We have to choose: Do we back Bibi or support Israel?

This is an impassioned plea for the JC’s readers to choose between backing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and supporting Israeli civil society.

The collision between these two entities – these two Israels – which has been building for years, took a horrendous turn on October 7, 2023 and has now reached an irreversible nadir. Such a total parting of ways between the government and a large part of Israeli society is a tragedy for Israel, but we have been facing it for years. It is time, albeit an unfortunate and dangerous time, that Netanyahu’s supporters abroad faced it too.

I am a centre-left Zionist, born and raised a kibbutznik. My Zionism is based on Theodor Herzl’s humanist legacy and on Israel’s magisterial Declaration of Independence. I believe in defending Israel wisely and powerfully from within its internationally recognised borders, and working cautiously toward a two-state solution that will not breed a terrorist state next door.

Before you write me off as an obsessive anti-Bibi leftie, please note that most of the numerous Israelis who currently brand Netanyahu as one of Israel’s worst problems are more politically hawkish than me. This is no longer about security or even a Palestinian state. It is about personal and public corruption, criminal cover-up and an ongoing constitutional coup.

Israeli society is not unravelling due to political disagreements but because of the orchestrated campaign by Netanyahu’s political and media cronies against the judiciary, the rule of law and the secular and liberal public. This campaign involved lying to the public on crucial matters. Netanyahu currently has two great fears: a state inquiry commission into October 7 and an end to the Gaza war. Entangled in a web of falsehoods, he has turned against the army, the Shin Bet and the Attorney General with the same venom formerly reserved for the Supreme Court (since his indictment on three corruption cases) and the left and liberals. The Prime Minister’s brazen maltreatment of the hostages’ families and the destroyed kibbutzim, bordering on emotional psychopathy, is part and parcel of this campaign.

During the last fortnight, senior journalists have made several astounding revelations of the antics of the Prime Minister’s office. Two members of Netanyahu’s team had worked on a social media PR campaign for Qatar, during the time it funded Hamas, with Netanyahu’s approval. The same close advisers, alongside a junior employee, are now suspected of passing military intelligence, its content possibly distorted, to foreign media outlets as part of a campaign against the hostages’ families. Netanyahu not only abandoned the 101 remaining hostages to their fate, but his team worked hard to cheat the Israeli public over it by planting false evidence of Hamas’s rejection of a deal.

At first Netanyahu denied any acquaintance with the junior employee under investigation, Eli Feldstein. Then, on Saturday, he videotaped a nine-and-a-half-minute rant to the nation embracing the man as a patriotic martyr to the evil machinations of the IDF and the Shin Bet. Never before has an Israeli leader publicly attacked the security forces, let alone so bluntly, mid-war. His speech said nothing about the latest deadly Hezbollah rockets, the recently fallen soldiers or the female hostage that Hamas reported killed just hours before. The performance aimed at destroying the reputation of Israel’s highest defence and judicial officials. It is widely assumed that the ground is being prepared for sacking both the Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara, and the head of Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, replacing them with the prime minister’s puppets – as has been done just recently in the ministry of defence. The Israeli police already reflects Itamar Ben Gvir’s extremist ideology and policies.

In parallel, new Knesset legislation promoted by communications minister Shlomo Karhi is under way to destroy the independence of the Israeli public broadcasting corporation. When charged with weakening democracy, Karhi did not deny it. “We were elected by the public,” he retorted, “and we can change the form of regime if we like.” And he means it. In the pipeline is legislation outlawing certain Arab Israeli parties and politicians. Without them, the centre-left, and even the centre-right, will never win an election again.

No less alarming is a bill blocking the long-due inquiry commission into the October 7 disaster and assembling a commission appointed by politicians instead. Netanyahu will soon be all set for imparting the whole guilt to the army and security services, walking away from that greatest horror in Israeli history scot-free.

A state commission headed by a senior judge cannot serve this purpose. Hence the renewed onslaught against the judiciary and the Attorney General. Israel’s judicial branch may well need a reform, but not of the kind Netanyahu’s coalition is re-enacting: it will not amend judicial independence, or even curb it, but annihilate it altogether.

Meanwhile, the war in Gaza will continue shedding rivers of blood with no set goals and no political (let alone internationally acceptable) plan for the day after, because Netanyahu is humouring the extreme right’s fantasy of resettling the Strip, and because war is what is keeping this government alive. Machiavelli and Orwell combined.

Decent friends of Israel are invited to look closely at the most recent news and see what we have already seen: Israel’s government is no longer running the country as a democracy. The events of recent weeks suggest that, regardless of his policies, Netanyahu is no longer fit to rule.

What will this acknowledgement mean for Israel and the Jewish diaspora? Glee from antisemites and Israel-haters, for sure. But in the long run, telling the truth to ourselves and to the world is a condition of survival, the beginning of revival, and the only moral option. It is also the Jewish thing to do.