On Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister. Twenty-four hours earlier, Gallant had defied his boss and urged the Knesset, the country’s parliament, to pause its efforts to degrade the judiciary. For the first time since 1973, the Jewish State roils amid existential crises.
“The State of Israel is in its greatest danger since the Yom Kippur War,” Naftali Bennett, a past prime minister, tweeted. “It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong... We are brothers.”
Or not.
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Netanyahu’s latest gambit triggered spontaneous protest. At midnight, thousands took to the streets in a show of anger, fear, and disgust. Come morning, the Histadrut (the national labor union) went on strike. Ben-Gurion (the nation’s main international airport) shut down. Israeli’s embassy in D.C. is shuttered.
The prime minister’s ongoing corruption trial makes him a prisoner of the whims of others. No half-baked idea was too stupid, too cruel or too radical to win a hearing or almost become law.
The banner on Monday’s Yedioth Ahronoth, the country’s leading Hebrew-language tabloid, blared: “NETANYAHU PRESENTS A CLEAR , IMMEDIATE & MATERIAL DANGER TO THE SECURITY OF THE STATE.”
The emperor has no clothes. Whatever magic he once wielded is gone. Today, Netanyahu stands as a would-be autocrat thwarted by a determined population. His nominal allies see a spent force.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister and racist poster child of the current government, reportedly lashed into Netanyahu this morning. “We cannot fold like this—stopping the legislation,” he shouted. “Stopping the legislation will lead to the dissolution of the coalition.” Welcome to politics.
People attend a demonstration after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the defense minister as his nationalist coalition government presses on with its judicial overhaul, in Jerusalem, March 27, 2023.
REUTERS/Ammar AwadFor now, the Israeli electorate remains comprised of citizens, not subjects. The halachic state (government by religious law) may have to wait.
Then again, for many Netanyahu supporters, democracy is alien or antithetical. The legacy of Runnymede (commonly known as the birthplace of modern democracy) is not theirs. It does not speak to them.
“I don’t think the Bible says anything about democracy,” the late Sheldon Adelson—a U.S. billionaire and major supporter of pro-Israel political groups—remarked in 2014. God “didn’t talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state,” he continued. “Israel isn’t going to be a democratic state — so what.”
Looking back a few months, Netanyahu's interview with the U.S. journalist Bari Weiss reads like a parody. “I am a 19th-century democrat,” Netanyahu smugly intoned. “The other parties in Israel are not democratic.”
Wow. He sure fooled Ms. Weiss. The rest of us… not so much.
As was the case a half-century ago, hubris has played an outsized role in this self-inflicted drama. Back then, Golda Meir, the then-prime minister, ignored reports of Egypt and Syria planning for war. On Yom Kippur, war came, men died, and Israel barely survived.
This time, a pig-headed prime minister repeatedly defied a stream of non-stop warnings. He put self-pity and party ahead of country. Thanks to Netanyahu and his allies, Israel looks more like a shtetl with nukes than a functioning state.
Indeed, the hyper-demonstrative Netanyahu and his ill-conceived plan to make the judiciary his handmaid triggered wide-scale resistance among Israel’s military reserves. Pilots, intelligence officers, tank commanders, and infantrymen said, “no more.”
After Netanyahu canned Gallant, the journalist Barak Ravid tweeted that he was done serving. “I have just notified my commanders that after the events of tonight I will not be reporting to reserve service anymore.”
Fighting for a nation and a cause was one thing. Bolstering Netanyahu and his government was something else.
The U.S. is vexed. A member of President Joe Biden’s National Security Council raised questions about the state of the IDF. “We are deeply concerned by the ongoing developments in Israel, including the potential impact on military readiness raised by Minister Gallant.”
The damage is real. Netanyahu and Co. now pin the blame on Gallant. God, they know better.
Key ministers in the present government never wore a uniform. The IDF deemed Ben-Gvir, Israel’s current minister of public security, unfit for duty.
In this vein, Israel’s haredim or ultra-Orthodox are, as a practical matter, exempt from military duty. By logical extension then, why should anyone else serve?
The question is no longer hypothetical. The divide between makers and takers, to use a Romneyism, stands behind much of this full-blown culture war. In Israel, there is little worse than being a freier, a sucker.
Netanyahu’s Sunday Night Massacre is just the latest chapter in a needless nightmare. We saw a similar movie unfold a half-century ago.
As the Yom Kippur War raged, Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox, the independent prosecutor, on a Saturday night. His departure marked the beginning of the president’s end.
Even if a compromise is reached, plenty of damage has been done. The national psyche stands deeply scarred. The gash that runs through the country is raw. Time does not heal all wounds. In the U.S., the embers of Gettysburg still smolder.
Monday evening, Ben-Gvir announced that he had agreed to a pause in the drive to legislate the government’s power grab. He expects the matter to be considered during the Knesset’s summer session. The demonstrations will continue.
If Netanyahu does push ahead with his plans, a constitutional crisis looms.
To quote Gen. Moshe Dayan, the defense minister amid the Yom Kippur War, “The Third Temple is in danger.”
