Israel and the U.S. are going through tumultuous times. In both countries, the gap between the Right and Left has dramatically widened, aided by foreign power interference.
In Israel, on November 1st, 2022, the centrist Likud party, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and a coalition of other like-minded and religious parties, won the election with a majority of 64 of the 120 Knesset members. They tossed out the 56 members of the left-leaning coalition, including the Arab parties (who deny Israel’s right to exist), headed by the incompetent and corrupt former Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
After decades of the power grabbing and abuse of laws by the Supreme Court and the Attorney General, the Israeli voters had enough. After four inconclusive elections, they voted decisively for the Likud coalition, which ran on a platform of reforming the corrupt legal system, especially the lawlessness and “dictatorship of the (Supreme) court”, (so defined by Nobel laureate Prof. Israel Aumann).
Today, the Court’s fifteen judges can veto everything the legislative (Knesset) and the executive (Government) decide, and the Attorney General acts as a prosecutor and a judge. The unelected judiciary has constantly interfered with the elected legislature, canceling laws, and even blocking the Prime Minister from governing.
In Israel, as in the U.S. when the Republicans and Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the Left, who lost the election, went into high gear to overthrow Netanyahu and the Likud, similar to the Democrats when they tried to depose Trump (four years of the Russia hoax).
In December 2022, the Netanyahu government began to fulfill its campaign promise to reform the legal system. Immediately, the Left’s opposition parties began challenging Netanyahu’s government, not through debates in the Knesset, but through non-stop incitement and fear-propaganda in the mostly left-leaning media and, organizing well-funded protests, illegally closing major roads, pressuring reserve military officers in essential units, urging medical staff to strike, and even closing down the country’s airports.
The leading Leftist groups, such as One Voice, V15, and Movement for Quality Government. received funding from the U.S. State Department and Progressive-Left American and European NGOs. Condoned by the Biden Administration, the minority Left in Israel successfully used fearmongering and outright lies to paralyze the country and rachet-up division among the populace.
The Left wants to maintain judicial control over the Prime Minister and the Knesset. The centrists wish for a more equal and balanced relationship between the Judiciary, the Executive, and the Legislative branches, as, for example, in the United States.
The Biden Administration has jumped into the Israeli domestic political controversy by supporting the small (but well-funded and very loud) minority of radical anti-Israel progressive-left parties. The administration supports those parties in Israel which lost the election, encouraging those minority parties to resist negotiating with the majority government. They have been creating civil unrest and chaos. Moreover, the Biden Administration is condoning the opposition’s revolt against judicial reform, which, if passed, would move Israel perhaps halfway toward the U.S. constitutional model.
Why is the Administration doing this? Why is it opposing the democratically elected government of Israel as it is trying to implement the platform on which it won the fair election? Why didn’t Biden congratulate Netanyahu until very recently and invite him to the White House as has always been done in the past? Why did the Administration shun Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich when he visited D.C.? How did U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides dare to say about Smotrich, who was flying to the U.S., “He has a flight to Washington, and if I could, I would throw him off the plane!” Why was Nides not fired? Why is the Administration seeking regime change in its most loyal ally, Israel, the only real functioning democracy in the Middle East?
The reason for the Biden Administration’s outrageous behavior is that PM Netanyahu is devoted to protecting the national security of Israel and its orbit of relatively friendly Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, and the four Muslim states who joined Israel in the Abraham Accord. This accord simultaneously protects the interests of the U.S., Israel, and its Arab allies. The coalition represents a strong bulwark against the imperialist and Islamist policies of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood supporting countries, Qatar and Turkey.
The Netanyahu government is also standing strong against creating a Palestinian-terrorist state, knowing that Iran and its proxy armies would quickly take it over. Netanyahu’s centrist government is acting in the mutual interests of Israel and the U.S.
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