The deep state is waging war on Trump and Netanyahu.
In a year and a few months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have spent more time at the helm of the Israeli government than any other man. The other man is David Ben-Gurion, the Socialist leader who repressed Zionist nationalist movements in Israel by fiat, by law and, as in the Altalena, by murder.
That factoid may not matter much to most people, even most Israelis, but it matters a great deal to the remnants of Ben-Gurion’s regime, the leftists who don’t win elections, but do control the government. Until ’77, Israel’s Prime Ministers came from the Labor Party. The last Labor Prime Minister left office in 2001. It’s not just that Netanyahu is eclipsing Ben-Gurion, but that Labor has become irrelevant.
But of course the Labor Party isn’t irrelevant. Its candidates may be a joke. Its base of support consists of Tel Aviv hipsters who never actually leave their leftist bubble except to visit Paris, New York or Berlin. Their burning social issue is how much more Daddy has to pay to get them a place in their trendy neighborhood. Not even Obama’s best people could help them get much mileage out of that one.
After the ’15 election, Haaretz, the paper of record for the Israeli anti-Israel left, had wailed, “Leftist, secular Tel Aviv went to sleep last night cautiously optimistic only to wake up this morning in a state of utter and absolute devastation.” Leftist secular Tel Aviv has been devastated for nearly two decades.
But Labor’s deep state still runs much of Israel the way it did when Ben-Gurion was still alive. It doesn’t just have the media and academia, the non-profits and the elites, the way most national ‘lefts’ do. It also controls the old machinery of government that it spent generations running and robbing.
Ben-Gurion’s tenancy may be a factoid to most, but it’s a sore insult to Labor. And its deep state is working overtime to force Netanyahu out of office using fake scandals, fake news and fake police.
This isn’t a new obsession. If you think CNN’s Trumpmania is bad, the Israeli police and media have spent the better part of a decade trying to invent ridiculous Netanyahu scandals. How ridiculous?
Netanyahu’s wife was accused of stealing bottle deposits. “Attorney general mulls probe into Sara Netanyahu’s bottle deposits” isn’t a gag, it’s an actual headline. The catering budget at the prime minister’s residence has been under investigation for years. But there was no investigation when Shimon Peres, the last rotten remnant of the Ben-Gurion regime, threw a lavish birthday party that cost millions and included Bill Clinton, Robert De Niro and Barbara Streisand. Clinton’s fee of $500K was paid by the JNF, which instead of planting trees, was paying one dirty leftist to lionize another.
Israel’s lefty fake news outfits cheered Peres, but took issue with Netanyahu’s ice cream budget.
Another Netanyahu investigation involved the nursing care provided to his father-in-law before his death, because the Israeli left has no more concept of decency than it does of national security.
None of these scandals ever actually go away. Much like the left’s perjury traps and obstruction of justice campaigns against Trump, discredited scandals are rolled into accusations of a cover-up.
And when that doesn’t work, then there are accusations of a media cover-up.
One of the investigations for which Israel’s lefty deep state cops want to charge Netanyahu involves an accusation that he had traded favors for positive coverage from Yedioth Ahronoth. But, as Caroline Glick points out, it never actually happened. Another accusation claims that Netanyahu provided favors in exchange for positive coverage from the Walla! news site. Both accusations testify to the left’s obsession with sowing fear into any media outlet providing positive media coverage of Netanyahu.
Israel Hayom, a free paper that covered Netanyahu positively, was targeted with a law banning the distribution of successful free papers. This attack on a literal free press was known as, “Law for the Advancement and Protection of Written Journalism in Israel”. Lefty journalism has plenty of ‘protektsia’ in Israel. But who will protect Israelis from the ‘journalists’ and their political bosses?
And who will protect actual journalists who report unfavorable information about the left’s deep state?
The message is that any paper that reports the truth might be accused of conspiring with Prime Minister Netanyahu by the police leadership who have their own incestuous relationship with media outlets.
Israel has a first-world military and a third-world police. Israel’s military is competitive, professional and heroic. Its police force is Middle Eastern. At its best, it’s useless and at its worst, it’s deeply corrupt and abusive. The same holds true for the entire justice system which remains a fossilized remnant of its socialist past that deserves to be classed with those of Russia or Uzbekistan.
The Netanyahu era has seen some limited reforms of the judiciary, but the police haven’t changed.
In the United States, the inciting incident of the Flynn investigation appears to have been his advocacy on behalf of FBI Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz who had accused former boss Andrew McCabe and others of sexual discrimination. Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich used the campaign against the Prime Minister to accuse a female police officer who had complained about sexual harassment by a superior back in ’11 of secretly doing Netanyahu’s bidding.
The commander whom she had accused of sexual harassment was in the unit investigating Netanyahu.
Alsheich also suggested that private detectives were investigating his investigators. Both are a convenient way of shifting the blame for his own people’s misconduct to Netanyahu. Covering up sexual harassment and opening up the prime minister’s chair for Labor kills two birds with one stone.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has spent a good deal of his life trying to clean up the corrupt system that Ben-Gurion and his dirty socialists inflicted on Israel. It’s a system where the law is nothing and personal connections are everything. At its worst, party membership was required for government jobs. The machinery of government did the bidding of insiders and crushed the outsiders who got in their way.
Some things have changed.
Israel has a booming private sector. Its growing population of the descendants of Holocaust survivors, refugees from Muslim countries and the Soviet Union have little love for or allegiance to Labor. Its government bureaucracy is a widely loathed corrupt boil on an incredible nation. (As it always was.)
But Labor’s state within a state still wields a great deal of power. It is no coincidence that in recent years, it locked up a prime minister and president who originated from the conservative Likud while Labor’s corrupt politicians have gotten a pass. Isaac Herzog, Labor’s head of the opposition, served as the errand boy for international criminals like Marc Rich and Octav Botnar. But Arafat will rise from the grave to sign a peace deal before a Labor princeling sees the inside of a prison cell.
Money from the estate of Botnar, a Communist, was funneled through Herzog, his lawyer, to Labor for its anti-Netanyahu ads. Rich was a wanted fugitive who bought a pardon from Bill Clinton.
Herzog was Rich’s lawyer.
But the media would rather talk about Netanyahu’s ice cream budget, Sara Netanyahu’s bottle deposits and how much the electrician got paid. The left always accuses the right of its own sins and crimes.
Some may wonder how a country under threat of terrorism, invasion and nuclear annihilation is wasting time on this nonsense instead of dealing with the real threat. Easy. The leftist deep state isn’t interested in dealing with the real threat. It undermined Netanyahu’s efforts to take out Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel’s retired top security bosses routinely pal around with anti-Israel groups and spread anti-Israel propaganda. Ami Ayalon, Carmi Gillon and Yuval Diskin, the former bosses of Shabak, Israel’s version of the FBI, defended the anti-Israel activists of Breaking the Silence. Ayalon had also served Labor in the Knesset. Breaking the Silence has received money from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund which was among the most aggressive funders of the campaign for the Iran Deal to protect its nuclear terror program.
The deep state is rotten and disloyal. And it’s launching a coup to put its own Labor man in power.
It’s not just the Ben-Gurion date that symbolizes the transfer of power from the corrupt socialist state of Labor to a cleaner Israel that fulfills the aspirations of those who dreamed and fought to make it real.
President Trump’s victory offers Netanyahu the opportunity to redefine Israel’s relationship with the PLO that was imposed on it by the Clintons and their Labor allies. Instead of leftist apparatchiks like Dennis Ross and Aaron David Miller calling the shots, pro-Israel Trump associates like David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt are breaking with the old failed ideas and defining a new future for Israel.
That made it more urgent for Labor’s deep state to stop Netanyahu. That’s why the charges are in.
Labor failed to stop Netanyahu at the voting booth despite Obama’s experts working for them. And Obama isn’t around to restrain Netanyahu. A deep state coup against democracy is its last option.
The doomsday option isn’t just about stopping Netanyahu, it’s about stopping Israel.
The people won in America and Israel. But that just means that the deep state in both countries is becoming more ruthless in its efforts to defeat the voices, hopes and dreams of Americans and Israelis.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
That’s funny (odd)…… I don’t understand about what you don’t understand…??? But I understand what I was talking about…!!
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I misspelled or maybe it was the automatic spellcheck kicking in but I am not looking for the abstract definition but trying to understand your account. The role of the shaliach was made clear. Thank you. I don’t understand what you were trying to say about the other.
@ Edgar G.:
Actually, I never really investigated the details. Are shlicim and shaking synonyms?
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Gaawan…ya know all about them. You haven’t suddenly got an atack of Dumbkeit have you…? You know that those coming on Aliyah are all organised overseas. and the Shaliach is the first contact. I like a bit of kidding but THIS….. You see pictures published all the time showing excited, happy new Israeli citizens just arrived. The journey begins in his office.
He’s also supposed to disperse a little Hasbara here and there, and generally does. He is a rep of Israel working through the Jewish Agency, or Ministry of absorption or etc. I don’t know..
He runs an Israeli immigration office PLUS……..
@ Edgar G.:
I just want to understand how you were using them in those sentences. I am trying to get your meaning. Can you rephrase using an English word? I am an English speaker. I know the meanings of certain Hebrew and Yiddish words, in certain contexts as you pointed out, but I don’t speak either language and you are relating an experience that I haven’t had. I wish to understand.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Something like I suppose…maybe…I only know them as sent from Israel to do their informative and arranging work abroad for those who are going on Aliyah.
The word Sh’lichim is the plural of Shaliach. As far as my knowledge goes, the ending “-im” is masculine plural, and “_ot” is feminine plural ending. The way I spell it in English is a transliteration as are ALL Hebrew words spelled in English. So perhaps another might spell it “Shalichim”…. I go be the Hebrew pronunciation of the word.
@ Edgar G.:
So, the shaliach would be the equivalent of the guy from the Hebrew Aid Immigrant Society (HIAS) who helped my father, who was a just-arrived Jewish Shoah survivor and refugee from Communist Hungary who only got a green card because he had two respectable uncles who were citizens, one was a doctor, who signed that they would be legally responsible for his good behavior — not necessarily a path to citizenship, he became a citizen when he married my mother — a couple of years later — get a shared room with a hotplate in Hells Kitchen in 1946 and the Irish guy at some government agency who helped him find his first jobs.
And the sh’licim? What’s that?
@ Edgar G.:
I just looked up the Hebrew for “emissary” and it IS “Shaliach”. Do it obviously, like most Hebrew words, has several meanings according to context.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
They are the emissaries that the Israel government send abroad to boost up interest in Aliyah. Those coming on Aliyah, will contact the Shaliach, and he will ask questions, as the Canadian one did, to make sure, he said, that ” you weren’t going to Israel “GUNG HO, to shoot Arabs.” (I was a very respectable, settled person) .. and later help them to make their arrangements, and make contacts with the Israeli end so that they are met, and guided to wherever they are to stay, generally to an Ulpan, where there are rooms to stay free of charge, and daily 6 month crash course classes in topical Hebrew to be to get a job. Etc. etc.
This is what I understand it is. I never had the pleasure of all the facilities above mentioned as I have written. To get this 2 year posting abroad is regarded as a “plum”, because it gives Israelis a then rare trip abroad, all expenses paid, a free house, car, salary and expense account. And you are your own boss….at least this is how it used to be. Neccessary changes may have been made when the Socialists were kicked out of government,…(or after my interview was published) I don’t know. Never bothered following it up. MY experience was enough for me for a lifetime, and every detail I’ve mentioned happened to me and my fiance.
My idiot shaliach arranged that we should have an apartment in Holon, which was the reason we went to Israel at that particular time. But after a few days looking where the office was hidden,we saw Sara Ya’ari, and told her..that we’re here about our Holon apartment, She just looked at us. and went to wall maps. She poined out where the apartment was, and we were delighted. and wanted exact particulars as to how to get there. She said…. “But you can’t go”.. ‘Why not”.” Then she said ..”well, the apartment is not built yet”….. Astonished and unbelieving, I showed her the cable from the shaliach telling me that there was an apartment now AVALIABLE for us in Holon, and see Sara Ya’ari…. She said….and I’ll NEVER forget these words……
“AVAILABLE” doesn’t mean that it’s already there…”… I won’t go into the rest we said in that office,
We had to find (my cousin did) a furnished apartment in Ramat Gan, high price, We were married the next week in that apartment, The struggles with the Municipal Rabonim where I threatened to smash his jaw, and actually picked up the phone to throw out of the window, I detailed here in past posts. It was all so that they would return to us the ORIGINAL conversion documents and not the copies. We had been warned to make sure to retain them, by the Satmar Rebbe in Seattle, and the Municipal Rabbi promised he would…But he reneged…. So I was prepared..
For our wedding, the Municapality sent along a chuppa, a chazan and an 80 year old venerable rabbi, gentle, tiny, long white beard, to marry us…… Rabbi Zilber.
****Looking for Sara Ya’ari**** was something in itself. We found the address, went onto a large office with a counter across the front. Behind were 4-5 desks in a row. I stated my business. was told to go to another address…. we did… stated our business…were told to go to another address….. we did… were told another address,,,and found it. to be the very first address we has been to. I collared the same man….and he told me “Oh sorry Adon, Sara is in Jerusalem today”. As described above, we say her the next day.
Israeli bureaucracy was in a hell of a mess then, like being in an oriental bazaar trying to find a genuine anything……….
sh’licim: I googled this word, only your post comes up. translation pls.
This is what comes up for Shalliach
The Shaliach Tzibbur is the person who leads the congregation (tzibur) in prayers and at times fulfills its obligation on its behalf. Who to appoint as Shaliach Tzibur. Any male Jew is fit for being a Shliach Tzibbur as long as the congregation accepts him.
correct translation please.
I have never heard these words before.
A really good article. I notice that as the charges against Netanyahu blossom and increase, there seem to be more writers who “tell it as it is” and perhaps the increasing voter support for Likud is part and parcel of this stronger attitude of some writers.
I DO know that he is correct in at least what I’ve experienced myself. I and fiance, arrived in Israel in 1976, late at night, un-heralded, un-greeted by dancing girls at the airport, no welcome wagons for us at all. We had to find our own way to Tel Aviv, and a flea-bag hotel which it seems must have rarely seen patrons like us, being more used to charging by the hour…Such sore feet i had, and was glad to stay anywhere.
Before we ever got to Israel I had to deal with 2 different sh’licim. One was normal, but he gave way to another who actually was the younger brother of a kid I was at school with. So I knew this shaliach almost from his babyhood. And I can tell you that he was always 2 degrees lower than a cretin. He messed up my trip like someone cooking for 1000 special guests who’d never been in a kitchen before.
He was stationed in London England. I was in Dublin, having come from Canada to see him. He was “supposed” to come to Dublin every week for a couple of days. When he did, he’d stay with his brother and send in an expense account for the best hotel in Dublin. (I think he sent in expenses for EVERY week, although came there maybe once a month or less). This I got from my friend his elder brother. I asked him how this kid became a shaliach with a free car, free home and a big salary plus EXPENSES…. He told me that he was a member of the Labour Party and had PROTEXIA…and explained what it was, that even to get any job, you needed to be “connected’. And the kid was a gofer for someone there..
So we were in Israel…..
The next day, I contacted my cousin who happened to be an editor in Le’Isha. At dinner with he and family that night I told them what happened. Almost the first thing my cousin said was “He must have “PROTEXIA”…. The next day he arrived at our new (separate) sleeping quarters with a cameraman and a shorthand reporter. I told them everything all over again. It seems that Aliyah had been very bad for a few years, and very few came from Britain and Ireland.
The article in the next Le’Isha was two full pages in the centre, with our handsome visages in the middle of one page. It was headed with a quote from me which was….. “The Problems With Aliya Are The Shlichim (pretty clever and penetrating, I thought although I didn’t say it like that) …..The creep sued both me and the magazine…It was through Chaim Herzog’s Co..
(In Dublin, before he went to Israel Chaim was known to everyone as “Hymie” Herzog, and lived just across the Rd. from us. My dear late eldest brother and he, were best friends, as were our respective parents. Hymie used to carry me around on his shoulders when i was small.) I even have photos of it.
The law suit never came to anything. In Israel later, when I needed a lawyer, and H had come back from the UN I naturally went to him. We actually had followed him into the building, I recognised him in the street immediately, Anyway, there we were, in shorts, sandals and shirt, flowered dress etc. The sec. went in to his office, and I heard her give my name. Then I saw H. peering at me through the crack at the door hinges. The sec. came out and said he wasn’t in, and gave me the name of another lawyer who’d be very good for me. She actually urged me out, and I told her that I followed him in, and KNEW he was there. She WAS embarrassed and said he had to do what she was told.
When I got home, I wrote to him and gave him hell. I still have the two letters of exculpation that he wrote me, full of excuses, and extolling his services at the UN and etc… A dogsbody who’d forgotten where he came from and who he grew up with. It was only afterwards, reading something, I saw that he was very close with a multi-millionaire family who sponsored and backed him for years with lots of cash. They happened to have the same last name as myself. So he was expecting someone else, and didn’t recognise me. Which was why his self-exculpatory letters were so awkward and phoney.
So as I said a long time ago…….. the above article -which I’d almost forgotten about- was first class.