Efraim Halevy, the former chief of the Mossad, has warned the JC that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “losing touch with reality” in pushing the judicial reform package through the Knesset, and is running the risk of causing “the entire breakdown of the system of government”.
Speaking in an exclusive interview from his Israel home, London-born Halevy, 88, who was appointed Mossad director by Netanyahu during his first spell as prime minister in 1998, said the current crisis “is not one of those ordinary events you just move on from, but a major act of destruction that could wreck the entire edifice of the state”.
Halevy told the JC: “The Prime Minister of today is not the Bibi I served. When I was working for him, he was very cautious, even hesitant about our activities, and I had to reassure him that if necessary, we could change course, or put things into reverse.”
Now, he said, rather than the consequences of his actions, “Netanyahu attends to his own public image more than anything else”. This, he added, was common to most in public life, but with Netanyahu it was “beyond a normal level of concern. He is not showing he has the ability to make decisions that will protect Israel’s security.”
Halevy reached the top of the Mossad after a long and distinguished intelligence career, and later served as head of Israel’s National Security Council. Known as a hard-headed pragmatist, he has argued consistently in favour of a negotiated peace with the Palestinians, even if this means talking to terror group Hamas.
Halevy said that although some claim to be confident that Netanyahu will agree a last-minute judicial deal with his ever-more numerous opponents, he feared he will refuse to compromise. “It’s still not too late to listen to what he’s hearing. Maybe he does still have the capability of drawing back. But I’m not sure that this time is similar to all those times in the past when he’s done that.”
And if he remained intransigent, Halevy went on, this would probably trigger a full-blown constitutional crisis, in which the Supreme Court would strike down the judicial package after it passes the Knesset, and so force Israelis to decide which branch of government took precedence, and which they should obey.
In the past, Halevy pointed out, “I’ve always been very circumspect. I’ve never expressed myself in terms like these before. But what we are seeing is unprecedented, and I am concerned that Netanyahu still has not realised what a grave situation we are in.
“If the branches of government are at odds with each other, then we will have reached a point of the entire breakdown of the system. The state will no longer be the responsible entity in the area that is called Israel.”
Halevy was also scathing about the appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as security minister, recalling his 2007 conviction for inciting racial hatred and his threat to the late PM Yitzhak Rabin, when a few weeks before he was assassinated in 1995, Ben-Gvir appeared on TV holding an ornament stolen from Rabin’s car, telling viewers, “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.” Halevy told the JC: “To take such a person and give him authority over the police goes beyond wisdom of any kind.”
It was, he went on, “a fatal mistake”.
He said the fears being expressed by foreign leaders very friendly to Israel served to illustrate the severity of the dangers it faced: “They are trying to convince the PM he is on the wrong track.”
He highlighted the two strongly differing accounts of the phone call Netanyahu had with US President Joe Biden last weekend. According to the Israeli version, they mainly discussed the threats of terrorism and Iran, with only a brief mention of what Netanyahu’s office called “judicial reform”.
Halevy noted that the US version distributed to the media was very different, saying Biden “underscored his belief that democratic values have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the US-Israel relationship, and that fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support”.
Halevy told the JC: “You can shrug your shoulders and say this is simply chaff in the wind, but you can hardly claim that Biden is turning his back on Israel.
“People are beginning to get the idea that Israel is no longer on the same track as western democracies.”
