He has never been lonelier. In the 15 cumulative years he has been leading the country, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was always surrounded by exclusive coteries and phalanxes of advisers and associates. While the quality of some was debatable, given Netanyahu’s preference for yes-men over independent professionals, he always had a reasonable, intimate consultative forum. He has always had a cabinet of selected ministers, a mini-cabinet for sensitive security matters, a forum of seven and then eight serious, experienced advisers just a phone call or a meeting away.

The most beautiful years were those of the “secret seven” between 2009 and 2013. Netanyahu was in a new term after a decade-long political exile. He established a government with the Labor Party led by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and a consultative forum dubbed “the Septet” that included such respected Likud politicians as Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, decorated security experts such as former army chief Moshe Ya’alon and Defense Minister Barak and maverick hawk Avigdor Liberman. In total, these men had hundreds of years of experience and responsibility, a well-defined worldview and a robust scale of moral values. They stood up to Netanyahu and prevented him from achieving his greatest and probably most unrealistic dream of mounting a military strike on Iran’s emerging nuclear infrastructure.

This restraint is no longer in place. The Benjamin Netanyahu of 2020 is a lonely person. He still appears very popular, but he has long stopped relying on an organized consultative framework, on an optimal work environment, on reasonable advisers or a decision-making process worthy of its name. These have all fallen by the wayside. Anyone capable of independent thinking and responsible insights or guided by some sort of moral compass has fled or been exiled. The list of directors of the prime minister’s office under Netanyahu is a telling illustration of the vacuum. Liberman was his first. He was followed by Moshe Leon, currently the mayor of Jerusalem. Then came Eyal Gabbai, a highly regarded economist, followed by Harel Locker, currently director of the Israel Aircraft Industries, who was followed by the talented and respected Eli Groner and then by former Avis director Yoav Horowitz. Each fled after being exposed to the chaos and lunacy in Netanyahu’s environment.

Since his major 2015 victory over Isaac Herzog, the lunacy has turned from anecdotal disruptions to a perpetual storm. The person directly responsible for this upheaval is Netanyahu’s son Yair Netanyahu, who at 29 has become a dominant force in the prime minister’s milieu, bolstering and even overtaking his mother, Sara Netanyahu. Together, Yair and Sara hold what senior Likud party officials call a controlling interest in the family’s board of directors, frequently influencing the prime minister to reverse or reconsider decisions.