PM ‘inspired’ by Trump to act after Biden’s warnings against altering Israeli democracy
Biden envoy says US alarm led Netanyahu to slow judicial overhaul; Israeli official laughs at prospect of Trump expressing similar concern over effort to oust Shin Bet chief and AG
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
After returning from his meetings with US President Donald Trump and his top advisers in Washington last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave impassioned remarks at a February 11 cabinet meeting that those present have dubbed the “loyalty speech,” according to an Israeli official familiar with the matter.
“Look at Trump. He has done three things in America: He has surrounded himself with people who are loyal to him and only him; he has fired all the people who are not loyal to him; and he is eliminating the ‘deep state’ methodically and thoroughly,” the official quoted Netanyahu as having said, confirming reporting by the Walla news site.
It was during this trip that Netanyahu decided to move ahead with the firing of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, the Israeli official said, describing the premier as having been “inspired” by Trump.
Netanyahu announced the move roughly a month later, citing his lack of trust in the security chief. The High Court has since frozen the dismissal, pending its adjudication of petitions against the move on the grounds that Netanyahu is facing a conflict of interest due to the Shin Bet’s ongoing investigation into his office’s allegedly illicit ties to Qatar.
As part of the Qatar probe, police detained a pair of Netanyahu’s aides last week. Netanyahu later tweeted: “In America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will. They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”
For his part, Bar responded to the move to dismiss him with a letter suggesting that the real reason for his ouster was his refusal to acquiesce to an “illegitimate” demand of granting personal loyalty to the prime minister.
Despite being the apparent inspiration for the move, the Trump administration has avoided weighing in on the Israeli government’s efforts to fire Bar or Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. The cabinet unanimously voted no-confidence in Baharav-Miara on Sunday, formally setting in motion a complex process for her dismissal.
Responding to a query from The Times of Israel, a State Department spokesperson said Friday, “This is an internal matter for the government of Israel, so we refer you to them for more information.”
The Biden approach
The response — or lack thereof — was a clear departure from the Biden administration’s approach to moves by Netanyahu that the premier’s critics have warned are aimed at fundamentally altering Israel’s liberal democratic character.
In 2023, it was the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul that triggered massive public protests and a gradual drumbeat of concern and criticism from then-US president Joe Biden.
For over a month, Biden held off on publicly commenting on the controversial planned package of legislation, which would radically curb the power of the country’s judicial branch.
But in February of that year, he gingerly broke his silence.
“The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary,” Biden said in a statement. “Building consensus for fundamental changes is really important to ensure that the people buy into them so they can be sustained.”
In the months that followed, the criticism became less subtle.
Biden urged Netanyahu to “walk away” from the judicial overhaul legislation in March 2023, saying he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy and warning that Israel “cannot continue down this road.”
In July, Biden warned that continued advancement of the legislation risked irreparable damage to the “special relationship” between the US and Israel.
“Given the range of threats and challenges confronting Israel right now, it doesn’t make sense for Israeli leaders to rush this — the focus should be on pulling people together and finding consensus,” Biden said in a statement nearly three months before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught that started the Gaza war.
Did it work?
Explaining the previous administration’s approach, Biden’s ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told The Times of Israel last week that he was careful to stress that changes to the judiciary were an internal matter.
“But the one thing I repeatedly made very clear was that the thing that binds our two countries together is this idea that we are truly living democracies and that anything perceived to be chipping away at our shared democratic values is not good for the bilateral relationship,” he recalled.
“People may have interpreted that as us putting our fingers on the scale,” Nides said. “I didn’t shy away from having people make that interpretation.”
Asked whether the warnings from the US had an impact, the former American ambassador surmised that they did. He clarified that the protests in Israel were the main driving force in pushing Netanyahu to hold off on much of the overhaul drive before Hamas’s October 7 attack led it to be largely shelved.
Netanyahu’s critics argue that the government’s current effort to remove gatekeepers is part of a renewed effort to take on the country’s independent institutions. The government is next week expected to pass a law that would remake the procedures by which Israel chooses its judges, handing more influence to the political echelon than it has in the current process.
“The Israeli people have to decide what’s going on here. Clearly, there is a sense among some people that again, [Netanyahu’s] trying to bend traditionally non-partisan positions, Nides said.
“President Trump is also going to have to decide how important these issues are to him, since he has a lot on his plate,” he continued, highlighting the president’s efforts to end wars in Gaza and Ukraine and broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“For our administration, this was very important to us. But again, this was before October 7. Israel was not at war at the time. So it was a different time and place,” Nides said.
The Israeli official speaking to The Times of Israel laughed at the notion that Trump would weigh in against Netanyahu’s dismissal of Bar and Baharav-Miara.
“On what grounds would he go about doing that? The prime minister is using Trump’s playbook,” the official said.
The Times of Israel Community.