The destruction of the Judicial system in Israel is going ahead full speed and until now, the unprecedented intensity of the protests notwithstanding, the government has not shown the slightest hint that it will halt the legislation and Netanyahu even fired his defense minister, after the latter dared voicing his opinion that the events of the past weeks are destroying the Israeli army and its ability to address dangers from outside.
The argument used by the government, and in particular Netanyahu, to justify the destruction of the remnants of Israeli democracy, is that it is the “will of the People”. The results of the elections gave the current coalition a majority and this is translated by Netanyahu and his cronies as a carte blanche, to do what they want in the name of the people. And the people, at least the Likud voters, love it. No matter how often they are told that their leaders are totally out of control, they will not even try to understand the consequences of the current legislative roller coaster initiated by the government.
Even though Netanyahu surely is aware that the victory in the last elections, while giving him the right to govern and initiate new policies, does not allow him to use this power to neutralize the basics of the democratic system, the fact that his voters are blind to this (and his fascist and religious coalition partners allow him), enables him to move forward with the changes in the judicial system. Netanyahu needs the judicial changes to increase his influence on the system which is currently putting him on trial for serious offences and if the collateral damage of his actions will include the increase of fascism and the ever faster move towards a Halachic State, he couldn’t care less.
Netanyahu the Statesman is no more. His actions are completely governed by his own interests. And when the survival of his coalition is required to further his own personal interests, he will do anything to keep this absurd government alive.
So last night, after many hours of delay which were apparently needed to convince his fascist coalition partners to allow him to halt the legislation, or at least to make a statement that he will halt the legislation, he did indeed make a speech on live television, in which he declared that the judicial reform legislation will be postponed until the summer session of the Knesset.
And shortly after that, it was announced that Itamar Ben Gvir, the fascist minister of National Security will get his own personal militia, which he will control directly and will not be part of the Israeli police. This is a clear recipe for further pogroms in Palestinian towns like Huawara, but for Netanyahu, if that is what it takes to have his coalition survive and with that, his options to take control of the Judicial system, who cares.
This of course, beside the fact that nobody believes anything of what he said in his speech. Nobody believes he is trying to unify the people, nobody believes he is halting the legislation, and nobody believes he is willing or interested to sit down with the (naïve) opposition, and talk about it.
Binyamin Netanyahu has become the biggest danger Israel is facing now. Not the Iranians, not Hezbollah, not Hamas. The real danger for Israel, its security, its social framework, its economic stability, is its own Prime Minister who acts as if he has completely lost it, but in fact is only focused on his own interests.
The Knesset has already made it practically impossible to remove him from office for any reason at all and as long as he enjoys a majority in the Knesset, he will be almost unstoppable. The hope of the Israeli people than lies with the very few Knesset members of the Likud who are not completely under his thumb, to wake up and stop the madness. However, the retaliation against Defense Minister Gallant after he opened his mouth does not leave much hope any of the others will have the courage to stand up against Netanyahu.
The Arab world is looking at the events in Israel with gleeful sarcasm and happily predicts the downfall of the Zionist State. It won’t come to that so quickly, but the real events within the IDF are still mostly hidden from the public eye. And the declarations of dozens of fighter pilots that are refusing to report for training now, the hundreds of support personnel who do not answer the call for reserve duty, the cyber and intelligence units that are trying to deal with severe lack of personnel because reserves are not reporting for duty, where is this all leading to?
Last night, for the first time, there were violent clashes between the protesters against the Judicial take-over and right-wing thugs that Smotrich and Netanyahu called out into the streets. It shows better than any speech, how far Netanyahu is willing to go to further his own interests.
In the Israeli democratic system, the “Shin Bet”, the internal security organization s responsible, in addition to man other tasks, to safeguard Israeli Democracy. How long will it take until they decide that intervention is required?
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