Netanyahu cannot be trusted

Fortunately, Israeli civil society forced the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stop, for now, his attempt to assert control over Israel’s independent judiciary and gain a free hand to govern as he pleases.

But this whole affair has highlighted a troubling new reality for the United States:

For the first time, the leader of Israel is a irrational actora danger not only to Israelis, but also to important American interests and values.

This requires a immediate reevaluation both by the president Joe Biden as well as the pro-Israel Jewish lobby in the United States.

Netanyahu essentially told everyone:

“Trust the process,” “Israel is a healthy democracy,” and, in a whisper, “Don’t worry about the religious fanatics and Jewish supremacists I brought to power to help block my corruption trial.” I will keep Israel within its traditional foreign policy and political boundaries. It’s me, your old friend, Bibi“.

They wanted to trust him, and that’s all it turned out to be lie.

From day one, it was obvious to many of us that this Israeli government was going to do everything that no one had ever dared before.

Without real defences, it would lead the United States and world Jewry to cross red lines they never imagined crossing, possibly destabilizing Jordan and the Abraham Accordseliminating hope for a two-state solution and bringing Israel, on its 75th anniversary, on the brink of civil war.

This is because the key to implementing the government’s radical agenda has always been to gain control of Israel’s Supreme Court in the first place – the only legitimate independent check on the ambitions of Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners – through a process disguised as “judicial reform”.

With the judiciary in check, Israel would be governed more like elected autocracies, like Hungary and Türkiye, than to the Israel that the world has always known.

And Netanyahu and his associates have pursued that kind of political control of the courts above any other priority they ran for, bringing the country to the brink of “civil war,” as Netanyahu admitted in his national address Monday night.

In the face of that civil war – following an unprecedented weekend uprising by large sections of Israeli society, its military and even some members of his own party – Netanyahu offered suspend your efforts take power and give about a month to negotiate with the opposition and see if a compromise can be reached.

We’ll see what happens.

But one thing is already clear:

Netanyahu has become the definition of an irrational actor in international relations, someone whose behavior we can no longer predict and whose words from Biden shouldn’t be trusted.

To begin with, the United States must ensure that Netanyahu does not use American weaponss with which to wage any type of war of your choice Iran OR hezbollah without the full and independent backing of the Israeli military high command, which opposed his judicial coup.

Why do I insist that Netanyahu has become an irrational actor and a danger to our interests and values?

It’s a question that can be answered with a question:

How would you describe an Israeli prime minister and his son who, after 50 years of the United States sending Israel billions and billions of dollars in economic and military aid, have spread the lie that the United States government was behind the protests mass against the Prime Minister, which could not be a real popular protest?

It was supposed to be funded by the United States.

I’m not making this up.

Yair Netanyahu, his father’s closest political adviser, shared conspiracy tweets last week with his many right-wing Israeli Twitter followers, it was reported. The Jerusalem Postlike this:

“The US State Department is behind protests in Israel, aiming to overthrow Netanyahu, ostensibly to strike a deal with the Iranians.”

I wonder where it comes from.

Well two weeks ago Times of Israel reported that while Netanyahu the Major was on an official visit to Rome, a “senior official” in his travel group (who everyone in the Milky Way galaxy knows is the prime minister’s own code) allegedly said (without a shred of proof) :

“This protest is funded and organized with millions of dollars… This is a world-class organization.”

The story continued:

“Another member of the prime minister’s entourage confirmed that the senior official was referring to the United States.”

This is the same conspiracy thinking which the Iranian leadership has deployed to discredit the real democracy movement in Iran, led by Iranian women.

For Netanyahu and his son to turn against the United States with the same pathetic cynicism as Iran is shameful and insane.

Neither should be allowed into the United States until they apologize.

This is not the only sign that Netanyahu has become an irrational player.

Ask yourself:

What rational Israeli prime minister would risk splintering its military – which this bid for a judiciary is doing – at a time when Iran can already produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb in less than two weeks, and is racking up diplomatic gains with Israel’s Arab allies?

Just over a week ago, Netanyahu’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a respected military leader who started out as a naval commando, gave the prime minister a choice: freeze his attempted judicial coup without a national dialogue, or to move on. the defense minister resigns, and large segments of the army and air force reserves refuse to report for duty.

Netanyahu then made the extraordinary decision to fire Gallant.

As Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel put it:

“It’s hard to think of a senior defense official who wasn’t shocked by Netanyahu’s decision. … Among senior IDF officers, both current and former, Sunday evening’s discussion centered on the need for a mass resignations of major generals and brigadier generals to stop the madness”.

Also consider this:

What rational Israeli prime minister would risk one of the greatest achievements of American and Israeli diplomacy in the Middle East, the Abraham Accords, to push for a judicial buyout that would give free rein to Jewish supremacists and fanatical nationalists in his cabinet?

I mean people like Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who, as Axios described, “gave a speech in Paris on a podium last week showing a map that included Jordan and the occupied West Bank as part of Israel and said the Palestinian people were ‘an invention‘”.

This has completely spooked the UAE and Bahrain, not to mention Jordan, which is a key pillar of US strategy in the Middle East.

If Netanyahu and company destabilize Jordan, they will sow winds and reap storms.

And what the Israeli prime minister would try to pass a law so he can appoint a three-times convicted financial and tax fraudster – party leader Shas Aryeh Deri – minister of health and interior, with a promise to make him minister of finance in the next cabinet reshuffle?

In 1993, the Supreme Court ordered Deri to resign from the cabinet on corruption charges, but he remained the leader of Sha until 1999, when he was sentenced to three years in prison for taking bribes.

In 2021, The Times of Israel reported, Deri agreed to a deal in which he admitted “a couple of tax offenses in exchange for resigning from the Knesset” and paying a fine. In January, the Supreme Court ruled that Deri was unfit to be in government.

In case you haven’t seen, on top of everything else that’s going on, Netanyahu has been trying to rush the passage of a law to overturn the Supreme Court decision, so this friend of his who defrauded the Israeli Treasury – that US taxpayers have donated billions in aid over the last half century – they can become responsible for that same Treasury.

The contempt this shows for Israeli taxpayers, for the rule of law in Israel, for the Israeli Supreme Court and for the United States is just further evidence of a leader who has completely detached himself from any ethical mooring.

The time has finally come for the US government, US Congress and American Jewish leaders and lobbies, who have too often been Netanyahu’s accomplices, to make it unequivocal that they are also marching with all those Israelis – in the military, in the high-tech community, universities, traditional religious communities, doctors, nurses, air force pilots, bankers, unions and even settlements – who took to the streets last week to ensure that the 75 anniversary of Israeli democracy is not celebrated on the last.

c.2023 The New York Times Society