The true agenda of Israel’s mass protests has been laid bare
The Punishment of Korach; detail from the fresco Punishment of the Rebels by Sandro Botticelli, 1480–1482
Whatever one thinks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, any true Israeli patriot will surely react viscerally to US President Joe Biden’s outrageous attack on Israel’s right to govern itself without foreign interference.
On Monday, Netanyahu announced he was suspending his coalition’s judicial reform legislation in order to negotiate a compromise with the opposition.
The next day, Biden told Netanyahu to “walk away” from the legislation, saying he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy. Warning that Israel “cannot continue down this road,” he added for good measure that he wouldn’t be inviting Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term”.
It is deeply disturbing that the US should brazenly and insultingly interfere in the internal affairs of another country and tell its prime minister how to behave. Biden was supposedly speaking as Israel’s friend, but he sounded like a colonial administrator barking at the natives to fall into line.
While Likud politicians hit the roof, left-wing and centrist politicians and commentators got behind Biden and kicked Netanyahu even more viciously in the head.
After three months of mass protests, incitement to hysteria and ludicrous hyperbole about the end of democracy that have caused Israel untold social, financial and reputational damage, those who shared responsibility for the crisis took their cue from Biden and blamed Netanyahu instead.
Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity party, called Biden’s comments “an urgent wake-up call for the Israeli government,” which he accused of delivering a “strategic blow” to Israel’s ties with the US
One of his MKs, Gideon Sa’ar, declared, “Never has any government caused such immense damage to the country in such a short time”. He called Likud politicians’ objection to Biden’s unprecedented foreign interference “a total loss of judgment”.
This is all straight out of the Palestinian Arabs’ Orwellian playbook: subject Israel to aggression and then blame Israel for causing that aggression by choosing to exist.
That’s not to say there aren’t valid concerns about Israel’s beleaguered prime minister. How could this master political strategist have been so maladroit that he ended up waving a white flag to the mob, thus dealing a terrible and possibly terminal blow to his own authority and to Israel’s defence against its enemies?
The obvious answer is that he was trapped. On the one hand, he should have realised far earlier than he did that he hadn’t taken enough of the public with him and therefore needed to make a tactical retreat to regroup. On the other hand, he needed to prevent his coalition allies from bolting and bringing down his government.
The truth is, however, that creating the current coalition, with its wild men over whom there are understandable anxieties and for whose inflammatory agenda Netanyahu would personally have had little time, was the only way he could return as prime minister.
The reason for this was that Netanyahu had become a fatally divisive figure. It was obvious several years ago that, if he had stepped down, the Likud would probably have comfortably returned to power. The reason it did not, despite the blocs of voters who will always vote for Netanyahu, was because of the passionate dislike the prime minister now provokes.
Even among those who had previously voted Likud, many were alarmed by the way in which Netanyahu marginalised his ministers and concentrated power on himself. They believed he would say anything to get himself out of tight spots and then go back on his word.
The reason so many nevertheless stuck with him was his unmatched global strategic sense and clear understanding of the dire threats from both Iran and its Biden administration appeasers.
Now, his missteps have exhausted this priceless political capital and allowed the Biden administration to say that he’s finished — thus helping to potentially bring this about.
Even some of Netanyahu’s erstwhile supporters are wondering if he’s lost his touch. According to one poll this week, 53 per cent of those who voted Likud in the last election said he was doing a bad job as prime minister.
Notwithstanding reservations about Netanyahu, however, we need to be very clear about what’s actually going on here. Biden’s remarks merely crystallise what’s been obvious from the start to those with eyes to see.
Whatever individual protesters may have told themselves, the real purpose of the uprising was not to stop judicial reform. It was to get rid of Netanyahu.
As the veteran law professor and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz said on the TV station i24 a couple of weeks ago, the claim that the protests were intended to stop the judicial reforms from destroying democracy was patently ridiculous. The reforms, he said, would make Israel’s political system similar to that of countries like the US, Britain and Canada.
As Dershowitz observed, the real purpose of the massive protests was to overturn the result of Israel’s democratic election. And it would do this by making it impossible for Netanyahu to govern.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid launched the uprising with his battle cry of “bring the government down”. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that, if the reforms passed, people were duty-bound to refuse orders by “an illegitimate regime” because it risked becoming a “de facto dictatorship”.
Protesters absurdly claimed that the reform programme — proposed by a democratically elected government — was a “coup”. Since the obvious response to an actual dictator’s coup is to try to bring him down, it was disingenuous for those protesters to pretend they were merely objecting to the judicial reforms.
For its part, the Biden administration wants a pliable Israeli prime minister who won’t challenge its all-too obvious decision to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. It also requires a prime minister who will kowtow to American demands to give away land and Israel’s security to the Palestinian Arabs.
So the Bidenites have been supporting the protests, not only verbally but reportedly financially too. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) tweeted this week: “It’s clear that Biden and his officials are high from funding what they believe to be successful anti-government protests in Israel.”
Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon said the Biden administration believed Netanyahu was “imperilling the security interests of the US” because “to them, democracy is like a religion; they don’t compromise”.
The administration’s views are preposterous. First, the “risk to democracy” from the judicial reforms is no more than feverish agitprop cynically aimed at enlisting the Israeli middle-class as useful idiots.
On Unherd, protest organisers admitted that they abandoned their original agenda of solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs when they realised the public relations damage done by waving the Palestinian flag. So they flooded the protests with Israeli flags instead. One organiser said, “We sacrificed our own agenda so the middle-class would come”.
Moreover, the Biden administration is itself imperilling American and Israeli security by grovelling to the Iranian regime and merely administering feeble slaps on the wrist when Iran attacks American assets.
Now that the left has been empowered by humbling Netanyahu, there will be no end to this. One of the elite reserve pilots who threatened not to serve over the reforms denounced Netanyahu’s pause as irrelevant. There was no need for negotiations, he said chillingly. No compromise would be acceptable. There should be no judicial reform at all.
A leader of the protesting pilots said that, although they were returning to duty, they will renew their threat if the negotiations don’t satisfy them.
The protesters’ success with their street uprising means they will henceforth use their newfound power to thwart the coalition’s ability to govern again and again.
That is the antithesis of democracy. It is truly frightening that so many in Israel today refuse to see it.
@pdale
I remember reading The Ugly American in the sixties. but it didn’t colour my thinking. For the next 50 years I was an avid reader of Commentary Mag, a neo-con and very pro-American. By studying the history of British and American betrayal of Israel and their and their continued interference in Israel’s internal affairs and Palestinian conflict I grew to resent the US and Britain. This reached an apex when America became a totalitarian thug with the election of Obama. I set out my new view in my article written on Feb 26/22 titled The Pot is Calling the Kettle Black.
Other memorable books in the sixties included Hilberg’s, The Destruction of European Jewry, Morse’ While Six Million Died and the The Pledge come to mind.
Preserving the tyranny of the left through the UN-elected IL SC!
A continuation of the blunt anti-IL Obama’s policies.
Ted: More people should read Eugene Burdick’s, ‘The Ugly American’ and John Perkins’ ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ to understand exactly how the Americans operate. As for a ‘special’ relationship, that is phooey.
Why Bibi should be angling for an invitation to the White House beats me. The Americans are interfering in the domestic affairs of an ally and should be stopped. That means sending the US Ambassador packing and recalling the Israeli ambassador to the US.
What really should upset Israelis is the fawning speech delivered by the Israeli Prime Minister to a conference on democracy sponsored, of all outfits, by the US government. As I said elsewhere, it is the speech of a satrap. Imagine calling the demented fool in the White House a ‘friend’ of forty years!
If you are interested in reading Bibi’s speech, here is the link:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/03/netanyahus-address-at-the-us-state-department-summit-for-democracy-2023
Although there is a lot that needs to be commented on, one very important point needs to be made:
This is blatant insubordination and this guy needs to be removed, court-martialed, demoted and all rights and privileges denied. These guys think they are the best of the cream but no-one can allow this kind of behavior. You couldn’t send a pilot like this on a mission – he could decide that he “preferred” not to complete it.
@Pdale
In the video by Lavrov, he goes into some detail to describe how the US coerces other countries to do their bidding. . Specifically he said that the US demands that counties vote yes on a certain resolution. When a diplomat asks the US what the US will do for his country if it complies, the answer was we wont punish you. Its that blunt.
I am quite surprised at the tone of Melanie Phillip’s article. Prime Minister Netanyahu is not only a patriotic Israeli, but also a master tactician. He did exactly what needed to be done to stop the violence in Israel without conceeding to the demands of the radical left who are clearly influenced by the woke radical Biden administration. Wait until 2024 when Donald Trump will become the next president of the USA and see what will happen. I am seriously troubled by the fact that Israeli’s were so easily influenced by a US government that has lost the plot world wide completely. I am from faraway Namibia in Africa but we can see clearly what the Globalists are trying to achieve. The US is nothing but cowards who are fighting proxy wars all over the world without achieving anything but hardship! Viva Mr. Netanyaho!
Israel is not the only country where the US interferes. The demented fool in the White House is also interfering in the Northern Ireland protocol. What I haven’t noticed is any US attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia of the Gulf States. Fortunately I do not have to wonder why; these states would put the boots to the demented fool in the White House.
The result of the government’s backing down is that the leftist street mob and the US and Soros funded organizers control the country. Appeasement never works as we learned in 1938. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. The spirit of Neville Chamberlain is alive and thriving. And we all know where his ‘peace and no war’ slogan went. Only this time it is ‘peace with consensus’.
It’s outrageous that America still continues to interfere in other countries’ politics, trying to bring about regime change and causing riots and disorder in the process. America must immediately stop trying to be the world’s policeman and acknowledge the rights of other nations to exist and to have governments which follow the wishes of their voters, not those of an American president.