Netanyahu has long enjoyed his reputation as Israel’s “Mr. Security,” but in this latest incarnation, he has turned against the military establishment that has been among the most forceful sectors opposing his judicial coup.
Adding to the general strangeness of recent months, Netanyahu, born in Jerusalem and raised mostly in progressive Tel Aviv, appears to inhabit an alternate sphere. He, his son Yair, and, on Tuesday, his brother, Iddo Netanyahu, have all spread the far-right conspiracy theory that Biden is fomenting or even financing the growing protest movement.
When fighter pilots rose to prominence among the opponents to Netanyahu’s plans, his minister of communications, Shlomo Karhi, suggested the pilots — who are lionized figures in Israeli society — “can go to hell.”
Twenty-four hours later, it was all over.
Rivlin’s words, like Moody’s warning of a credit downgrade, like the pilots’ threats to withdraw from reserve duty, like the doctors’ strike, like the millions of Israelis who’ve marched against the administrative power grab, had fallen on deaf ears.
On Monday afternoon, in what felt, despite months of buildup, like a stunning and casual stealth vote, Netanyahu’s coalition passed a bill eliminating Israel’s “Reasonability Clause,” a legal tool enabling the judiciary to strike down improper government appointments and executive decisions. Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader, said “The government has declared a war of attrition against its own citizens.”
All joshing was gone. In the hours leading up to the vote, Netanyahu turned down a request from Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi to meet. He didn’t want to be briefed. Reality, be gone.
Adding to the sense of an impending apocalypse, Netanyahu, 73, barely made it to his own fateful vote in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. He was released from the hospital after the emergency implantation of a pacemaker about two hours before the roll call began, and, uncharacteristically, he gripped the handrail hard as he slowly descended the steps to the plenum.
Within half an hour of the bill passing, 64-0 amid an opposition boycott, hundreds of pilots posted pictures of themselves, many in tears, sending their unit commanders letters ending their decades of service. “We signed a contract to fight for the realm,” they wrote. “We will not fight for a king.” The Israel Defense Forces later revealed that more than half of the air force personnel that signed the original petition to Netanyahu, including pilots, had followed through and informed their units they would no longer report to reserve duty.