Suddenly the hundreds of thousands of participants in the protests who filled the streets, blocked roads and along the way gathered in people who never dreamed their Saturday nights would be like this – are now in a panic.
What will we protest about this Saturday, they wonder, as if the party had ended before they arrived, and the threat of the coup turned out to be a cloud on a summer’s day. Look at the number of people who came to Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv last Saturday, maybe it would have been better to stay at home so as not to embarrass ourselves, a few of them suggest.
But in front of our eyes a much more monstrous coup continues to develop. Its foundations rest on changing the face of Israeli society by constructing a new demography. Its poisonous roots lie in the budget that presents two disastrous goals, even more dangerous than the overthrowing of the legal system: doubling the number of settlers, and feeding the Haredi bulimia. Finance Minister and Minister in the Defense Ministry Bezalel Smotrich this month ordered government ministries to prepare to absorb another 500,000 settlers in the West Bank. Smotrich promised that “budgeting for these steps will not be a problem.” (Yaniv Kubovich, Haaretz, May 5)
Given the billions of shekels the government is scattering, Smotrich’s commitment seems to have a solid basis. Funding for this exalted project will come from the pockets of those who create the revenue for this country – business owners, high-tech workers and salaried employees, and at the expense of the poor and underprivileged, the educational system, which already ranks at the bottom of Western achievement scores, and the collapsing health system.
The result will be that the settlers will hold enormous and much more dangerous political power that they already do. If today they can dictate the division of the budget, set security goals and use the military as a private defense force, once their power has doubled they will determine the content for the educational system, dictate the national narrative, empty out towns unable to cope with their lack of funding when more worthwhile alternatives are offered instead on the hills of the West Bank, and turn Israel inside the Green Line into their printer of money. One out of every seven Jews will be a settler who carries around a racist, colonialist ideology, on that will also obligate anyone who moves there merely for economic reasons.
This will be just one leg of the demographic coup; the other is already rooted deep in the Haredi educational institutions, where unrestrained parasites are developing, most of whom do not even recognize the State of Israel. According to data from the Israel Democracy Institute, about 1.2 million Haredim live in Israel today – some 13 percent of the population – more than twice the number of settlers. If Smotrich’s plan is realized, about 25 percent of Israel’s population will be Haredim and settlers – and not in another 20 years, but in two to three years. These are two groups that see secular Israeli society and the State of Israel within the Green Line as an ideological threat, or at least a historic mistake that requires correcting – and the cost of this correction will of course be paid by those who caused the “damage.”
These two destructive strongholds don’t really need the coup against the system of government. The half-million West Bank settlers and million-plus Haredim got along just fine with the “old system,” including the High Court of Justice, which turned the settlements into a legal entity and never managed to enforce the law to draft Haredim. Now, after they have stolen the government treasury, they are galloping toward the demographic revolution that will bring forth a debilitated and limited society, fascistic and ignorant.
Anyone who fears for the fate of Israeli society, who fears the abyss of messianism it is rushing toward, the sacralization of the air it breathes, the creation of a parallel state, a Dark State, who fears the invasion of the agents of its destruction, cannot and has no moral right to torment his soul over what they will protest on Saturday. This is no longer just a battle over the character of the regime, it is a war of survival.
If Smotrich’s plan is realized, about 25 percent of Israel will be Haredim and settlers – and not in 20 years, but in two to three.
Netanyahu's Government Is Creating a Parallel Israeli State
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28.05.2023
Suddenly the hundreds of thousands of participants in the protests who filled the streets, blocked roads and along the way gathered in people who never dreamed their Saturday nights would be like this – are now in a panic.
What will we protest about this Saturday, they wonder, as if the party had ended before they arrived, and the threat of the coup turned out to be a cloud on a summer’s day. Look at the number of people who came to Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv last Saturday, maybe it would have been better to stay at home so as not to embarrass ourselves, a few of them suggest.
But in front of our eyes a much more monstrous coup continues to develop. Its foundations rest on changing the face of Israeli society by constructing a new demography. Its poisonous roots lie in the budget that presents two disastrous goals, even more dangerous than the overthrowing of the legal system: doubling the number of settlers, and feeding the Haredi bulimia. Finance Minister and Minister in the Defense Ministry Bezalel Smotrich this month ordered government ministries to prepare to........
© Haaretz
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