What the firing of Ronen Bar means for American democracy

If you want to understand how democracies erode – not in coups, but in committee rooms – one need look no further than Israel. The ousting (and subsequent un-ousting) of Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, might seem more like the plot of a Kafka novel. Except it isn’t – it’s Israeli governance in wartime. And it should alarm Americans, given that President Donald Trump – who, during his first term, treated federal agencies as Nixon did: as tools of loyalty, rather than law. The difference, though, is that Nixon had constraints. Both Trump and Netanyahu returned with fewer.

Bar was not fired for incompetence – that much is clear. The Shin Bet head has, in sworn affidavits, claimed that the prime minister made unlawful demands of Israel’s FBI equivalent. Bar, though, refused to comply, and was dismissed shortly after – only for the dismissal to be reversed following legal and political backlash. What followed was essentially the bureaucratic equivalent of a mafia shakedown or something straight out of a Tammany Hall playbook: We’re not firing him – he just doesn’t work here anymore.

To those paying attention in the United States, this will all feel eerily familiar. Trump’s war on federal agencies in his first term was not a fluke; it was a trial run. The Department of Justice was leaned on to prosecute the President’s enemies; the intelligence community was smeared to align with Trump’s political narratives just as he did when dismissing Russian interference reports as a “deep state” hoax; and the loyalty of top officials – Comey, McCabe, even the President’s attorney general – was constantly tested against Trump’s wins. It is clear, therefore, that the President didn’t want competence; he wanted obedience. He still does.

Through initiatives like Project 2025 – backed by The Heritage Foundation – Trump loyalists have already drafted plans to purge thousands of federal employees and replace them with a compliant political machine. And, unlike Israel, where even now the High Court can act as a sort of democratic tripwire, there is no real brake in the American system. No last-resort court, no legal firewall; just the will of one man and the silence of those around him.

This is what makes the Bar case so instructive, because this wasn’t just a power grab; it was a lesson in how to obscure one. Fire, then deny; punish, then reframe; force a resignation, then pretend it was voluntary. In Israel, the government backed off just in time to prevent a High Court ruling that would likely have set a politically disastrous (read: binding) precedent that would have permanently limited executive authority.

And, while Netanyahu’s government may argue that wartime unity demands civilian control – that is to say, political control – over intelligence services, that case collapses entirely when refusal to carry out an unlawful order becomes cause for dismissal. No court ruling over Bar’s firing means no judicial guardrail, and no judicial guardrail means precedent-free power, ready for the next activation.

If these tactics feel familiar to American readers, that’s because it should. It’s the playbook of Trumpism: move fast, move loud, and leave courts gasping in the dust. What Israel, however, shows us is how these sorts of arm-twistings don’t dissipate with time; instead, they metastasize. In both Israel and the United States alike, we are watching what happens when intelligence agencies, once charged with defending the state, are instead expected to defend whoever happens to be in charge.

What is remarkable, though, is how quickly these lines blur and instead become the norm. An intelligence chief is removed for not playing along, a prime minister shrugs, and a legal ruling is narrowly avoided. The system, we’re told, works. Except it doesn’t. This was not an isolated scandal, but simply a test of the machinery.

Ronen Bar has said that he will resign on June 15. And American institutions, still limping from years of political warfare, should take notice – not because Bar himself particularly matters in Washington, but because the forces that tried to remove him look a lot like the forces now lining the hall of the West Wing.

Democratic backsliding doesn’t start with purges: it starts with paperwork; with loyalty tests that would make McCarthy proud; with who gets to stay in the room, and who is told instead to leave quietly. Whatever happens now in Israel will likely determine what happens next in the United States: who will lead the Shin Bet next? And will they be chosen for their loyalty, or their independence? That question, more than any legal technicality, will tell us whether the machinery still serves the public, or the man who controls it.