The past couple of weeks Israel has seen a phenomenon that until recently was not expected.
Haredi Israelis have been, often violently, demanding the end of the “prosecution” of Haredi men and attempts to have them enlist in the army. With the Army personnel warning multiple times that the army, after three years of war, and reservists being called up for hundreds of days of reserve duty, destroying businesses and causing family problems, the Israeli parliament is continuing to ignore the demands from the Chief of Staff and others and continues with the efforts to pass the law, that would exempt thousands of Haredim from serving.
Last week the parliament, with the pressure of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, passed this despicable law and even added an additional one that would prevent the army from arresting the draft dodgers.
While it is clear and obvious to all that the army is in urgent need of soldiers, Netanyahu and his coalition partners have only one thing in mind: to please the Ultra-Orthodox parties and convince them to remain in the coalition bloc also after the elections which will be coming up in three months.
While there is no doubt that Netanyahu’s “partners” are just afraid he will abandon hem after the elections (what he definitely will if they do not act “properly”), for the Haredim it was the clearest signal that they could demand anything and thus they did. The has been a “blitz” of legislation in the Knesset, from the draft law, the prevention of the draft dodgers arrest, the dilution of the powers of the Attorney General, the limitations on the Freedom of the Press and others, all to convince the Haredim to remain in Netanyahu’s court and they have exploited it to the maximum. Their demands were limitless and their blackmail will be studied in history as the most successful ever. And that includes the hundreds of millions of shekels that they keep demanding, and receiving.
They were so successful, that the draft dodgers did not hesitate to go to the street and “protest” even though it was quite clear from the start that they would get all they demand. Even the police claimed they “did not have the capacity” to prevent the demonstrations and thus the Haredim rampaged on highways and near military prisons and one of their most “respected” leaders, Rabbi Dov Lando, claimed the religious soldiers were committing murder.
After the Israeli Supreme Court froze the draft evasion law and revoked millions in support for non-complian,t the coalition members, again under heavy pressure from the Prime Minister, simply chose to ignore the Supreme Court and go ahead anyway. And this is causing a deepening of the Judicial crisis that has been led by Justice minister Yariv Levin together with Shlomo Karhi. The dangers of these efforts are clear: the destruction of the legal system as the basis of Democratic leading inevitably to dictatorship in some form or another.
Again, the driving force behind this is the Prime Minister’s office with Netanyahu wanting to continue even after the October 7th disaster. For which by the way, after almost three years, still no inquiry commission has been appointed to investigate this enormous failure, not even a so-called “political one.
So, is Israel becoming a dictatorship? It is impossible to predict and it will happen gradually, in the hope that the Israeli public will accept the reality and go on with their lives. The latest opinion polls do show that Netanyahu is losing the trust of the people, especially after the Haredi laws were passed and Netanyahu is already trying to turn this around. As an example, when visiting and army base in Lebanon last week all female warriors were told to stay in their rooms and no show themselves while he was a the base, surrounded by male soldiers. The fact that these soldiers were “jobnics” only while the females at the base were active daily in the daily protection of Israel’s north and fighting the enemy.
Netanyahu will apparently not stop at anything and (hopefully) only by losing the elections he can still be stopped.
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