Image from YouTube (Video uploaded by Al Jazeera)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war on many fronts. He has ended the tense ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza in spectacularly bloody fashion and resumed bombing of Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. Missiles fired at Israel from the Houthi rebels in Yemen also risk seeing a further widening of hostilities.
Domestically, he has been conducting a bruising, even thuggish campaign against Israeli institutions and their representatives, an effort that is impossible to divorce from his ongoing trial for corruption. He has, for instance, busied himself with removing the attorney journal, Gali Baharav-Miara, a process that will be lengthy considering the necessary role of a special appointments committee. On May 23, the cabinet passed a no-confidence motion against her, prompting a sharp letter from the attorney general that the Netanyahu government had ventured to place itself “above the law, to act without checks and balances, and even at the most sensitive of times.”
High up on the Netanyahu hit list is the intelligence official Ronen Bar, the Shin Bet chief he explicitly accuses of having foreknowledge of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. “This is a fact and not a conspiracy,” a statement from the prime minister’s office bluntly asserted. At 4.30am that morning “it was already clear to the outgoing Shin Bet head that an invasion of the State of Israel was likely.”
The PMO failed to mention Netanyahu’s self-interest in targeting Bar, given that Shin Bet is investigating the office for connections with the Qatari government allegedly involving cash disbursements to promote Doha’s interests.
While Bar has been formally sacked, a measure never undertaken by any government of the Israeli state, the Israeli High Court has extended a freeze on his removal while permitting Netanyahu to consider replacement candidates.
It is the judiciary, however, that has commanded much attention, pre-dating the October 7 attacks. Much of 2023 was given over to attempting to compromise the Supreme Court of its influence and independence. Some legislation to seek that process had been passed in July 2023 but the Supreme Court subsequently struck down that law in January 2024 in an 8-7 decision. The relevant law removed the Court’s means to check executive power through invalidating government decisions deemed “unreasonable”. In the view of former Chief Justice Esther Hayut, the law was “extreme and irregular”, marking a departure “from the foundational authorities of the Knesset, and therefore it must be struck down.”
Even in wartime, the Netanyahu government’s appetite to clip the wings of an active judiciary remained strong. In January 2025, it made a second attempt, with a new, modified proposal jointly authored by Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. The law, passed by the Knesset in its third and final reading on March 27, alters the committee responsible for appointing judges. The previous nine-member judicial selection committee had been composed of three judges, two independent lawyers and four politicians, equally divided between government and opposition. Now, the relevant lawyers will be government and opposition appointees, intended to take effect after the next elections.
The convulsions in Israeli politics have been evident from various efforts to stall, if not abandon the legislation altogether. The law changing the judicial appointments committee had received 71,023 filed objections. While it passed 67-1, it only did so with the opposition boycotting the vote. Benny Gantz, the chair of National Unity, wrote to Netanyahu ahead of the readings pleading for its abandonment. “I’m appealing to you as someone who bears responsibility for acting on behalf of all citizens of this country.” He reminded the PM that Israeli society was “wounded and bleeding, divided in a way we have not seen since October 6 [2023]. Fifty-nine of our brothers and sisters are still captive in Gaza, and our soldiers, from all political factions, are fighting on multiple fronts.”
The warning eventually came. To operate in such a manner, permitting a parliamentary majority to “unilaterally approve legislation opposed by the people, will harm the ability to create broad reform that appeals to the whole, will lead to polarization and will increase distrust in both the legislative and executive branches.”
Before lawmakers in a final effort to convince, Gantz, citing former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, issued a reminder that “democracies fall or die slowly when they suffer from a malignant disease called the disease of the majority.” Such a disease advanced gradually till “the curtain of darkness slowly [descended] on society.”
Gantz also tried to press Levin to abandon the legislation ahead of the two Knesset plenum readings. In a report from Channel 12, he called it a “mistake” to bring the legislation forward. The response from Levin was that the legislation was a suitable compromise that both he and Sa’ar had introduced as a dilution on the previous proposal that would have vested total control in the government over judicial appointments. The revision was “intended to heal the rift of the nation.”
Healing for Netanyahu is a hard concept to envisage. His authoritarian politics is that of the supreme survivalist with lashings of expedient populism. Sundering the social compact with damaging attacks on various sacred cows, from intelligence officials to judges, is the sacrifice he is willing to make. That this will result in a distrust in Israeli institutions seems to worry him less than any sparing from accountability and posterity’s questionable rewards.
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Descended frm a Lithujanian superstition scholar, Netanyahu is an intrusive foreign souced zionist invader of the legal Israel of May 1948, but which was betrayed by Britain, USA stupidity and a world that wished to eliminate and expel and concentrate Jews anyway, at the expense of all rightful Palestinians, mamy of them Jews. Zionism was a "plan" for murder, agony, theft, occupation, the only way to steal a "new" land.
The UN has been neutered by the ability of the US to vetoe every resolution on Israel and Gaza.
The U.S. has vetoed resolutions critical of Israel more than any other council member – 45 times as at December 18, 2023. The U.S. has vetoed 89 Security Council resolutions in total since 1945, meaning slightly over half of its vetoes have been used on resolutions critical of Israel. Of the vetoed resolutions, 33 pertained to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or the country’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
Unless the vetoe power available to the five permanent members of the UNSC is removed the United Nations will become totally irrelevant to humanity.
We are witnessing a semantic argument of definitions of Anti-semitism and other forms of discrimination. Why is there even an argument?
Why should ant-semitism be distinguished as a special category of discrimination when we see Islamophobia all around us, we see racism all around us, we see misogyny on a daily basis. Why do we need a special definition when the claimants to the term semite demonstrate their disrespect, no worse than that, utter contempt for people who dare to be other than Jewish, Zionist.
By drawing such distinctions we are favouring one form of hatred over others, allowing the genocide which is occurring in Gaza and on the West Bank to continue. It makes us complicit.
The most corrupt have the most to protect, in the case of Israel, the Prime Minister is in self protection mode, the zealots claiming the West Bank and Golan Heights claim their right to possession through the mythology of promises maybe made thousands of years ago, and defend their actions through the claim of semitism.
There is no need to have special definitions for discrimination. We need to uphold a common standard, that discrimination is just wrong. We should not be defending the indefensible, whether it is a terrorist atack by an oppressed group or whether it is the elimination of a people because they are to be feared because of the treatment they have been subjected to for generation after generations.
Bibi the the Jewish Hitler's toxic reach is global. He has our very own Labor government cowering in fear of Israel's Fifth Column, the Zionist lobby.
Indeed, it does appear that way Max. The Jewish lobby is very influential in Australian politics. Even when the antisemitic stuff is concocted, as with the caravan full of explosives.
If, as the Labor policy states, that all people are equal, why does it appear that Muslims are less equal than Jewish people?
The antisemitic stuff we have gone through, separate definitions on how to deal with antisemitism seems to favour one marginalised group over others, and there is no way that can be in line with Labor policy.
I haven't checked the Lib policy on this, but it SHOULD be the same, that all people are EQUAL, no matter their faith, country of origin, colour of skin and gender preferences
The treatment of Palestinians in our political context implies that to be Palestinian is to be Hamas, and hence a terrorist.
And that is bullshit!!
All quiet on the caravan story.
Does that mean that the sponsors of the story were the Jewish lobby, and the storm of antisemitic events all were financed by Israel hoping to (and succeeding) get laws changed to favour the jewish minority over here?
The AFP may find these were all organized from an external party, and they are not obliged to tell us who that is if our government is gagged!
Don't disagree with themes, but apparently Gazans are not happy with Hamas either.
There are several issues which writer etc. miss by framing October 7 as a reference point or start of Israel vs Hamas, but misses much complexity preceding and in the background; not to forget this new found tendency for Orwellian RW MSM headlines.
Recall Trump I regime & Kushner's relationships with Netanyahu, MBS (Abraham Accords), MBZ etc. and also a Red Sea grouping including MBS Saudi, MBZ UAE, El Sisi Egypt and Bahrain with US consultants acting with Israel and Russia (vs. Iran, Qatar & Turkey); both Netanyahu and Hamas leadership had good relations with Putin (Abramson).
Late '23 Putin's Russia was in trouble with their Ukraine special operation, invasion and in need of a 'ceasfire' to replenish itself; October 7 was manna from heaven to deflect media and keep resources from Ukraine (heelped by Trump & Koch's Freedom Caucus in Congress).
While the infamously secular Netanyahu blew back big time and even threw hostages under the bus, surprising all, especially Hamas and Putin?
It not only put pressure on Netanyahu & Hamas, but helped the RW MSM and Trump's GOP to blame Biden, Harris and the Dems for being weak (ditto UK on Starmer & Oz on Albanese), and on campus pro-Palestinians were 'anti-semitic' (even though many Jewish) as a form of voter suppression on the Democrats, for Trump to prevail.
Meanwhile we are supposed to believe that MAGA, alt right, white Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis and promoters of the 'great replacement' or the Soros conspiracy are not 'anti-semitic', as Dutton says 'the left is anti-semitic'?
Finally, like has occurred elsewhere (France, Israel, US etc.) anti-semitic graffiti and an arson attack on a Synagogue; perps have been caught, but weird suggestions of foreign influence, whom?
One influencer Murdoch, along with activist in chief Andrew Bolt, with an historial whiff of anti-semitism and white Christian nationalism, hypocritically turning up to the Synagogue; lucky Murdoch's wife is Jewish?
Not suggesting it's too cute fitting into electoral narratives :)
Glad to see the advent of the Jewish Council of Australia. It's apolitical, wise and properly interrogative and self-critiqing. And definitely does not support Netanyahu's govt.
Here's the Jewish Council of Oz first public event Dr Gabor Maté on Healing, Justice and Liberation for All. It's long and grueling, but well worth a listen.