yossi Cohen Is Prime Minister Netanyahu's Chosen Successor

Yossi Cohen, then the national security adviser, is seen in a committee meeting at the Israeli parliament on December 8, 2015, sitting behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) 


Spy chief widely seen behind killing of Iran’s nuclear weapons chief is a trusted Netanyahu loyalist, and his preferred choice to steer Israel through the coming regional chaos 

In August 2019, people close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heard him utter a startling sentence. 

“There are two people I consider fit to lead Israel — Yossi Cohen and Ron Dermer,” he was quoted by unnamed associates as saying, referring to the head of the Mossad and to Israel’s ambassador to Washington, respectively. 

It was uncharacteristic of Netanyahu to speculate about his replacement, or indeed about anything that might suggest an end to his tenure as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. That fact alone led some to interpret the leaked comment, which was never denied, as a calculated signal to Likud MKs and leadership hopefuls that Netanyahu doesn’t see his politician-colleagues as his equals and plans to throw his support behind an outside loyalist when the time comes. 


WNU Editor: An interesting post on the men who may be running the country after Netanyahu is gone. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

An interesting person and choice.

Anonymous said...

Netanyahu is correct. It is a hard world. You need hard people. Politicians are hard on their political opposition, which does not mean they will be hard enough,or pragmatic enough, when it comes to the rest of the world.