A Dire Moment and The Requisite Response

What a disgrace.

They call for accompaniment there; they must have it.

Let us be clear.

There are two people who, legally, can put a PM into nivtsarut, meaning, that he is incapacitated, unfit to serve. They are the AG and the President– President יצחק הרצוג – Isaac Herzog.

A Prime Minister who greets Israel’s isolation and anathematization, the cutting of trade, critical medical and other research, diplomatic, and military connections, the end of decades’ long, critically important peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and the end of the real possibility of historic, regional agreements with other Sunni states–

who greets escalating catastrophe with a deranged celebration of self-siege, to us becoming  “super sparta” (regular sparta is not enough, he grasps the scale of the disaster), and the utter nonsense of an autarkic economy (meaning, we produce all our own needs, no need for trade, in either direction– no exports, imports)– all this is the definition of “unfit to serve.”

He has sent the army into an operation that all the military heads, intelligence heads, present and past, oppose, saying it will bring the death of the hostages who have somehow! managed to survive until now!- and the deaths and maiming of who knows how many more soldiers, and billions more taken from health, education, social services, professional police, including traffic police while the killing on the roads continues under the incompetent fanatic in charge of the police.

this, while he continues to pursue legally enshrined draft evasion and massively increased subsidies to the evaders– and to their “educational” institutions that do not educate to citizenship and its obligations nor give the most basic skills to make a living– and pay taxes–

History will judge those who, in this urgent moment, do not do what is in their hands to do.

We’ve been in the streets for years.

He doesn’t listen to us. To consistent polls showing overwhelming (80%) popular support across political and religious lines for an end to this war and a deal to return the hostages, alive, for those still living. He doesn’t listen to the highest military advice, intelligence advice, even that of one in his innermost circle who yet dares to give it to him straight (Tzachi Hanegbi). He clearly is not listening to any economist, while his fanatic Minister of Finance boasts his lack of  economic expertise; extreme ideology, not professionalism, governs policy. He is enveloped in his own world, immune to reality, reason, facts on the ground.

Let us recall that Netanyahu is PM only because he signed a binding conflict of interest agreement with the AG of the time, Avichai Mendelblit, approved by the Supreme Court, that he would not involve himself in justice matters that impinge on his trials. The inanity of that agreement is discussion for another time; it is a fact, and the basis for him serving as PM. He has violated that agreement again and again, openly, flagrantly. He has run a massive, taxpayer-funded campaign in the Knesset, on social media, in the streets, against the justice system itself. He has impugned his trials and the judges in charge of them, incited against them, right there in the court house, itself a violation of the law. He appointed a Justice Minister whose whole political career has been directed against the justice system and who acts on Netanyahu’s behalf, together with the rest of his governing coalition, all of whom have a direct interest in him and them continuing in their posts, to end his trials, not least, with a concerted campaign to fire the AG, who has ultimate oversight over those trials. He openly violates the legal condition for his being in office, exercising and inviting contempt for the law.

There is no acceptable option to this citizenry than President יצחק הרצוג – Isaac Herzog doing what is necessary. Do the needed consultations with the AG, urgently, and act.

This is not the time to think of anyone’s political future.

Only the country’s future.

Imperiled directly by the PM and his deranged call super sparta and all that goes with that. If this is not a violation of the Declaration of Independence, which is the very basis for this polity, nothing is.

Et laasot, heferu toratekha. ”עת לעשות לה’ הפרו תורתך.“

We are in a dire moment and it requires the requisite response.