Gaza War Brings Back the Champions of Israel's Judicial Coup - Opinion - Haaretz.com
The great protest against the judicial coup had many achievements. It's true, the protest did not bury the attempted coup, but it served notice against the power of an unrestrained executive branch of government. The protest also sank the two people behind the coup's ideas and their implementation, Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman, pushing them into the shadows, seen or unseen, but no longer heard.
However, October 7 created another reality. The agenda changed, and with it the spectrum of opinions. That day, which could have been a day of reckoning and accountability, a taking of responsibility for the colossal failure, became an excuse for the abandonment of and disdain for any semblance of regime stability.
The massacre that the Hamas terrorists committed and the people who dispatched them created a warlike atmosphere, directed not just against the perpetrators and the people who had sent them, but against the values that have shaped this country as a liberal democracy.
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There has always been latent animosity against Arabs, and against the investigation of soldiers, because they are "combatants." But the killing of an incapacitated terrorist by Elor Azaria, and the words of Bezalel Smotrich calling for the wiping out of the West Bank town of Hawara, were, in that time, the exception.
Since October 7 there has been a change in mindset regarding security dangers, the undermining of Israel's international standing, the hostages rotting in underground tunnels under horrific conditions. A resonating voice has arisen among Israel's polity, removing the artificial sense of "standing together" while embarking on a campaign against all the public institutions and gatekeepers that are still keeping watch over the country's soul.
Thugs broke into an army base to protect soldiers suspected of war crimes; demonstrators showed up at a session of the Supreme Court, trying to silence judges with their yelling; settlers attacked a Bedouin family from the Israeli city of Rahat, trying to burn them alive; lawmaker Tally Gotliv is calling for the arrest of the military advocate general, who is charged with maintaining IDF norms. David Ben-Gurion talked about his ambition for Israel to become a "light unto the nations," while this caricature of a parliament suggests that journalist Nahum Barnea be executed for treason.
It's no wonder that under the prevailing atmosphere, with Gotliv and Limor Son Har-Melech considered legitimate Knesset members, the values of liberalism are under attack and religious ultranationalism is growing, and that in this atmosphere Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram can deliver a speech which extols the virtues of religious Zionism as values obliging the whole country, while opposing "hollow secularism."
Hiram is a loyal IDF soldier. However, his loyalty is to the divisiveness preached by the rabbis in Judea and Samaria, who embrace the process of redemption, which, in their worldview, is imminent.
Some columnists are trying to crown the militantly religious Brig. Gen. Ofer Winter as the next IDF chief of staff. If his path is blocked, he should be a cabinet minister in Netanyahu's government. Loyalty to this process does not distinguish between political and military echelons. Embracing messianic values is the important factor.
I wasn't sure that I was correct in my analysis. I was wondering if these events were all coincidental, unplanned. And then I started seeing the faces of Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman on TV screens again. In a comeback performance, Levin was demanding a return to the mother of all sins, the judicial coup, which is what brought Israel to its current state.
It's true that all eyes are cast toward the north and east. But we also have to wage war against those trying to destroy the norms of our common existence, in addition to engaging in a military campaign. In the face of the "resurrection" of Levin and Rothman, we have to revive the huge protest which overcame them in the past.