Gideon Sa’ar, Rival to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the right, is getting some American help ahead of March 23 elections.
Gideon Sa’ar, a onetime Netanyahu colleague, has hired four of the founders of the Lincoln Project, which ran a relentless campaign to help defeat US President Donald Trump.
The hiring was first reported by Israel’s Channel 12 TV and confirmed by a member of Sa’ar’s campaign, who also said they would visit Israel when possible. Lincoln Project founders Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens, and Reed Galen were among the leaders of the effort to draw Republicans from Trump’s reelection effort centered on the president’s ethics and moral leadership.
The Lincoln Project’s stated mission is to hold public leaders “accountable.” That is similar to Sa’ar’s message as the head of the New Hope party, the faction he founded when he broke away from Likud. He accuses Netanyahu of turning the Likud into a tool for personal survival at a time when he is on trial on corruption charges.
In an interview Saturday, Sa’ar said Likud could be “a partner” in the government he hopes to form after the upcoming election, but that Netanyahu would not be able to serve as a minister in it, due to the criminal indictment against him.
Sa’ar, 54, entered Israeli politics in 1999 as cabinet secretary during Netanyahu’s first term. He held key senior cabinet posts after Netanyahu returned to power in 2009.
But as with many other fast-rising Likud figures, he eventually had a falling out with Netanyahu. Sa’ar took a break from politics in 2014 to spend time with his wife, and children. He returned in 2019 but never seemed to repair his ties with Netanyahu. Later that year, he lost to Netanyahu in a party leadership vote, confining him to the backbenches.
Since leaving Likud and launching New Hope last month, Sa’ar has made no secret that their battle is personal. In his inaugural speech, he accused Netanyahu of creating a “personality cult” — a term he repeated Thursday to describe those who blindly support Netanyahu’s claims that his corruption trial is a conspiracy.
