Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

Opposition leader Yair Lapid warned last month that “the crazy incitement” he alleges emanates from the government will lead to “political murder,” especially against failed Shin Bet head Ronen Bar. “We are on the way to another disaster. This time it will come from within… Jews will kill Jews.” Lapid’s threats should be taken seriously, although not for his stated reasons. It is because this pattern of the left inciting, fomenting, and committing acts of violence – and then blaming it on the right-wing – has a fairly long history in Israel.

While the identity of the murderers of pre-state Zionist leader Chaim Arlosoroff (assassinated in June 1933) remains a mystery, the Labor movement was quick to blame the Revisionists for the violence. The three charged were all eventually acquitted, but one of the open theories of some historians is that Arlosoroff was murdered to eliminate him as a political threat to his Labor Party rivals. (This would not be the first time the Hagana had committed a political assassination, having murdered Haredi spokesman Jacob de Haan in 1924. This technically remains an “unsolved murder,” although Hagana member Avraham Tehomi admitted decades later that he murdered de Haan on orders from above – and felt no guilt about it.) We will likely never know the full story.

Fomenting violence and blaming the right-wing reached its apogee in the year preceding the assassination of PM Yitzchak Rabin in 1995. As reported in devastating detail by Shimon Riklin in his recent Channel 14 documentary, the Shin Bet repeatedly tried to incite violence from settlers, including setting them up with weapons, choosing “targets,” and then intervening at the last moment. It even dispatched its agent, Avishai Raviv, to infiltrate the settlers (he even married under false pretenses an unsuspecting woman), instigate violence, and encourage Rabin’s assassination. Raviv infamously held up a poster at a right-wing rally depicting Rabin in an SS uniform, all so that the Labor Party could blame Netanyahu and the settler movement for this staged atrocity.

Note that well, because in the weeks before the Rabin assassination, Yitzchak Shamir even warned that “they are planning another Arlosoroff.” It does not matter whether their plan succeeded or went awry; what matters is the harsh reality that Israel’s “General Security Services” then continued the tradition of stoking the flames of violence in order to castigate, indict, and defame its political enemies.

When the head of the Shin Bet’s (“anti”-) Jewish division was recorded as saying about the youthful settlers that “we arrest these shmokim without any evidence at all,” he was escalating this tactic. Imagine arresting people on no grounds and no evidence, simply because you think the state has granted you such power, when it has not. He has since suspended himself, whatever that means, but in a functioning democracy, he would already be behind bars. That is unlikely in the extreme. And, as is well known, the Shin Bet has tortured Jews in order to extract confessions, genuine or not. For this, it pays no price, legal or political.

It is in this context that Lapid’s warnings should be perceived. If he speaks of the threat of imminent violence, it is all to prepare the ground for left-wing violence that can be imputed to the right-wing and then bolstered by a flood of echo chamber reports from the left-wing media. It also renders comically, absurdly hollow, Ronen Bar’s contentions that he is above the law and cannot be fired, fired because he has devoted himself to defending Israel’s democracy. And, having been fired, he announced that he will instead resign, on his own timetable, once he is assured that he can designate or approve of his successor. It is good to be the king, or at least to act like you are the king because the legal establishment is in your corner.

This is the stuff of secret police forces in brutal dictatorships. The more Israel’s self-appointed guardians of democracy – the secret services, the judicial establishment, and the mainstream media – trumpet their commitment to the people’s well-being and to the survival of Israel as a democracy, the more suspicious we should be of their real motives.

When journalists can be casually arrested, like the editor of the Jerusalem Post or the videographer of Riklin’s Shin Bet documentary, without major protest or backlash, we have entered dangerous territory. No one who espouses the “wrong” views is safe, to which even the Prime Minister can attest. He has been investigated for more than a decade and on trial for almost half a decade.

The weaponization of the legal system against disfavored individuals has long been a staple of autocracies but sadly has become common in putative democracies as well, such as Israel and the United States. Power – its uses and retention – is that seductive, and invariably corrosive. The legal system can always get someone for something and there is little downside in trying and no consequence even if a frivolous prosecution fails.

Beware of those who deign to speak in the name of the people or democracy, especially when they repeatedly lose elections (presumably the voice of the “people” and the instrument of “democracy”). Most dictatorships identified themselves as “People’s Republics,” such as today’s “People’s Republic of China.” For good measure, the world’s most tyrannical dictatorship (North Korea) is self-styled as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” whereas Algeria reverses its titles (the “People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria”).

Is anyone fooled by this? For sure, people who disdain elections and the rule of law while simultaneously crowing about preserving democracy and the rule of law are hazards to true democracy. For clarity’s sake, will we soon become the “People’s Republic of Israel” or the “People’s Democratic Republic of Israel”? Sadly, the elements are all there – a secret police leadership that is beyond control of the politicians, a judicial system that literally composes and enforces its own laws, chooses  its members, prosecutes citizens arbitrarily, and is beholden only to the world views and values of the individual judges and prosecutors, and a media that is an organ of the state when the left is in power and a useful tool of the opposition when, as has been the case for most of the last fifteen years, the right-wing heads the government.

Add to this the continuous blandishments that “the prime minister is a danger to the security of the state!” and we see the groundwork being laid for an attempted coup. Can it be averted? It would behoove PM Netanyahu, currently protected by the Shin Bet, to seek protection from another force, much like in the US where the Secret Service is not a branch of the FBI but rather part of Homeland Security (after a long stint as an agency within the Treasury Department).

The good news is that most members of the Shin Bet are dedicated public servants who adhere to the law and strive to protect Jewish life and the land and State of Israel. And there is a strong but still mostly silent majority of Israelis – also known as voters – who see through the left-wing charade, the judicial hypocrisy, and the media duplicity. They are good people who eschew violence and instead endorse political advocacy, possess good Jewish values, and appreciate the State of Israel and the opportunity of our generation to change the failed political and strategic dynamics of the last thirty years.

They no longer trust these institutions and are no longer enthralled by the tales told by the tendentious holders of prestigious posts. They recognize lies as soon as they are spoken and want to reclaim their rights and privileges as loyal citizens.

The government’s inability to fire appointed officials is bizarre and most anti-democratic, for it renders the public servants answerable to no one. Oddly, both officials slated for dismissal but who refuse to leave (!), Gali Baharav-Miara and Ronen Bar, share the exact same gematria (Hebrew numerology); each of their names equal 508, which is identical to the Hebrew word, cheresh, deaf. They are deaf to true democracy, deaf to the will of the people, and deaf to the needs of the moment. In addition to other acts of incompetence, both are defiantly clinging to power on the wings of a corrupt system. They should both resign, and Bar, having resigned, should leave immediately, for the good of the country.

We are celebrating 77 years of independence and are on the verge of dealing harsh, perhaps even fatal blows, to at least some of the many enemies that surround us. Perhaps the internal struggle – the collapse of important governmental and societal institutions – should concern us even more at this point. Ironically, those potentially plotting a domestic coup are also those who are also afraid of victory, fearful of vanquishing our external enemies, and petrified (unreasonably) about the implications of a truly Jewish state.

They will do anything to stop it. We must do everything to counter them, peacefully, persuasively, but also firmly and insistently, so that the best days of the State of Israel, now 77 years young, are ahead of us, en route to complete redemption.