It is quite stunning to watch the elected leader of a democracy drag his country toward authoritarianism and a civil war — and all for egotistical reasons.
No, I'm not referring to attempted coup leader and election denier Donald Trump, who promised his followers last weekend that, if reelected, "I am your justice. I am your retribution."
Rather, I'm pointing at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, who, in an apparent effort to avoid conviction in his ongoing corruption trials, is trying to destroy the independence of the Israeli courts, and pandering to ultra-radical cabinet ministers who guarantee him the votes to do so.
Down that road lies serious instability within Israel, where hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens have been protesting Netanyahu's attack on democracy. Down that road also lies the prospect of a new Palestinian uprising on the West Bank, and the possible fracture of Israel's Abraham Accords with the Gulf States — if Bibi's hard-line religious allies stir up trouble over control of Jerusalem's holiest sites.
But Bibi's attention appears focused mainly on saving his own skin.
Netanyahu's legal "reforms" would enable parliament to overrule Supreme Court decisions by one vote. This would decimate the high court's power to strike down laws it deemed in violation of basic civil rights or in contravention of Israel's basic laws (the country's quasi-constitution). The changes would also gut the role of Israel's attorney general.
"This is a plan ... to deal a fatal blow to the independence of the judiciary and silence it," Supreme Court President Esther Hayut proclaimed in January. She added that it would also deal "a fatal blow" to the country's "democratic identity." It would put Israel in league with illiberal democracies such as Poland and Hungary (whose leader, Viktor Orbán, is admired by both Bibi and Trump), which have curbed their courts and media.
The domestic resistance to Bibi's attack on the judiciary has deeply split the country. Members of its highly prized tech sector are talking of moving investments out, and Israeli military reservists in key sectors are skipping training sessions — something virtually unprecedented. Meantime, Bibi's religious allies in his governing coalition are pushing for more gender segregation, angering mostly secular Israeli women.
In my decades of writing about Israel, I have never seen the divisions within its society deliberately gouged open this wide (even after the unpopular Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s). Yet so far Bibi and his team have rejected any serious effort to find a compromise with the opposition, despite urging by Israel's president, Isaac Herzog. Indeed, Netanyahu's son Yair, who resembles Donald Trump Jr. in his efforts to outdo his dad's vitriol, once accused judicial officials of "treason" for indicting his father.
Moreover, Netanyahu's political allies have shamelessly made clear they want to revamp laws that directly relate to his ongoing trials on charges of fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes. Israeli cabinet ministers advanced a bill this week that would allow him to keep a large donation to finance his legal expenses in the trial, despite the loud objection by the attorney general that this would promote corruption.
Americans cannot ignore Israel's turmoil as an internal legal struggle. For one thing, the bills promoting judicial destruction are devised by the right-wing Kohelet Policy Forum, whose two major funders are Jewish American Keystone State multibillionaires Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass.
Moreover, Bibi's machinations have serious foreign policy implications for the United States.
As a payoff to coalition allies, Netanyahu has handed over key government portfolios to two religious, ultranationalist extremists who are encouraging a major explosion of Jewish-Palestinian violence in the West Bank.
The new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose Jewish Power Party is an offshoot of a party that was banned from the Israeli parliament as a terrorist organization, has himself been convicted of supporting a (Jewish) terrorist organization and incitement to racism. Ben-Gvir is a supporter of expanding settlements and annexing the entire West Bank; he hopes a "reformed" Supreme Court will green light that. Now in control of Israel's police, he has ordered them to attack Israeli demonstrators who oppose Bibi's move on the court.
Even more dangerous, Ben-Gvir is pressing for a change in longtime Israeli policy that bans Jewish Israelis from praying on the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. If such prayers are permitted, as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan approaches and tension rises on the West Bank, this could incite another Palestinian uprising. Violence at holy sites in Jerusalem is the one issue that could undermine the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Gulf States.
Meantime, Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, for whom Bibi carved out a special role as head of Israeli civilian government activities in the West Bank, is another firebrand pushing to seize the entire West Bank. When Jewish settlers recently ran wild in the Palestinian town of Hawara, burning hundreds of cars and homes after two settlers had been killed there by Palestinians, Smotrich called on radical Jews to "wipe out Hawara."
Smotrich's tepid retraction, after his incitement caused an uproar, should not prevent Washington from denying him a visa for a scheduled visit this week, especially since settlers attacked Hawara again on Monday.
Bibi's desperation to hold on to power has left him wide open to the machinations of his radical ministers. As tensions rise over Iranian nuclear activity, he may well feel the need to drag the United States into a war with Tehran to distract from his self-inflicted domestic problems — and to rally the bitterly divided Israeli public.
The Biden team must send a clear message that Bibi's risky behavior will have consequences. One place to start would be telling Smotrich to stay home.
