Israel's Deep State

[To my American readers: I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!]

                                   *          *          *

A ceasefire has been announced in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Everyone in the Middle East, from the beggar in Cairo to the citrus farmer on the kibbutz to the King of Saudi Arabia, knows that it will never hold, and that it constitutes a victory for Hezbollah. Of all the factors contributing to this disaster, one is missing from most analysis of the situation: Israel's Deep State.

Yes, Israel is ruled by its very own Deep State. And that Deep State is firmly in the hands of the Left, and thus hostile to the interests of the majority of the population, who, for lack of a better term, are “conservative” (i.e., guided by common sense).

The Deep State of Israel, its Leftist Establishment if you prefer, includes the security/intelligence apparatus, the high command of the military, the news media, academia, the cultural elite, and the judiciary. They run the country, plain and simple. The “government” led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has figurehead status only; it runs nothing of consequence.

The Israeli Deep State routinely conducts spurious investigations and other forms of lawfare over alleged wrongdoing by patriotic officials, and arrests them at will. (For in-depth coverage of these shenanigans, I recommend Caroline Glick). They kneecap the army in its conduct of war. They also work hand-in-hand with woke American and European NGOs to demoralize the population.

The Israeli judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, issues outrageous edicts at its leisure, backing the Deep State while nullifying a wide range of government policy initiatives, notably in the area of national security. Ideologically speaking, the Israeli judiciary is slightly to the left of Mao.

No one has been able to stop this robed dictatorship, until some brave souls in the Knesset (parliament) introduced judicial reform legislation to rein in the worst excesses. The Deep State rallied, organizing riots and other mischief—even in the midst of an existential war—as part of a campaign to “save democracy.” They wail and lament that the evil fascist Netanyahu and his henchmen want to extinguish human rights, heretofore safeguarded by the holy judiciary.

Does all this sound familiar? It should; the situation is roughly analagous to the first Trump administration. In both cases, the Deep State continues to pilot the ship of state, despite the nominal transfer of power. Meanwhile, the entire world thinks that the country is now “right wing,” while the Left merrily continues its agenda of mayhem.

It wasn’t always like this. Sure, Israel was always controlled by the Left, but in the old days, these elements were mostly patriots who loved the country and its people. Let’s give credit where credit is due: they built the state. The real shift in attitudes began around 1977, when Menachem Begin became prime minister. As a result of that election, the Knesset/cabinet slipped out of the Left’s control.

This could not be tolerated. The nation had to be punished for rejecting the glories of socialism. It didn’t take long for the Deep State to counterattack, committing itself to sabotaging the government. The Left hounded the country during and after its victory over the PLO in the Lebanon War of 1982, turning a decisive military win into an unnecessary quagmire (and laying the groundwork for the current Lebanon mess).

Over the next decade, the Left regained control of the Knesset, and the populist annoyance was eliminated. The table was set for the great betrayal: the Oslo Accords of 1993. This was the Left’s crowning achievement, unmatched in its treachery. The Left had set a trap from which Israel (and the Arabs, for that matter) has never been able to escape. This also marks the moment when, for the first time in the history of the state, free speech was suppressed; dissenters were persecuted as “obstacles to peace.”

In the U.S. as in Israel, the central issue, towering above all others, is this: How can the Left be stopped and ultimately neutralized? The survival of both countries—not to mention the rest of the “Collective West”—depends on it.