The BIG Lie

The latest and largest in the series of Saturday night demos against Netanyahu are reminiscent of the “Not My President” marches against Donald Trump in 2016. Elections have consequences, but it seems leftists both in Israel and the USA are never prepared to accept them like grownups.

In both countries those demos were driven by a media that blatantly lied to the public in the service of an all-powerful left-wing establishment. This has been exposed most recently in America with the exposure of the Twitter files and the release of video coverage of the entry of demonstrators into the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The BIG lie being peddled in Israel is that Netanyahu is out to change the legal system in order to escape conviction in the trial he faces for accepting free cigars and conspiring to get better treatment in the left-wing media. If that had any shred of credibility you might ask: why on earth would Bibi want to upset the very judicial elites who will decide whether or not he goes to jail?

The truth is that the proposed judicial reforms, far from being retrospective and of any use to Bibi in his own indictments, have nothing to do with civil or criminal cases. They have to do with the self-appointing judiciary overruling the democratically elected parliament, the Knesset.

In no other democracy do courts have such veto power. As everyone knows, judges are there to interpret laws, not to make or change them. As things stand in Israel, and has been demonstrated very recently, all the supreme court has to do is deem a law or a ministerial appointment ‘unreasonable’ for it to scuttle the will of the people and its elected government.

Far from a threat to democracy, Netanyahu’s proposed reforms are solely directed to preserving ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ as opposed to autocratic rule by an unelected court president acting as if he sits in an upper house of parliament.

Which brings me back to those Saturday night demos, stirred up by the media peddling the BIG lie.

Have you thought how much police manpower is needed to secure any one of those mega demos? How much background investigation is involved by the Shin Bet and other branches of the security apparatus? You are talking about many thousands of officers and working hours which are normally devoted to detective work in the prevention of the kind of terror attacks which have plagued Israel since these Saturday night circuses began.

Surrounded by mortal enemies, as well as clearly infiltrated by them, Israel’s security resources are still limited. A week’s planning for the securing of a major demo could better be spent protecting innocents like the 14 Jews who have so far been murdered in half as many weeks.