Democracy, Politics and the Secret Police

Netanyahu Does Right and Wrong

Just when you think things have reached a breaking point and reason can’t be stretched any longer, we are seeing legal arguments in Israel that in order to defend democracy the democratically elected government can’t fire the head of the secret police. Yes, the Prime Minister, after not doing what needed to be done for 18 months for reasons no one has been able to explain has fired Ronen Bar, head of the Shaback – the General Security Services – a combination of the American FBI, Secret Service and some CIA mixed in for flavoring. This is the group that is responsible for protecting senior government officials, for infiltrating terror groups in Israel and Gaza, for providing intelligence on terror attacks and a group that has the ability to keep track of the movements and conversations of nearly every citizen in the country.

It is powerful because it has to be powerful. Without the Shaback untold civilians would be killed on a regular basis, the IDF would not know who to stop and who are the members of the various terrorist groups in the West Bank, Gaza and in Israel itself. It is not less important than the IDF and the Mossad and in many ways is more powerful. In a non-democratic country the Shaback would be compared to the KGB or the Stasi but democratic norms and control keep it in step. It goes without saying that when a democratically elected government loses faith in the leadership of the Shaback, or feels it a threat to democratic norms that it has the obligation to fire the leader and to appoint someone new.

The leaks of conversations by the head of the Shaback such that he will only resign after a commission of national inquiry into October 7 is appointed and that he will decide who replaces him (statements denied by the Shaback but most probably true) as well as the outright threats of his predecessor Nadav Argaman to reveal things he knows about Netanyahu, are as much an attempt at a coup as tanks in the capital city.

But of course, those, including the heads of all the opposition parties in the Knesset who are challenging the legality of the firing of Bar, know this as well as we do. Their problem is that they refuse to grant this government legitimacy not because of October 7 or the legal system reforms but because they don’t feel that the groups that voted for this government should be allowed to make decisions for the country. They are not opposed to Netanyahu as Netanyahu or even Netanyahu’s policies – which we see are lock step with the failed military and security theories that led us here, but they are opposed to a democratic process that gives important decisions to those who are not “us”. As long as it was just some of other people’s money to throw around and deciding on where train tracks needed to go that was fine, but the moment the “important” decisions fell into their hands, all bets were off.

This does not absolve Netanyahu of his unwillingness to face the voters in an election that ought to have been done in the first quarter of this year. Israel is a parliamentary democracy and there is a mechanism for a government to face the voters in unscheduled elections when important things are brought to the fore. In the US we have the midterm elections to keep things (sort of) honest. Of course, Israel has a history of government’s ignoring the responsibilities that come with being in a parliamentary democracy because they don’t want to risk losing power. The Oslo agreement was one such event. It was an agreement that ran against the campaign p[romises of Prime Minister Rabin and came out of the blue. I am not arguing if Oslo was good or bad but rather that Rabin ought to have taken the agreement to the people and called for an election. The chances are he would have won and there would have been more than the two vote majority in the Knesset that Oslo did receive increasing its legitimacy amongst the populace.

The same with Sharon and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. In that case, he betrayed all political norms (and in many people’s eyes, legal normsand formed a new party not only so he wouldn’t have to face the electorate but so that he wouldn’t have to face the Likud central committee. The newly formed Kadima took a majority of Likud Knesset members without an election in what was a mass disenfranchisement of Likud voters.

Netanyahu now is doing the same thing as Rabin and Sharon did – he is not willing to face the voters after the greatest disaster to fall to Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. True enough, elections could not and should not have been done immediately but certainly a year later was not too soon. One has to wonder if there could have been a true national unity government then with an agreement to go to elections in a year.

The government needs to follow through on the decision to fire Ronen Bar in order to protect “our democracy” since Bar and Argaman’s threats and statements cannot go unanswered. The courts need to understand that no matter what they think of the coalition’s voters and the government’s ministers you cannot have a situation where the head of the secret police controls the government.

The government meeting about Bar needs to be done and it needs to be adamant that Bar cannot remain even for one more day.

However, the next day, the Prime Minister needs to meet with the head of the opposition and agree on a date for elections. In my view, elections need to be held in early September.

And a word of two for the opposition. You have tried for that last 15 years to breakup and defeat Netanyahu his coalition and yet you keep on using the same tactics – and fail each time. A word to the (un)wise – change your political strategy. Being irrational will not get you a victory. Supporting policies that are bad because they are also bad for Netanyahu or conversely opposing policies that are good because they happen to be good for Netanyahu is not a sign of leadership and is not a route to victory. The Bar firing is a case in point. Saying that the head of the Shaback cannot be fired by the government makes no sense. It cannot be illegal under any circumstances. The reasons for it are not important. Conversely, in a parliamentary democracy the appointment of someone in particular, can be illegal and done for the wrong reasons. It is time to campaign on actual policies and not on demonization of entire populations in Israel via attacks on one person. It is this demonization - and don’t fool yourself, the attacks by Yair Golan now and by Yair Lapid are nothing if not demonization of loyal citizens – that pushes people, reluctantly, back into the arms of Netanyahu.

I have to admit that in many (but not enough) instances Benny Gantz has spoken properly – that is why he joined the government after October 7, the problem is that he can’t stand up to the pressure of what in Israel we like to call “the branja” – the cool kids who control the conversation and get invited to all the good parties. The “branja” does not like outsiders and does not like people who tolerate outsiders. Gantz is too concerned with their reactions. Lapid and to a lesser extent, Eizenkott are all in with the “branja”

This take no prisoners language in the opposition’s politicking works well if you are satisfied with a soap box to stand on and to yell, but if you want to govern you actually have to campaign on policies and competence. That is not to say there is much competence in the current government but in elections you have to give someone a reason to vote FOR you.

Which brings us back to Netanyahu – doesn’t it always come back to him? What people do not seem to understand that is in the world stage he is, in the language of Walter Russel Mead a “larger than life figure” – much the way Trump and Xi are – and Starmer, Schulz and Macron certainly are not. That is because of the fantastic attacks last summer and fall that cut Hezbollah and Iran down to size and toppled Assad. That is because he has been so successful in keeping the Iran conversation alive even when the rest of the world tired of it. That is because he keeps on winning elections against all odds.

In Israel however, he is the prime minister who successfully navigated the left’s objections to the natural gas deals making Israel an energy exporter, in cutting government spending so that israel thrived during the 2008 western economic collapse and most of all for understanding that Israel needed to be an economic powerhouse in order to fund its security needs. But he is also the man who would led the country to October 7 by appeasing Hamas and befriending Qatar. He is the man who refuses to force the draft issue with the Haredi sector and the man who refused to put the country on the war footing it needed to be on after October 7, by creating a true war government.

The worst thing that can happen to “our democracy” is for the courts to force the government to retain a person as head of the Shaback in spite of the lack of confidence between the two groups. That will politicize the Shaback forever and create yet another institution that will divide instead of unite.

The second worse thing that can happen is for the current government not to face the voters soon – so as to either renew their mandate or let someone else gain one.

Netanyahu wants a few years with Trump as President. What he does not understand is that Trump has no patience for those without the confidence or ability to take bold moves. Netanyahu can only get that from a renewed mandate from the people. He does not want to risk his position for that (which politician does?) but will pay the price if he doesn’t – and that price will come from an unexpected source.