Two cardinal achievements left Benjamin Netanyahu in power for many years and ensured him successive victories in one election after the next: a reasonable security situation following the horrific years of the second intifada, and economic prosperity generated primarily by the high-tech engine, soaring costs of living notwithstanding.

This time around, it didn’t take Netanyahu more than two months to shake both pillars.

• A wave of Palestinian terrorism is roaring through the West Bank and Jerusalem, and though it began during the Bennett-Lapid government, it is now intensifying and is being inflamed by acts of revenge perpetrated by Jewish terrorists. And on the other front, the flight of investors’ money and the devaluation of the shekel vis-à-vis the dollar are clear danger signs for the future of the Israeli economy.

The brutal behavior of the government, which has in practice declared war on the democratic system, is only fueling the fire of the protests.

The combination of the coalition’s moves in the Knesset and the public statements of cabinet ministers ensures a significant increase in the number of protesters every week as people who never imagined that they would ever take part in a demonstration join.

Israel is on the brink of anarchy.

Captain Chaos himself, Netanyahu, seems to have totally lost control of the situation. The hysterical speech, studded with lies and misleading comments, that he delivered on Wednesday night clearly reflected this.

Since the start of the pro-democracy protests, each week there is one day that seems to concentrate all the madness of the new reality into which the prime minister has plunged the country in his desperate efforts to escape from his criminal trial. This week it was on Wednesday, “National Day of Disruption,” as the protest organizations dubbed it. With every passing hour, the reports in the media and on the social networks got more extreme and more bizarre. Demonstrators in Tel Aviv accusing the veteran entertainer Tzipi Shavit of trying to run them over barely scratched the list of the top five unbelievable events.

That day also included a senior minister and member of the security cabinet call on the government to perpetrate a war crime by wiping out a Palestinian town (and afterward claim, without batting an eyelash, that his words hadn’t been understood properly); the violent suppression of a demonstration in the heart of Tel Aviv that saw protesters wounded by stun grenades without an iota of violence on their part, with the vigorous encouragement of the responsible minister; the driver of a military truck threatening demonstrators with a weapon after they blocked a road in the Negev; and the detention of a reservist pilot for hours on the false grounds that he attacked police officers during a demonstration.

The day came to its dramatic end when the prime minister’s wife, Sara Netanyahu, determined to play the part of Evita Peron, decided that this was the perfect time to have her hair done in Tel Aviv’s ritzy Kikar Hamedina shopping area.

• The hundreds of demonstrators who besieged the salon shouting “Shame!” provided a fitting fade-out for one of the craziest days in Israel’s history.

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But even that wasn’t the bottom of the barrel. That title should probably be awarded to the live nightly news program on Channel 14, effectively the Netanyahu family’s house channel, on which the demonstration was framed as “an attempted lynching of Sara Netanyahu.”

The presenter asked an innocent question: Could it be that the “anarchist demonstrators” are being financed by the CIA? That, of course, is a false accusation that cannot be backed up with evidence, but who cares? In the finest tradition of radical American broadcasters, from Tucker Carlson to Alex Jones, she’s just asking questions.

The program’s vigorous commentator didn’t rule out the possibility. Having learned about the exploits of the Central Intelligence Agency from television shows such as “Narcos,” he explained that in fact, it’s also well known that the United States is being run by former President Barack Obama. From here the discussion launched an all-out assault on the director of the Shin Bet security service, Ronen Bar, who supposedly is familiar with the dangerous war room of the protest organizations but is deliberately ignoring their actions.

Amid the hullabaloo, it’s worth taking note of two things. First, the Netanyahus and their elder son no longer feel personally secure.

The passion, rage and personal involvement of the protest activists have reached such levels that the prime minister is finding it difficult to keep to an organized schedule of public appearances and private leisure activities. Netanyahu travels from one secured venue to the next: from the Prime Minister’s Office to the Knesset and to Hakirya, the security establishment’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. Even routine military ceremonies are no longer perceived as a convenient environment for him (last week he canceled his attendance at a ceremony marking the conclusion of a course for naval officers).

• In these circumstances, the Prime Minister’s Office is improvising empty diplomatic visits abroad – last month to France, this weekend to Italy – whose primary purpose is to allow the family an European getaway where they can spoil themselves, far from the madding crowd. But Netanyahu is still having a hard time getting an invitation to the places he really wants to visit: the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
• The second matter is the deliberate choice of the head of the Shin Bet for Bibi-ist attacks. Bar, who was appointed not by Netanyahu but by Naftali Bennett, already managed to irk the family by refusing to extend service’s protection to the mother and the son while the husband/father was perforce in the opposition.

The Channel 14 program on Wednesday noted that “the attempted lynching is on their hands” – meaning the police and the Shin Bet. Bar is the problem.

In the past we would have said that this was a loathsome, unprecedented attack on a civil servant. Today it’s barely counted as another rung on the way down. Similar verbal assaults could target the police commissioner, the army chief of staff and any ranking figure who would dare to stand in the way of the regime coup. They will all get the same treatment that was meted out to Liat Ben-Ari, from the state prosecution, who had the effrontery to spearhead the criminal cases against Netanyahu.

Unserved danger

Far more than in other countries, the Israeli protest movement, most of which originates from the left and the center of the political map, bears a strong militaristic hue. In the political debate, the Zionist left and the old elites ascribe exaggerated moral value to uniforms and ranks. Former Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet personnel speak at every rally; security establishment retirees are prominent in the various protest groups. They are energetic, they care very much about what’s happening and they are used to leading people by dint of their experience and their personality. It also has to be admitted that in the case of retired career officers, they are usually relatively well-off economically and have time on their hands.

• Alongside them are active reservists, most of whom are younger. Not all of them are left-wingers, but for most of them it appears that their enthusiastic participation in the protest movement is releasing years of pent-up frustration over controversial tasks in the territories, which they saw themselves as duty-bound to take part in due to a feeling of mutual solidarity with the reserve unit, even if they completely objected to the logic of the missions. The anger and the concern stem mainly from the regime coup project, though the broad context also encompasses reserve service. In the reservist infantry battalions in particular, right-wingers and religiously observant individuals constitute a large part of the personnel, both in the officer crops and among the rank-and-file troops. The political disagreements were always there, but the sides were able to get along, sharing the burden.

However, the ministers in the new government are giving expression to something different.

• Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the security cabinet, only found time for abbreviated service in the regular army at a relatively late age; Itamar Ben-Gvir was disqualified for army service because of his extreme views; the majority of the ministers from the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties did no military service at all.

When Smotrich and Ben-Gvir issue instructions, in a lordly tone, to the professionals in the security establishment, the reservists can’t help but wonder who will be sitting around the security cabinet table and making decisions about going into the next holy war. In the case of Netanyahu, it’s clear that he is painfully aware of the price of the wars, in the light of the personal scars they inflicted on his parents and on him.

A week ago, this column featured the first report about the depth of the discussion regarding refusal to serve and “gray refusal,” when soldiers avoid showing up for reserve duty without explicitly saying they are refusing to serve, in WhatsApp and other groups of reservists. In the Weekend section, Hilo Glazer and Itay Mashiach interview tens of reservist officers and soldiers for whom threatening refusal or refusing to serve is a logical element of the protest actions (See story, Page 7). Prominent among the initial protest groups are reservists from air crews and from special ops units in the intelligence corps. The mouthpieces of the right wing are responding contemptuously, but it’s worth recalling that these are two of the most important branches in the IDF and that reservists play a large part in both of them.

Most of the IDF’s offensive activity in recent years has been carried out far from Israel’s borders, within the framework of the campaign between the wars, and those bearing the burden are the air force and Military Intelligence. It’s not surprising that Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, the commander of the Israel Air Force, is one of the most worried individuals in the General Staff today.

Under the pressure of the developments, the IDF chief of staff, Herzl Halevi, felt compelled to refer to the events in speeches at two ceremonies from which Netanyahu was absent.

Halevi, who continues to speak cautiously for public consumption, knows that he is fighting a rearguard battle against phenomena that have long since lurched out of the army’s control. What he can do is order the commanders of the various units to speak with their reserve personnel, talk about their feelings and put out feelers about whether collective refusals are in the offing. The goals he has set for the army are to close ranks, preserve organizational cohesion and retain the units’ fitness as much as possible, despite the storm that is raging outside. For the time being, the chief of staff, who of course is against refusal to serve, does not intend to take vigorous steps to quell the initiatives or to mete out collective punishment to refuseniks.

• Like during the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, the commanders will be instructed to take a low-profile approach to refuseniks and to prefer indirect solutions in cases where a frontal collision can be avoided. Halevi knows he won’t be able to hermetically seal the IDF from the crisis outside. Even an 80 percent success rate will be considered an achievement, and much depends on the wisdom and the judiciousness that the reservists’ direct commanders will display.

Much of the media discussion of the judicial overhaul and the protest movement deals with obvious implications, such as the fear of an economic collapse. But over time, the crisis would seem to hold out the danger of the dissolution of Israeli society.

If that happens, it will be more perilous than all the consequences of the government’s plan and will certainly also have implications for the reserve army.

Source: Amos Harel – HAARETZ

Header: Border Police officers clashing with protesters opposite the salon where Sara Netanyahu went for her haircut on Wednesday evening.Credit: Moti Milrod