Israel's Crisis of Legitimacy | Tikun Olam |

Israel faces the most severe crisis in its history.  After passing the anti-judicial law on Monday, near chaos has ensued. Israelis, who had protested the anti-democracy coup weekly for 28 weeks, now raged against Bibi Netanyahu's government. They massed around the Knesset attempting to block MKs from entering before the vote.  They've withstood police water cannons and foul-smelling skunk water (normally reserved for restive Palestinian communities) fired directly at them. Police also beat protestors mercilessly. They've marched by the tens of thousands from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 100+ degree temperatures. And they watched helplessly as a settler rammed his car into a crowd of demonstrators (ironically, a tactic used by Palestinians to attack Israelis) injuring three.

Protestors faces-off defiantly against police vehicle spraying skunk water (Ariel Schalit/AP)

The Knesset vote on the judicial bill was 64-0.  The remaining 56 MKs left the chamber in protest, denying the bill any legislative legitimacy.

And this is only the start. Coming down the pike are bills permitting the prime minister to fire the attorney general and appoint a twice-convicted MK to a ministerial portfolio.  The crowning "achievement" would be legislation immunizing him from prosecution for virtually any crime.  In this case, he is on trial for four counts of bribery.  Under current law, if convicted he would be forced to resign.  The proposed bill would eliminate this provision.  Currently, directors general of ministries are appointed by the civil service.  The new "reforms" would permit ministers to hire and fire their senior civil servant.

Now, the government seeks to essentially eliminate the judiciary and rule by fiat.  In any other country, this would be called a dictatorship.  This being Israel, there will be hasbara and apologists explaining that this coup is the "voice of democracy."

Pro-Israel stalwarts think the unthinkable

David Rothkopf, a former federal official and former managing director of Kissinger & Associates, has always been a staunch pro-Israel voice among the Beltway punditry.  Yet over the past few years, and especially the past few months, he has published jeremiads offering searing denunciations of not only the government, but of the state itself.  He published This Is the End of the U.S.-Israel `Special Relationship,' yesterday in the Daily Beast.  The rage and despair is palpable:

While most of the blame for this turn of events must go to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing coalition of Jewish nationalists, some falls on America's leaders who, to varying degrees, for years refused to acknowledge Israel's drift toward authoritarianism or, for that matter, its serial abuses of millions of the people who lived within the borders it controlled.

The chorus of American leaders who regularly promised Israel's leaders we would be with them (no matter what they did) invited Netanyahu and the thugocracy he assembled around him to do their worst. The Israeli leaders knew there was no price to pay. They knew that American aid would keep on coming. They knew American leaders would apologize for or cover up their crimes, block the U.N. from taking action against them, and maintain the myth that they were democratic when becoming less and less so ...

Here Rothkopf takes on the Israel Lobby and its weaponization of anti-Semitism:

We must also acknowledge that part of the support for Israel was due to the political influence of its supporters among the American electorate, from Zionist Jews to evangelical Christians. Some among these supporters have been particularly effective in making any wavering of support by political leaders seem toxic. This was accomplished via multiple means, but among these were the establishment of bright red lines, such as the argument that failing to support the government of Israel's ethno-nationalist policies was tantamount to anti-Semitism...

[...]

Finally, the author warns of global catastrophic consequences if the US acted as if nothing has happened and continued on the same course:

A restoration of ties [which] further debase[d] the principles on which both governments were once founded would mean something much worse than the end of an international relationship. It would mean a devastating blow to democracy and the rule of law worldwide. It would be a catastrophe for both nations and the planet.

Nothing new for the Middle East watchers ... Israel mirrors its paternal ally. Contrary to suggestion in article and a comment, any comparison to Ukraine is lame.


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