Now that the holidays are over, the war over the state’s character and future is expected to resume full force, and that’s a good thing. There were also lulls in 1948 – tactical cease-fires of limited duration on which nobody pinned any real hopes, because fateful, existential issues were at stake.
The first lull in the attempt to turn Israel into a dictatorship was initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government solely because they had been defeated across the board – in the economy, security and the streets. There was no goodwill or soul-searching, just a desire to cut their losses and regroup (“public diplomacy”). As evidence, see the fact that Thursday evening, without even a single day of grace following Memorial Day and Independence Day, supporters of the government’s planned legal coup will hold a demonstration outside the Knesset.
The event’s organizers, in an idiotic own goal, called it a “million-man demonstration” in advance. There won’t be a million people there, but Netanyahu and his collaborators have invested enormous effort, including a well-funded network of buses, in an attempt to bring out the masses.
The date chosen is patently symbolic. It’s the day of the Netanyahu family’s personal Armageddon – the deadline for returning $270,000 to the generous Milikowsky family, on orders of the Supreme Court president. And that is a genuine casus belli for a war of Gog and Magog. Of course, only in benighted, tyrannical regimes do governments organize “popular” demonstrations in support of themselves, and that is indeed the goal – turning Israel into a dictatorship with elements of a monarchy.
The “freeze” of the coup legislation was intended solely to abate the protests and put the opposition to sleep. Netanyahu has been working on this full-time with his blitz of recent interviews, though, as usual with him, only to the foreign media (except, of course, for his personal propaganda channel, Channel 14 television, which the state, in its weakness, allowed him to set up and operate).
We must not fall into this trap. Justice Minister Yariv Levin has already announced that the upheaval will continue full steam ahead; he has also announced that he will participate in Thursday night’s demonstration. Another minister in the Justice Ministry, David Amsalem, has demanded that Supreme Court President Esther Hayut and one of her predecessors, Aharon Barak, be put on trial.
At the same time, dictatorship supporters are backing convicted criminal Efraim Naveh’s run for another term as chairman of the Israel Bar Association. They are also systematically assailing the seniority system for choosing Supreme Court presidents. The goal is to take over the Judicial Appointments Committee even if its composition remains unchanged.
They are all thugs, and the only way to talk with thugs is through force. They don’t understand any other language, and they interpret compromise or dialogue as weakness, which only increases their appetites. And in any case, it’s impossible to compromise and be half-democratic.
Consequently, it’s time to shut down the bazaar of the talks at the President’s Residence. This is an undemocratic forum, also an illegal one. Not a single thing that is happening there has a basis in Israel’s system of government or its laws (aside from the payment received by Oved Yehezkel, a private individual, for his services running the talks on President Isaac Herzog’s behalf).
Herzog is apparently in love with the position of national mediator that he took upon himself, a kind of unifying, healing father of the nation. But he has no mandate to intervene in this issue or even to be involved in it. A significant portion of the parties in the Knesset aren’t represented in these talks at all, including, of course, the Arab parties. There are also no representatives of the legal system, which is under assault, or of the impressive civic protests that for now have saved the country.
Nor can the president be seen as an impartial mediator. He said in advance that a comprehensive reform is needed. He repeatedly downplayed what is at stake (“the gaps aren’t wide”). And he outdid himself in a holiday interview when he said, “I have great respect for Benjamin Netanyahu. I think he’s a polymath who has done very great things as prime minister.”
The two biggest opposition parties were dragged into the negotiating room for fear of the blame game, which Herzog also announced he would run. But this is a waste of time and energy. It’s unfair to the protesters in the streets, and unreasonable given the ongoing assaults on democratic Israel and its supporters. Enough already. End the talks.
End Herzog's Performative, Pointless Talks With Israel's Overhaul Thugs
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28.04.2023
Now that the holidays are over, the war over the state’s character and future is expected to resume full force, and that’s a good thing. There were also lulls in 1948 – tactical cease-fires of limited duration on which nobody pinned any real hopes, because fateful, existential issues were at stake.
The first lull in the attempt to turn Israel into a dictatorship was initiated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government solely because they had been defeated across the board – in the economy, security and the streets. There was no goodwill or soul-searching, just a desire to cut their losses and regroup (“public diplomacy”). As evidence, see the fact that Thursday evening, without even a single day of grace following Memorial Day and Independence Day, supporters of the government’s planned legal coup will hold a demonstration outside the Knesset.
The event’s organizers, in an idiotic own goal, called it a “million-man demonstration” in advance. There won’t be a million people there, but Netanyahu and his collaborators have invested enormous effort, including a well-funded network of buses, in an attempt to bring out the masses.
The........
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