T. Belman. Tobin’s best commentary ever.
A false narrative about Netanyahu’s “judicial coup” may achieve its goal of toppling him. But more than that, the consequences for future governments and U.S.-Israel relations are ominous.
By Jonathan Tobin
(March 27, 2023 / JNS) After months of increasingly strident mass protests against his government’s plans to reform Israel’s out-of-control and highly partisan judicial system, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have given in to the pressure. He said he was going to be “delaying judicial reform to give real dialogue a chance.” But it’s highly doubtful that this will merely be a timeout that will help his supporters regroup and enable opponents to calm down and accept a compromise on the issue.
On the contrary, Netanyahu is waving the white flag on judicial reform—and everyone knows it. And since the ultimate goal of the protests was not just preventing legislation from being passed but to topple the government, it’s far from clear whether the prime minister can long stay in power after this humiliation since his allies are shaken and his opponents won’t be satisfied until he’s ejected from office.
Whether that will happen remains to be seen. But the one thing that is clear is that the consequences of the events of the last months go far beyond the future of the Israeli legal system.
Netanyahu’s announcement is leading to celebrations on the Israeli left as well as among their foreign supporters, especially in the Biden administration and liberal Jewish groups. And they have good reason to celebrate. The anti-Bibi resistance was able to sell the world a false narrative about their efforts being nothing more than a successful effort to defend democracy against the efforts of would-be authoritarians who wanted to create a fascist theocratic state.
But the notion that an uprising of the “people” has stopped a “coup” by Netanyahu and his allies is pure projection. What the world has just witnessed was itself a soft coup. Fueled by contempt for the nationalist and religious voters whose ballots gave Netanyahu’s coalition a clear Knesset majority in November and imputing to them their own desire for crushing political opponents, the cultural left has shown that it has an effective veto over the results of a democratic election.
In exercising that veto, they have given Israel’s enemies, who don’t care how much power the courts have or who the prime minister of the Jewish state is, ammunition that will make their international campaign to isolate their country more effective.
More importantly, they’ve broken rules and set precedents that will impact future Israeli governments no matter who is leading them. They’ve shown that not even an election can be allowed to break the left’s stranglehold on effective power via a system of courts and legal advisors that have effectively made Israel a juristocracy rather than a country ruled by the representatives of the people. That sends a dangerous message to the people whose votes determined the outcome of the election—that their views don’t matter and that they should lose faith in the ability of political action to have an impact on society.
The opposition didn’t play by the rules
Netanyahu and his fellow coalition members made a lot of mistakes in the last few months. The prime minister was inhibited by an outrageous ruling from the attorney general that effectively silenced him on the most important issue facing his country. Still, by concentrating most of his efforts on trying to rally reluctant Western nations to face up to the threat of Iran, he was distracted from what was going on at home.
He had been criticized for trying to force fundamental change to the justice system via a relatively narrow partisan majority without a national consensus. But those who say this are hypocrites. A left-wing Israeli government forced the disastrous Oslo Accords with an even narrower majority. Democrats like President Joe Biden, who make the same claim, also seem to be forgetting that the Obama administration he served did the same thing with health care despite the lack of a consensus or even making minimal gestures towards compromise.
Given the way his opponents have been willing to go to any length to defame or delegitimize him and even to drag him into court on trumped up flimsy charges of corruption, Netanyahu underestimating his opponents is hard to fathom. Having broken a three-year-long political stalemate by gaining 64 seats in the Knesset to form the first clear majority since he won in 2015, the prime minister somehow thought his foes would play by the rules and let him govern.
He failed to understand that—like the willingness of the American political left to do anything to defeat former President Donald Trump, even if meant dragging the country through three years dominated by the Russia collusion hoax—his opponents were prepared to set the country on fire, destabilize its economy and even weaken its national defense to throw him out. The notion that restraining the power of the court—something that opposition leader Yair Lapid used to support before he realized that latching on to the resistance would give him a chance to erase his defeat last year—was the point of the protests was always false. The same could be said of the claim that preventing the courts from selectively exercising unaccountable power without any basis in law was the end of democracy or the first step towards the creation of a theocratic state.
With the chaos in the streets—with the financial, legal, cultural, media and academic establishments joining with the left-wing opposition—the prime minister already had his back to the wall. But the widespread refusal of many reservists, especially among those with skilled positions such as pilots, to refuse to report for reserve duty threatened the country’s national security. Along with general strikes that forced closures at airports and shutdowns of medical services, that proved to be the last straw and led already shaky members of the coalition to lose heart.
The coalition was slow to mobilize its own voters, who, after all, did outnumber the opposition in the recent election. The government’s supporters were forced to watch impotently as their leaders faltered, feuded among themselves and failed to act decisively to fight the battle for public opinion.
Going forward in the face of a resistance that was ready to trash even the most sacred of Israeli civic traditions involving national defense in order to gain a political victory became impossible. And with his own party losing discipline, and the U.S. government and many leading institutions of American Jewish life similarly backing the opposition, Netanyahu had no choice but to try and prevent any further damage.
Netanyahu has made a career out of repeatedly proving wrong those who have written his political obituary. Still, if the protests continue—and there is no reason to believe they will fully stop until a new election date is set—the government can try to reset the debate as being one about the left’s appetite for power and not their supposed devotion to democracy.
Whether they succeed is not as important as the implications of a political battle in which large numbers of people were prepared to sabotage the country in order to preserve the establishment’s power to determine policy regardless of who wins elections.
Implications for the future
Will that happen every time the right wins an election from now on? Probably. That means not only will the juristocracy defend its power, but its supporters are permanently committed to thwarting the will of voters who may continue to outnumber them in the future.
And how will a theoretical government of the left—assuming, as many now do, that Lapid and his allies can win the next election—react if large numbers of right-wing opponents try to play the same game? If the debate over the disastrous Oslo Accords and the 2005 Gaza withdrawal are any gauge of their behavior, they will crack down on their opponents in ways that Netanyahu hesitated to do this year with widespread jailing of dissidents. Dismissals from the army of those who refuse orders rather than the gentle lectures the anti-Bibi refuseniks got will also be likely.
While the left threatened violence against their opponents and even civil war if they didn’t get their way about judicial reform, who really believes they will hesitate to initiate one if they are in power and the right rises up in the streets the way we’ve just witnessed?
Similarly, the implications for Israel’s foreign relations are equally ominous. The opposition has essentially legitimized American involvement in Israel’s domestic politics even on an issue that had nothing to do with the questions of territory and peace. That weakens the country’s independence at a dangerous time when, as Netanyahu has been trying to point out, the threat from Iran is growing.
What’s more, Netanyahu’s opponents have (whether they realize it or not) also legitimized arguments aimed at denying that Israel is a democracy. While his foes think that this will only apply to times when the right wins elections, they may come to realize that to the antisemites who assail the Jewish state in international forums and in American politics where the intersectional left is increasingly influential, that will also apply to governments led by parties not named Likud.
Ultimately, Israel’s citizens—whether through democratic elections or mob actions that break governments and Knesset majorities—will determine their own fate. And those who look on from abroad must accept the outcome of these struggles and continue to support the Jewish state against its enemies.
Yet far from defending Israel from authoritarian forces, the protesters have established a precedent that will haunt future governments of all kinds and shake the foundation of its democracy. Whether that damage can be undone remains an open question.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him on Twitter at: Jonathans_tobin.
From Gen. Avivi of the IDSF:
Read his full statement here:
https://mailchi.mp/idsf/this-sunday-everything-will-change?e=062227363d
@Felix
No, it’s you who is spouting lies. A few of many.
“Kielce pogrom
The Kielce pogrom was an outbreak of violence toward the Jewish community centre’s gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce, Poland on 4 July 1946 by Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians during which 42 Jews were killed and more than 40 were wounded. Wikipedia
Start date: July 4, 1946
Location: Kielce
Deaths: 38 to 42”
“Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels (Yiddish: ???? ??????? [also spelled ?????? ??????? during the Soviet era], Russian: C?????? (??????) ???????, 16 March [O.S. 4 March] 1890 – 13 January 1948) was a Latvian born Soviet Jewish actor and the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater. Mikhoels served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. However, as Joseph Stalin pursued an increasingly anti-Jewish line after the War, Mikhoels’s position as a leader of the Jewish community led to increasing persecution from the Soviet state. He was assassinated in Minsk in 1948 by order of Stalin.[1]”
Wikipedia
“Paul Robeson And The Soviet Purge Of Russian Jews”
https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/paul-robeson-and-the-soviet-purge-of-russian-jews/2018/02/21/
“Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew.
Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.
What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.
Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.
An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that this practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development and works for human emancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement.
We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate.
In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”
Karl Marx
“On the Jewish Question”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/
—-
Marxism is an antisemitic religion in humanist garb. It’s not a science either because it can only predict the past. It’s future predictions are as worthless as Nostradumus or Christian propecies
“Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system.”
Trotsky
What a joke. The Jews have been persecuted in every country that ever did that. Some people never learn from history.
Incidentally, not all fascist regimes were antisemitic. Portugal, Spain, Italy in the 20s and early 30s.
Nazism is not merely fascism.
“…Lenin campaigned vigorously, both orally and in writing, against anti-Semitism and incitement to pogroms…Despite this position, however, Lenin did not oppose the cruel persecution of Zionists and suppression of the Hebrew language and the Jewish religion by the Soviet authorities, although in his time many arrested Zionists and rabbis were eventually allowed to leave Russia and go to Palestine. The assassination attempt on behalf of the Social Revolutionaries (1918), carried out against him by a Jewish woman, Fanya Kaplan, did not change his approach to the Jews at all.”
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/vladimir-lenin
“Coffin Problems
How Soviet anti-Semitism buried Jewish scientists”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/coffin-problems-soviet-anti-semitism-scientists
“Eventually Jews were permitted to become soldiers in the Czar’s army. Youths as young as twelve years of age were conscripted. .. The real reason that the czars created these laws was that they wanted to decrease the number of Jews in the general population, either by attrition or by their conversion to Christianity. One way of doing this was by drafting them for a term of twenty-five years. Only during the reign of Alexander II was the term reduced to five to ten years. By keeping Jewish men and boys in the Army for such a long period of time, the Russian government had hoped to separate them from their shtetl and their Jewish roots for a such a long time that they would eventually be more willing to convert to Christianity in order to improve their conditions. …”
https://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ftp-jitra.htm
“Shortly before he died on March 5, 1953, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin accused nine doctors, six of them Jews, of plotting to poison and kill the Soviet leadership. The innocent men were arrested and, at Stalin’s personal instruction, tortured in order to obtain confessions. “Beat, beat, and again beat,” Stalin commanded the interrogators.
The unfortunate physicians can be described as lucky only in comparison with Stalin’s eighteen million other victims. The dictator died days before their trial was to begin. A month later, Pravda announced that the doctors were innocent and had been released from prison. It later became known that after their pro-forma trial and conviction, Stalin intended to organize pogroms around the country, after which prominent members of the Jewish community would publicly beg him to protect the Jews by sending them all to Siberia. Indeed, when Stalin died, the supposedly spontaneous appeal by leading Jews had already been written and signed; the signatories had been coerced into signing.
In accusing the Jewish doctors of being poisoners, Stalin was, of course, reviving a libel that was common among medieval anti-Semites. The most notorious incarnation of the “Jews as poisoners” libel occurred in the fourteenth century when they were accused of having caused the devastating Black Plague by poisoning the wells of Europe. In addition to all the Jews who died from the plague, thousands more were murdered in pogroms prompted by these accusations. In 1610, the University of Vienna’s medical faculty certified as its official position that Jewish law required doctors to kill one out of ten of their Christian patients. One wonders what it must have been like to be in a Jewish doctor’s office — in back of nine other patients.
While one would think that all Jews would have breathed an enormous sigh of relief upon Stalin’s death, there was no shortage of Russian Jews who shared in the country’s paroxysm of grief. Even more peculiar, I. F. Stone, a well-known left-wing Jewish journalist in the United States, attacked President Eisenhower for not issuing a more effusive note of condolence on the mass murderer’s death.”
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-doctor-s-plot
Peloni
You omit the main one Trotsky
You lump Lenin with the Czars and Stalin. How barbarically ignorant of history is that!
This is the very big problem. You do not seem to understand at all this history and you even say history doesn’t matter.
But it does matter.
Even though we are small in numbers there was once a time when Marxism united with Jews to wipe the Pogrom off the face of the earth. And it can happen again.
I asked you for some content and you present what are really lies about my politics and no content at all in the sense of what I say.
The hallmark of Stalin was to seek a peace with Imperialism. I do not see that as possible and this war confirms that.
For example
Quote. “hysterical blather about fascism”
This is from Sebastien who lost many of his family in the Holocaust.
How weird is that telling me not to voice my concerns about the great dangers of Fascism once more.
So all this amounts to is an empty insult. No it doesn’t work. I ask you to give some detail and you carry on empty insultd
Yes Jewish history is being erased here and I refer specifically to Lenin and Trotsky, the party and the Red Army forming a unity with Jews against Antisemitism.
The Antisemites of Ukraine in fact.
That’s being erased by you, Peloni and Ted.
This is getting very ugly so I withdraw from this. It was a characteristic of Stalinism to attack without content on a personal interview level.
There are many good responses from others here. I notice that.
@Felix Takes one to know one. Listening to you talk is like reading Pravda in the late 40s and early 50s. All this hysterical blather about fascism, imperialism, enemies everywhere, erasing Jewish history, name calling, worshipping at the altar of the Soviet Union. You are channeling the great grandparents of today’s woke cultural Marxist globalist crowd. Though unlike all the others who are doing that, you still manage to support Israel or at least as long as she doesn’t fight Russia, who you conflate with the Soviet Union (it’s not.)
And it’s just the style of rhetoric.
You are like a mirror of me 30 years ago. Makes me sad.
Sebastien you look in a mirror and you see a Stalinist. You have actually been in a Stalinist group.
Mind saying what I have said that made you say that?
@ Felix Anybody ever told you you talk like a Stalinist?
Peloni Ted Sebastien
Like your revisionist lies around the science in virus vaccine and Global Warming we have to fight against your revisionist lies as regards the history of the Jews. This is fundamental.
@Raphael
You are quite correct, but that context can’t affect Israel’s position, but it does make the affect of her warning shots less effective.
@peloni1986
I can’t say that I disagree with you on Russia’s ever closer relationship with Iran, and with China for that matter. Most distressing. What I will say, however, is that it is the West that has pushed these players into each other’s arms. I think if I were in Russia’s place, (facing an existential challenge from the West), I too would look for friends wherever I could find them. The whole situation has generated many disagreeable unforeseen consequences.
In Israel, as in the US, and in most other places, “the Right” is unlikely to rise up…ever. The Left knows this and counts on it. Those on the Right are typically good, law-abiding people who have been raised to act properly. In addition, they are usually employed and can’t take time off to march or riot. They also raise children, and strive to set a good example. They even go to church or schul. The Left mocks those who lead responsible lives. I’m sorry to say this. There used to be good people on the Left. They’re gone.
These reports are all from “Intelligence” and Ukraine.
https://www-timesofisrael-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.timesofisrael.com/report-russia-to-supply-with-iran-with-dozens-of-sukhoi-su-35-fighter-jets/amp/?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16800824338401&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timesofisrael.com%2Freport-russia-to-supply-with-iran-with-dozens-of-sukhoi-su-35-fighter-jets%2F
If true we head to all out war, maybe world war, with Israel on the side of America and NATO from where it can only go deeper
@Felix
We could take the time to track thru our history, but interests trump history. I couldn’t care if the Czars, and Lenin, and Stalin and all the rest were the bestest friends that the Jews ever had (and they were very very far from that), it doesn’t matter. Russia is aiding and abetting a state sponsor of terrorism which has taken control of many of the states surrounding Israel and her allies, and has become a nuclear threshold state, with intentions of annihilating Israel and her 7million Jews. This is all we need to consider. This is all we need to know.
A limited, measured response was both appropriate and necessary. Russia would have done no less, and probably a good bit more, if Israel had supplied Ukraine with an advanced fighter jet. Iran is Israel’s Ukraine. Actually, Iran is Israel’s Ukraine times a million fold. Unlike Ukraine, Iran is building nuclear bombs to use against Israel. Russia knows this. They knew what they were doing when they did it and still they did it. The consequence will be to have Russians die as they attack Ukrainians armed with Israeli defensive gear. This measured response was intended to send Moscow a message which they don’t even need to read to understand. Hopefully for both Israel and Russia, the message will not be disregarded and Russia’s escalation against Israel will not continue.
@Felix Why the ignorance of our history? Have you tried googling it? Try: Soviet antisemitism or Russian antisemitism. Soviet Union amd PLO. Seriously.
Here’s two of many
“Soviet Russia: Creator of the PLO and the Palestinian People”
https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.2139/ssrn.2387087
“Antisemitism in the Soviet Union”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Union
Sebastien Peloni Ted
The heart of your position is here
“Do you really think that makes any sense? Iran is the only country trying to kill 7 million Jews and has a shot at doing it with its nukes not to mention armies and proxies throughout the region trying to build a land bridge to Israel, not to mention the cyberwarfare and terrorism.
And while I feel sympathy for the Russians of East Ukraine, Russia has been a very mixed bag for us, mostly negative. We owe Russia no debt of gratitude as you seem to think.”
Russia a mixed bag you say
Please explain. You may even have to use words like Lenin Stalin etc.
Why the reticence to grapple with HISTORY?
Sebastien Peloni
I can only find an Iran source behind reports
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-buy-su-35-fighter-jets-russia-iranian-broadcaster-2023-03-11/#:~:text=DUBAI%2C%20March%2011%20%28Reuters%29%20-%20Iran%20has%20reached,Iranian-built%20drones%20used%20in%20Russia%27s%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
@Felix Do you really think that makes any sense? Iran is the only country trying to kill 7 million Jews and has a shot at doing it with its nukes not to mention armies and proxies throughout the region trying to build a land bridge to Israel, not to mention the cyberwarfare and terrorism.
And while I feel sympathy for the Russians of East Ukraine, Russia has been a very mixed bag for us, mostly negative. We owe Russia no debt of gratitude as you seem to think.
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” – Lord Palmerston
Peloni Sebastien
Look Iran is on the side of Russia. What do you expect Russia to do?
The real question is why you and Israel are not on the side of Russia against ONU?
Do you people on Israpundit not know the history of the Jews?
Disgraceful!
@Felix
By reciprocally providing aid and comfort to Russia’s enemy. It will teach them that there is a price for aiding Israel’s enemies. That being said, Russia has many toys which it could provide to Iran as a counter to Israel’s response, which is why making a limited, measured response was the correct move to make. Hopefully Russia will accept this reproach in the light of their own mis-step and respond accordingly.
Sebastien go ahead then punish Russia and how you going to do that?
This is quite the pattern for your lot. You always end up on the side of Fascists.
Don’t mess about. Nail your colours openly and without ambiguity to Biden and Zelensky with the Azov flag emblazoned on your cello
@Sebastien
Nicely stated!
@FelixThe only thing that can bring about another Shoah is Iranian nukes only this time it will be Israel’s 7 million Jews. Secondarily, the Arabs inside Israel are trying to subject our people to a “death by a thousand cuts” and the Leftwing legal establishment and Deep State aided by hundreds of thousands of confused narcissist pawns/useful idiots are naively assisting them.
The Russians are victims of the West Ukrainian fascists who are funded by the U.S. and NATO (irrationally from the point of view of national interest as Russia coyld have been an ally against Iran and China whose arms we forced them into)
But Israel must punish those who aid her enemies.
Sebastien the main threat to Israel is Fascism because that brings about another Holocaust of the Jews. The only solution is to defeat and replace the thing that caused Fascism which is of course capitalism. Ted/Peloni think that by sucking up to the ONU direct descendant fascist force of today is the thing to do. How stupid but above all lacking in principle.
@Felix
Russia is supplying Iran with advanced fighter jet technology which they did not have before. By doing so, they are fueling the existential threat against Israel, even as Israel is being further isolated by the Saudi’s rapprochement with Iran. So, do tell us, what exactly would you have Israel do to combat Russia expanding the existential Iranian threat against Israel?
Israel is not escalating against Russia, she is not even keeping pace with the escalations committed by Russia. Also, Ukraine is no threat to Israel, but expanding the technological advantage of Iran over Israel is, and it is this threat which Israel must address, not the threat sitting on Russia’s border.
Israel it seems can’t get ahead, because they are always getting in their way!
I am sick ? of israel they go to the grave
@Felix The main fascist threat is Iran.
@Felix
I never said that. Going from memory, I was reacting to Russia giving fighter jets t Iran and that made it OK for Israel to offer defensive aid to Ukraine. That way they are placating the US and confronting Russia.
I guess it’s time to sit shiva.
Lapid opportunistically gave lip service to judicial reform when it wasn’t on the agenda at one point but he sabotaged the vote for it in the Knesset years before that. I had him pegged as the hidden leader of the Judicial Tyranny TSS crowd and the principal obstacle to judicial reform years before he stepped into the limelight. The Knesset voted it down in the past when it was raised entirely thanks to him.
I read about two weeks ago Ted saying that Netanyahu was right to offer military aid to the Fascists in Ukraine, the scourge of the Jewish people over so long.
At that point I knew the game was up for Ted and his Israpundit.
I commented as his horrific statement which lay uncontested for so long. What happened after I don’t know. Articles are turned over, issues dropped at such a fast clip, I lose track.
Then I noticed the provocateur “Michael” had his reactionary initiative.
Then lost again in a ban by Ted on principled people like Edgar. Over really nothing when placed against a softish Fascist coup in Israel.
So eye totally off the ball. I.E. just a diversion.
Meanwhile the reactionary conspiracist on virus issues provided a site policing role to the editor. Always.
Very unfortunate because devotion to the cause not ever the issue..
As to Tobin
In fact Tobin is a reactionary also who calls these Fascist Antisemites like Lapid as being from a “Left” perspective.
Long disputed in fact but all reactionaries like Belman ran with that as being part of their essential makeup.
So perhaps step one is to understand how wrong this “left right” characterisation really is.
But Tobin is right. On the key issue in front of Jews.
Israel is being run into the ground from both sides. It is the total crisis of leadership.
And Fascism in the Obama Biden Lapid axis is on the march.
But the main problem is the common one – how to defeat Fascism, rising now in not one but many forms.