A very interesting article. More interesting detail in the article, “Deep state doesn’t get any deeper than this”, by Gadi Taub, in the Jewish News Service.

Link

quote:

The extent to which Israel is ruled by unelected officials is difficult to convey to outsiders. It sounds too fantastic. So fantastic in fact, that it may be best described as “legal surrealism.”

Our rulers sound like they speak the language of politics and law, but much of what they say makes no sense at all. Consider the case of Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his own trial.

quote:

Consider the case of Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his own trial.

Though Israel is in a state of war on several fronts, the judges presiding in that trial are forcing him to testify three days a week, every week, because, they have argued, it is “in the public interest” to bring the trial to a speedy conclusion. So, determining the exact number of cigars that Mr. Netanyahu received as gifts from friends has come to take precedence over his running of the war.

The judges know, of course, that they will pay no price for their risible definition of “the public interest,” which the public itself would undoubtedly have rejected. Because Israel’s deep state has achieved the dream of bureaucrats since the dawn of bureaucracy: the complete divorce of authority from accountability. The judges know that if their lopsided priorities hinder the war effort, it will be the prime minister, not those who coerced him, who will pay the political price.

quote:

The exacting schedule that the judges have imposed on the prime minister is less a reflection of any tangible public interest, and more part of a trap that our clever jurists have laid down for Netanyahu. You see, they have invented something they call “essential incapacitation.”

Contrary to the explicit meaning of incapacitation clauses in the laws of Western democracies, including those in the United States and Israel, this helpful little judicial gadget extends the idea of medical incapacitation to the realm of scheduling conflicts. According to this new abracadabra, if Netanyahu argues appearing in court three days a week impairs his ability to run the war, then the attorney general can declare him “essentially incapacitated” from performing his duties, and thus overrule the results of a legal election.

The article points out that the opposition to Netanyahu included the Biden administration, and that DOGE has revealed that Israeli NGO’s opposing Netanyahu were funded by American taxpayers.

quote:

So far, Netanyahu—who, in addition to everything else, is recovering from a recent surgery—has managed to wage a successful war against Israel’s enemies, while Israel’s elites have been trying to use that war to topple him, even at the expense of victory.

Considering that all this was done in the face of American attempts to shut the war down without victory, this seems almost superhuman (no Israeli prime minister has withstood such American pressure for so long). How, then, was Netanyahu able to accomplish this, and to do it at the very same time that the administrative state had completed its takeover of formal power?

The way I heard it Israel never finished their Founding Documents so they are open to interpretation.

The Judicial Reform last year was an attempt to correct this and that's why the Leftists went crazy.

I believe the Israeli Judiciary can say- That's unreasonable= Fix it or else. They don't need a case before them to rule on issues.

Perhaps President Trump could lean on the Israelis to get their shit together so that their ideology aligns more with conservative America. I have no problem with supporting Israel but not if they aren’t on the same page in regards to fair and honest government.

The parallels between Israel and the lawfare against Trump during the past 4 years of the ???? Administration are spooky.
But Netanyahu has much stronger public support at this point. And—as with Trump—every time he resists his enemies he gets stronger.

An interesting tidbit. After 0bama's campaign team did the successful hope and change here, the campaign team went to Israel to do hope and change against Netanyahu. It wasn't successful, but I wonder if the campaign team transferred Obama's deep state ideas to Netanyahu's opposition?

We think that the developed world is “democratic” and think they have legal systems modeled after ours. But hardly any have a strong executive and checks and balances; instead they have parliamentary democracies, with multiple parties as in the Knesset. This makes for unstable government. Israel, like the UK, apparently lacks a written constitution.

Israeli government is pretty much corrupt to the core.
They're an inch away from being communist.
You can't understand what it's like until you spend a lot of time there.
Most of my engineers are the non-commie variety.
All except one. You can tell he was raised on a kibbutz.

I wouldn't say "to the core", though it may feel like that to exasperated locals. In international comparisons like Transparency International's, Israel has actually improved in recent years, now sharing rank 30 of 180 in their index of perceived corruption with South Korea, just behind the US.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/...rst-scores-in-years/

Per TI, the problem isn't so much in national politics rather than public services, enabled by an ineffective bureaucracy (the usual problem: you want some permission quickly, you gotta pay for it). The very fact that they're investigating a sitting prime minister over corruption charges, actually sent his predecessor to prison for the same, and for that matter jailed the president the latter served under for rape, also indicates that while the system has problems, it can police itself.

BTW, it was already silly to import the "deep state" term coined by Turkish leftwingers in the 90s (derin devlet) into the US via Steve Bannon et al around 2015, along with lots of European political concepts to remodel the American Right. Implying that the US would have needed to export what believers think the term entails to Israel is a step beyond. The problem of an overly powerful judiciary there also goes back to the early 90s. Which many Israelis agree should be adressed - but not for the benefit of a particular political camp along with electoral reform aimed at entrenching the same camp in power, as the Netanyahu government has tried since coming to power in 2022.

Transparency International was started by former employees of the World Bank. They actually gave Hillary Clinton an “integrity award” in 2012.

Citing them as if it’s the gospel is laughable.

If you think Israel is more corrupt than they say, and/or hasn't improved, I can't argue against that. But to compare, you need some kind of yardstick.

Once it has been established that a source is bought and paid for by the World Bank and UN globalists, their “yardstick” should be thrown out. They have an agenda. And that agenda is the eventual destruction of Israel.

By making Israel look less corrupt? All right then. Cheers.

You know what I’m saying. Saying Israel is as low as it is of all countries in corruption is absurd and only reveals their ant-Semitic bias. The vast majority of all UN resolutions passed in the history of the UN have been against Israel.

The Judges in Israel think they run the country.

quote:

AG: Firing ISA chief needs my permission
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara must approve firing of ISA chief Ronen Bar, Deputy Attorney General Gil Limon insists.

"The Attorney General is once again mixing herself up with the Prime Minister, Chief of Staff, and ISA chief all at once. It seems to her that Israel is subject to a Council of Lawyers and not a sovereign country with an elected government."

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/404698