Wrecking the Country from the Inside

What’s more dangerous for a country’s future: external attack or internal revolution? As a political scientist, I am not aware of any scholar who actually performed a “head count” regarding this question, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer was the latter. Israel still has many surrounding enemies, but right now its greatest danger is coming from within – and the present government itself is the mortal threat.

First, some general world history background. Countries have self-imploded for all sorts of governmental idiocies, and even from some occasional sane but not really thought-through policies. Among the first kind: Mao’s “Cultural Revolution,” a misnomer if there ever was one. By trying to “peasantify” the country back in the 1950s and 1960s, his socio-economic policies led to the starvation death of (approximately) 20,000,000 people! The result, after Mao’s demise a decade later, the governing Chinese Communist Party was anything but “communist” – opening the doors to “regulated capitalism.” In short, although the Communist overlord did not officially fall, the country’s regime underwent a “silent” revolution i.e., politically much the same, while socio-economically very different.

Fifteen years later, a similar attempt in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev led to the total collapse of the Communist Party and its regime. His “Glasnost” policy was a last gasp attempt to resuscitate a moribund economy, but it was too little, too late. In hindsight, it might seem that he had intended to slowly turn Russia into a democracy, but that was certainly not his objective (as he admitted later).

Recently, the world has been witnessing moves in the opposite direction: from liberal democracy to autocratic “democracy.” The quote marks here signify the use of “democratic” means to undermine democracy itself, as was seen in Poland a decade ago and continuing in Hungary today. The term “democracy” still holds great sway among the general public, so that wannabee autocrats don’t officially change the name of the system; rather, they empty it of most/all true democratic content while keeping the regime’s name intact.

The same trend seems to be happening today in the United States, with President Trump doing things that are borderline unconstitutional: attacking a foreign country without Congressional approval; sending in “troops” to various states to ferret out illegal immigrants thereby bypassing local state authorities; detaining or threatening deportation of legal foreign residents who have not been accused of any criminal behavior; withholding federal funding from colleges and universities deemed “hostile environments”; using the Justice Department to investigate wrongdoing of public officials (most recently the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank!) in order to pressure these constitutionally independent public servants into toeing Trump’s official line, etc.

From here to Israel. The various attempts of the present Netanyahu government to institute “Judicial Reform” (opponents call it a “Judicial Revolution”), have by and large not succeeded… as yet – but efforts continue apace in the Knesset. Meanwhile, what PM Netanyahu has done is to basically rid himself and the country of dis/loyal (the “dis” is from his own political perspective) high level officials: Defense Minister (Yoav Gallant), IDF Chief of Staff (Herzi HaLevi), MK Yuli Edelstein (Chair, Foreign Affairs Committee).
Most egregious of all are attacks on judicial/law officials. Justice Minister Yair Levin has made it his policy to completely ignore the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (Yitzchak Amit), while simultaneously attacking and (still unsuccessfully) trying to fire Israel’s Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara for her constant legal opinions against the government’s intended anti-democratic legislation.

Indeed, the latest brouhaha this past week shows how far some in the government are willing to go in the direction of illiberal democracy. The Attorney-General has asked the Supreme Court to find PM Netanyahu in dereliction of duty for not firing Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister in charge of National Security (mainly the police), due to his being involved in specific police investigations, when the law specifically states that this minister is allowed only to set overall policework policy. (Leaving aside the outrageous fact that in the past, Ben-Gvir himself accumulated eight criminal convictions.) As a result, a few days ago several Likud MKs (as well as the Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich!) called for the prime minster to ignore any future Supreme Court directive demanding Ben-Gvir’s firing – clearly a Constitutional crisis of huge import if that ever came to pass.

The public outcry was immediate, with former Supreme Court justices (including religious, certainly not left-wing, Elyakim Rubinstein) strongly criticizing any such anti-judicial behavior. Major leaders of Israel’s economy also came out strongly against any such conduct.

Israel is particularly vulnerable to a “Hungary-like” autocratic takeover (with democratic dressing), because it lacks the clear separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches found in the U.S. and elsewhere. The Knesset today almost completely rubber stamps any governmental decision (by comparison, some Republican U.S. Senators have recently opposed a few of President Trump’s policies). Moreover, Israel lacks a completed Constitution; its Basic Laws (sort of Constitutional Amendments) can be erased or changed by a simple majority of 61 MKs. Thus, only Israel’s judiciary remains as a bulwark against unfettered governmental action – precisely the reason for the latter’s attempts at “Judicial Reform.”

It is not too bombastic to say that Israel’s upcoming elections are the most critical in Israel’s history. Should the present governing coalition win (for the past year or so, the polls show them losing by a significant margin), there will be little to stop it from eliminating the remaining checks on governmental power. Stay tuned for a no-holds-barred campaign on both sides of the electoral map, with “constitutional democracy” hanging in the balance.