Power-hungry Bibi is Israel's biggest threat - The Jewish Chronicle

Some of us have been making the case against Benjamin Netanyahu for decades — but it’s never been easier than it is now. Suddenly, the whole world can see the threat he poses, including those who would once have been his stoutest defenders.

I wrote on these pages last week of the remarkable sight of long-time Netanyahu allies now warning of the danger he represents. No less striking has been the denunciations of Israel’s prime minister from within the foundational institutions of the country, including those charged with its defence and security. The condemnation has come not just from former heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet; it is coming from those who serve now.

Reservist fighter pilots made international headlines when they refused to attend a training exercise. This week they were joined by around 650 members of the IDF’s special forces command and military intelligence cyberwarfare units, as they announced an escalation in their protests. This is uncharted territory for Israel, one that has the army’s General Staff anxious about the country’s very ability to defend itself. And to think Netanyahu once boasted that he was Israel’s Mr Security.

Of course, there is no contradiction between the protests of these IDF personnel and the job they do all year round. They swore an oath to protect Israel and that’s exactly what they’re doing, along with the hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens who have been taking to the streets for 11 weeks straight. They’re protecting Israel from the threat within, the threat whose name is Netanyahu.

The menace is triple-headed. First and most obvious are what he and his coalition allies call “judicial reform”, but what is in fact a gutting of the judiciary and a naked power grab. Under the plan, which is steadily advancing through the Knesset, the prime minister of the day will be armed with the power to appoint the judges he wants and for his government to overturn any judgment of the Supreme Court they don’t like, so long as they have even a one-vote majority in Israel’s parliament. The judiciary will be neutered and, with it, the rule of law.

You can wave aside the arguments of Netanyahu’s defenders, who say these changes will do no more than bring Israel’s arrangements into line with other western democracies, including the UK. That is either naïve or disingenuous, asking us to believe that Netanyahu is motivated by a selfless desire to improve Israeli governance, wholly unconnected to the fact that he is standing trial on corruption charges that could see him thrown in jail. No wonder he wants to tear up the rule book: it could soon put him behind bars.

But the defence is spurious for another very simple reason: not one of those other western democracies has a system anything like Israel’s. They have multiple checks and balances; Israel has just one. In the absence of a written constitution or second chamber of parliament, Israel’s Supreme Court has functioned as the sole brake on executive power. Netanyahu wants to remove the one obstacle that stands between him and total control. That’s why otherwise level-headed people are warning that Israel is heading down a path that ends in Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.

The second danger lies in the character of the government he has assembled to get his way. Netanyahu has handed massive state power to a group of racists and thugs who have no business being anywhere near it. Itamar Ben-Gvir is a convicted criminal, found guilty of charges that include incitement of racism and support of a terrorist organisation. Yet he is now minister for national security, in control of Israel’s police forces. He is a fox put in charge of the henhouse. Bezalel Smotrich once called for the segregation of maternity wards, so that Arab and Jewish newborns might be separated at birth. He is now finance minister, with a role in the defence ministry that puts him in charge of the civil administration of the occupied West Bank.

This is not just a matter of a dark past. These men have not changed. Last month, settlers staged what the IDF commander on the ground called a “pogrom” in the Palestinian village of Huwara: the mob burned down buildings, attacked villagers and then paused to say the Ma’ariv evening prayers, gathering together, “silhouetted against the background of burning buildings, only to resume incinerating homes and assaulting scores of innocent people,” as one Israeli newspaper put it. Afterwards, Smotrich said that Huwara needed to be wiped out altogether: “the State of Israel needs to do that — not, God forbid, private individuals.”

Recall that Ben Gvir and Smotrich made it into the Knesset last November because Netanyahu wanted them in: he brokered an alliance between the parties of the far right, so that their votes would not go to waste. The result is a morally repellent government, one that is cracking open every fault line in Israeli society.

And this is the third danger that Netanyahu poses. With ultra-nationalist hoodlums and assorted theocrats at his side, he is tearing the country apart, to the extent that the president himself warns that a bloody civil war is possible.

This is the case against Netanyahu. The man who posed for so many decades as Israel’s protector is instead — and for no greater cause than to save his skin — seemingly bent on becoming its destroyer.

Jonathan Freedland is a columnist for The Guardian

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Jonathan Freedland

Judicial reform protests

Benjamin Netanyahu