Netanyahu’s extremists target Israel’s vital last sphere of consensus – the military
Plumbing new depths of irresponsibility, the coalition’s dominant far-right lawmakers, indulged by the PM, are dragging the security establishment deep into the political maelstrom
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
This Editor’s Note was sent out on Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
Our external enemies must be rubbing their eyes in disbelief, astounded at their good fortune.
Since before its foundation, tiny Israel has managed to fend off conventional war after war designed to wipe it out. It has resisted decades of terrorism, most remarkably through the relentless suicide bombings of the Second Intifada. As Hamas subverted every available Gaza resource to develop rocket capabilities down south, and Hezbollah amassed a six-figure-sized rocket arsenal across the northern border, Israel devised and constantly improved Iron Dome and a multi-level array of other missile and rocket defenses. As Iran has closed in on nuclear weapons, Israel has set it back and, in the words of its previous IDF chief of staff, prepared “vigorously for an attack on Iran” should the need arise.
Now, however, under the hard-right coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which the extreme fringe increasingly sets the tone and agenda, Israel’s vital last sphere of consensus — the security establishment that acts, and must act, 24/7 to keep this country safe — has been swept into the destructive maelstrom of our politics.
In late March, with the coalition about to pass legislation to gain control over the appointment of Israel’s judges, Netanyahu’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, warned resonantly: “The events taking place and the issues in Israeli society aren’t skipping over the Israel Defense Forces. Unprecedented feelings of anger, pain and disappointment have risen. And I see the source of our strength eroding…
“The growing rift in our society is penetrating the IDF and security agencies,” he elaborated. “This poses a clear, immediate, and tangible threat to the security of the state.”
Rather than heed Gallant’s plea and stop the legislative blitz, Netanyahu initially fired him. But a combination of massive public protests and jitters in small pockets of his coalition forced a rethink — a temporary halt to the lawfare on democracy, and the rescinding of Gallant’s dismissal.
Less than five months later, however, the situation Gallant warned against is taking shape before our eyes. Thousands of volunteer reservists have made clear they will not report for service in an Israel they see as undergoing a kind of constitutional coup, in which the first overhaul law has now been enacted, the prime minister refuses to say whether he would honor a potential High Court decision to strike it down, and the core legislation to give the coalition near-complete authority over the appointment of judges is set to be passed into law in the next Knesset session.
Some of the reservists have begun following through on their threats, with the IDF Spokesman acknowledging on Tuesday that IDF “readiness” — in a “people’s army” heavily dependent on its reservists — has already been impacted, and especially in the Israel Air Force.
And while Netanyahu has for years demonized his political opponents, the media, the police and the state prosecution as dangerous leftists who threaten the well-being of the state, members of his irresponsible coalition have now taken to castigating senior figures in the IDF and the Shin Bet security service as destructive leftists, too.
Yehuda Fox, the general who oversees the West Bank, is denounced for failing to halt Palestinian terrorism, for “deliberately” endangering the lives of Israeli West Bank settlers, for ostensibly “prioritizing” the welfare of the Palestinians. Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet chief, is pilloried for reportedly warning Netanyahu that Jewish terrorism by settler extremists against Palestinians in the West Bank is fueling Palestinian terrorism.
Likud MK Tally Gotliv declares that “the ideas of the left have also reached the top of the Shin Bet,” and that the “deep state has reached the head of the Shin Bet and the heads of the IDF.”
In the horrifying summation of Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech, senior defense officials do not know how to “distinguish between the enemy and your own people.”
In one of his innumerable American TV interviews, Netanyahu this week acknowledged that he cannot control what his extremist coalition colleagues choose to say. He did help broker the pre-election agreements, however, that enabled many of them to make it into the Knesset, and he most certainly controlled their entry into positions of power, authority and influence in the government of Israel.
But not only is Netanyahu pleading helplessness as the radical colleagues he empowered incite against Israel’s essential security establishment, he is also proving tardy and somewhat half-hearted in defending Israel’s protectors.
And far from being inclined to stop the legislative axe descending on Israeli democracy, as he reluctantly did in March, he is instead issuing transparently empty promises to seek compromise, while recommitting to that core legislation to take control of the appointment of new judges.
The next overhaul law “would probably be about the composition of the committee that elects judges,” he told Bloomberg this week, before adding, with unintentional candor: “That’s basically what’s left.”
What has become of Netanyahu, once a defender of the independence of the judiciary? What has become of a former outstanding military man who was fully cognizant of the necessity to ensure the security establishment was unified, respected, and protected from the casual, shortsighted viciousness and radicalism that passes for politics? Why did he choose to give so much power in this government to messianists whose pyromaniacal agendas run counter to the most fundamental interests of the state? And why is he exhibiting such weakness as they pursue those agendas?
We’ve searched in vain for adequate answers to all those questions through weeks and months of mounting self-destruction. But with most Israelis recognizing that the country is in a state of emergency, the answers matter less now than the simple imperative to halt. To halt the deepening social and economic crisis. To halt the racist policymaking. To halt the disingenuous misrepresentation of a strategic process that will remake the way Israel is governed and change its democratic-tolerant Jewish orientation and ethos. To halt the unilateral legislation intended to achieve that disastrous goal.
And no less urgently, to heed the security establishment’s warnings — of rising danger in the West Bank, of rising concerns across the northern border. And to restore cohesion in the military ranks — if necessary by firing the lawmakers inciting against officers and security chiefs, and by rebuilding the security establishment’s confidence and trust in its political masters.
Our enemies cannot believe what we are doing to ourselves. They cannot believe that the source of our strength, our existential military strength, is being eroded by our own hand.
If that is not enough to bring Netanyahu to his senses, then nothing is.
