This is no false alarm. Netanyahu has invaded, occupied, destroyed and looted the State of Israel. If the supporters of good government, its servants and its political representatives do not wake up, it will cease to exist. From the moment criminal indictments entitled "The State of Israel versus Benjamin Netanyahu" were filed, the prime minister decided to let the country burn.
The affair of the SIM cards activated October 7 is an influence op with distinctly Russian-Putinesque characteristics. His goal is to tar the army general staff and the Shin Bet security service while they are fighting in Gaza and negotiating a hostage deal and a cease-fire that Netanyahu intends to thwart.
Last Saturday on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, the police ordered protesters carrying placards to stay on the sidewalk "to ensure safety" and "enable traffic to move on a main road." The protesters did as they were asked and two minutes later mounted police appeared and they were targeted by water cannons. In the first Hebrew city, with no provocation apart from signs saying "elections now" and "Netanyahu's guilty," elderly men, women and children were brutally attacked by thugs in uniform – including the families of hostages and one hostage who had returned from Gaza. It was a perfect metaphor.
Kobi Shabtai, the toadying police commissioner, and the police spokesman, a former journalist, blamed the events on "provocateurs" – a term that conjures up Stalinist-Putinist Russia, where the opposition leader Alexei Navalny died after he suddenly "felt ill" while taking a walk.
Seizing control of the Israel Police is Step 1 in the how-to instruction manual on tyranny. In Israel, it involved a pincer movement, neutralizing the investigations division to ensure that no further corruption cases were pursued while clearing out the top command in the field of undesirables such as Superintendent Ami Eshed, turning the police into a militia that handles political protests with an iron hand. At the same time, the Justice Ministry, to which the internal investigations division is subordinate, today exists only on paper.
This week, it should be noted, the investigators were called in to question Police Superintendent Meir Suissa, who shortly after October 7 assaulted Dr. Gideon Avital in a well-documented case of brutality. Avital, a survivor of the Yom Kippur War's Battle of the Chinese Farm, is a respected jurist and military historian. His crime was standing outside the Kirya defense headquarters in Tel Aviv with a sign that read "Netanyahu, resign." Suissa – who even before the massacre had thrown stun grenades into a crowd of protesters – knocked Avital to the ground and assaulted others.
Patriotic Israelis must consider what would happen if Netanyahu gained control of the Shin Bet. In fact, the agency reports to the Prime Minister's Office. Agency director Ronen Bar will not be there forever – he has already said he plans to resign at the end of the war.
Due to the war, the Netanyahu family already has a significant foothold in the organization via the VIP security section. His men cheerfully submit to all their whims, escorting them around the country in ostentatious convoys, maintaining a security envelope around them and protecting them from reality whether in Caesarea or Miami. The phenomenon has been over the top for a long time as business owners and passers-by on Jerusalem's Gaza Street will testify. Now, imagine the Shin Bet devoting itself entirely to the interests of the Netanyahu family.
Does all this sound imaginary, hysterical, exaggerated? Just see what has happened in military censorship under the command of Kobi Mandelblit, in the state prosecutor's office headed by the gutless Amit Aisman and with the Israel Prize, which was canceled when bereaved father Eyal Waldman was chosen to receive one. We have arrived at the stage of fight or flight.
A little more of Netanyahu's rule, and Israel will look like Jerusalem (20 out of 30 seats in the city council for the ultra-Orthodox, Haredi-nationalists and Kahanists). Benny Gantz's mild denunciations and Gadi Eisenkot's scholarly warning letters will not help here. If we don't fight for our lives now, we will no longer be able to live here.