In the middle of a life-or-death war to defend Israel’s existence as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms — the only such refuge in a world where attacks on Jews are on the rise — Israel has been wracked by a semi-civil war within its capitalist political system.
The liberal bourgeois news media in the U.S. and Israel present this as a fight by those who believe in “democracy” against a “rightist,” warmongering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is only concerned about staying in power.
But what is really involved is an effort by Netanyahu’s capitalist political rivals and meritocratic, middle-class layers — including at top levels of Israel’s military officer corps and intelligence organizations — to drive him from office and force the government to stop its war to destroy Hamas and to completely eliminate Tehran’s nuclear weapons programs. They argue that is the road to “peace.”
Their anti-Netanyahu drive is aided by the U.S. ruling class, which sees his refusal to compromise with Hamas as an obstacle to the stability the U.S. imperialists require to advance their own interests in the Middle East. The U.S. rulers have never cared about the lives of Jews or Palestinians. They seek to keep plundering the natural resources and labor of the region, and to block Beijing, their main rival, from increasing its toehold there.
Witch hunt against Netanyahu
A central figure in the witch hunt to oust Netanyahu is Israel’s attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara. She has backed at least three different investigations or trials against Netanyahu or members of his staff.
This includes a trial that began in 2020 of a “corruption case” that asserts Netanyahu paid bribes to get favorable news coverage.
In another case, a close aide to Netanyahu along with an Israel Defense Forces officer are charged with leaking “top secret” documents to the press. The documents are actually reports discovered by the IDF on Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s computer.
A third case is the so-called Qatargate accusations by Ronen Bar, then head of the Israeli domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, and Baharav-Miara. They allege aides to Netanyahu helped a lobbying company present the Qatari government as a neutral mediator trying to bring peace to Israel and Gaza. They claim this harmed state security.
Attorney general ‘bends the law’
“I saw Israel’s attorney-general bend the law for her favorites, and I paid the price,” was the headline on a July 17 Jerusalem Post article by the paper’s editor, Zvika Klein. It exposes Baharav-Miara’s trampling on democratic rights.
Klein had flown to Qatar where he interviewed the country’s prime minister. His interview was quoted widely in the Israeli press, but Shin Bet tried to make it part of the “Qatargate” case, accusing him of being a “foreign agent.”
Klein, who is no fan of Netanyahu, was arrested in April without a warrant in the middle of voluntarily giving testimony in the Qatargate investigation. Israeli cops threw him in a room, interrogated him for 12 hours, placing him under house arrest and a gag order for several days. His two phones were confiscated and remain locked in a police vault, while cops leak some of their contents to select Israeli media.
Contrast Klein’s treatment to that of a reporter from notoriously anti-Netanyahu Channel 13 who aggressively shoved Gal Dabush, an aide to Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, in a courthouse corridor — all caught on video. When the Channel 13 reporter was supposed to be questioned about the attack, Baharav-Miara called it off. An “urgent consultation,” she said, is required before police can contemplate investigating a journalist for conduct linked to their work because it might “chill the press.”
“The woman who lectures the nation about ‘careful, proportionate enforcement’ now behaves like a wounded animal, lashing out at anything that steps onto her path of self-preservation,” Klein writes.
The office of “attorney general” and the “Supreme Court” in Israel have little in common with U.S. institutions of the same name. Attorney General Baharav-Miara, who was appointed by the previous government, has the power to overturn decisions of the elected government that she claims are “illegal,” and even decide who may or may not serve in the cabinet.
This power of the attorney general was never voted on by Israel’s parliament, nor is it written in any law. It’s the result of a 1993 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court.
Supreme Court judges in Israel are not voted on by the parliament. Instead, they are selected by a nine-member committee, which is dominated by lawyers and sitting Supreme Court judges.
In one of the most serious disputes, Baharav-Miara tried to block Netanyahu from firing Shin Bet head Ronen Bar. Shin Bet is responsible for Gaza and Bar was centrally involved in the decision on Oct. 7 to keep reports from going to Netanyahu on numerous signs Hamas was about to attack.
The attorney general claimed that it was a “conflict of interest” for Netanyahu to fire Bar, alleging he did it to stop the Qatargate investigation. And when Bar resigned, she maintained that Netanyahu can’t name a replacement. All in the middle of a war!
In fact, it was no secret for months before the Qatargate prosecution that the Netanyahu government was getting ready to fire Bar for his treasonous refusal to notify Netanyahu about the likelihood of Hamas’ attack.
Washington fuels civil war
Decades of collaboration with the U.S. military and Washington’s spy agencies, fortified by billions of dollars of military “aid,” have helped consolidate a layer of Israeli officials who act as transmission belts for the interests of U.S. imperialism.
During President Barack Obama’s administration, the State Department funded groups in Israel that sought to oust Netanyahu. And the Joseph Biden administration funded “nongovernmental organizations” that fought against Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reform.
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, Washington tries to block the Israeli government from taking measures to complete the defeat of Hamas, achieve the total elimination of Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and to prevent the new Syrian regime from being able to threaten Israel.
In leaks to the Axios news site, six anonymous Trump administration officials criticized Netanyahu for going against U.S. interests. Netanyahu acts “like a madman,” one official said. “He bombs everything all the time.”
Netanyahu seeks U.S. imperialism’s support for Israel. But he acts on the fact that if Israel is to survive as a refuge for Jews, it must be ready to act on its own. The U.S. rulers view that as an obstacle to their interests.