Think whatever you want about Netanyahu.
We should all be scared by how utterly disdainful Israel’s unelected deep state elites have become of democracy & the elected government.
How insistent they have become that any challenge to their power – power which would be considered absurd and outrageous in the U.S. – is a threat to the essence of Israeli democracy.
Imagine if the head of the FBI informed the U.S. President that he, the head of the FBI, and not the President, would choose the candidates to head the agency.
That is what Shabak head Ronen Bar just did in his official statement in reaction to Netanyahu’s decision to hold a government vote on removing him. Bar also declared of course that he has no intention of stepping down, unless and until the government accepts his policy demands (you can agree or disagree with regards to Bar’s policy demands- in a democracy, the head of the security forces doesn’t get to demand that elected officials adopt his policy preferences).
Israel’s deep state has done two brilliant things. Firstly- It exercises its power in such an absurd manner, that anyone who describes it in English sounds like a conspiracy theorist. For example- when I’ve described the unbelievably undemocratic overreach of Israel’s Attorney General, the reaction I often get is- that can’t be true! (It is).
Secondly, it has convinced a (increasingly smaller and smaller) percentage of Israelis, and a (larger?) percentage of American Jews, that the deep state is the ‘guardian of democracy’, and that any challenge to its power is a slippery slope towards a theocratic dictatorship.
As just one example, @Nadav_Eyal described this evening the PM’s decision to hold a government vote on removing Bar as an attempt to kill the soul of democracy itself. The fact that the law explicitly gives the government the power to vote to remove the head of the Shabak, that the Shabak is the body most directly responsible for foiling terror, and that Bar has admitted that the Shabak under his command failed to foil the worst terror attack in Israeli history- is irrelevant.
From the perspective of Israel’s old elites: Bar opposes Bibi, so Bar is democracy, and any attempt to remove Bar is undemocratic.
I know people will respond- But Bibi! But Ben Gvir!
Again, think whatever you want about Bibi and the current Government. I have plenty of criticism. But be equally concerned by blatantly and explicitly undemocratic maneuvers by those who have appointed themselves the ‘Gatekeepers of Democracy’.
My guess is that he could have gone on for quite a while on this subject. Unfortunately, nothing really new. They all try to take advantage.