Yoav Gallant's removal as defense minister left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's milieu without a single independent person of substance. The Haredim are subordinate to their rabbis, and their relationship with the government is in any case strictly functional. Give them what they need, and you can do as you please with the judiciary, the media, the military, Gaza and the hostages. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and the settlers have political power, but in any event they've been partners since the gay days of the Oslo Accords.
Israel Katz is a scarecrow, but of the bumbling type that even birds laugh at. His appointment as defense minister proves that from Netanyahu's perspective, the real war is pretty much over. In other words, the big threats have been removed; now – after the military, which has retained something of the Israel of old, saved his butt from their joint debacle of October 7 – he can start beheading its leaders. Yes, dismantling the IDF and the other defense agencies in the way the other state institutions were handed over to agents of breakdown (the judiciary to Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the police to Ben-Gvir, the media to Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi).
And, as in every revolution, after the old world is destroyed will come what Netanyahu's former chief of staff, Nathan Eshel, who remains a confidant, promised this summer: "As soon as the war ends, we'll hold a handover ceremony of the elites."
And indeed, on the TV program "The Patriots," Irit Linur told Minister David Amsalem, who is leading the drive to fire the attorney general, that firing her isn't enough, because what about her deputy Gil Limon? And what about all the others of her ilk throughout the Attorney General's Office?
Ironically, Amsalem seems to be less steeped in Bibi-ist ideology than Linur. He still believes the problem has to do with Gali Baharav-Miara specifically and the direction she provides. He doesn't understand that the intellectuals of Bibi's revolution – it's worth noting that converts from the left, like Gadi Taub, star in this – are plotting a class inversion through the length and breadth of government institutions, as befits the historical farce of the dictatorship of the proletariat. What can you do? Amsalem's just a proletarian who was parachuted into the Justice Ministry. He's not an Ashkenazi genius like Linur and Taub, who are drafting the Bibi-ist manifesto for the Mizrahi proletariat.
Justified proletarian-ethnic anger is not fueling an appropriate and necessary correction; rather, it is serving a revolutionary program whose core is the complete dismantling of institutions. And that's exactly what will happen after the inversion is completed. There will be no functioning institutions open to all, headed by people from diverse backgrounds. There will only be skeletons and facades of institutions that cannot function because they were converted into systems that serve the revolution, not the state.
Do you want a peek at a state without police? Here's a news item from Thursday: The police have cut back on enforcement, and more Israelis are dying in traffic accidents. Or a state without an Education Ministry? Look at how Israeli students' performance in math and science has plummeted.
This week, I gave my email to a bank clerk. "With a Haaretz email address, you're lucky you got me," he told me in all seriousness. His colleagues would have treated me as if I worked for an enemy organization, he explained. A colleague admitted to me that he once boasted of working at Haaretz, but today he hesitates before identifying himself as an employee of the paper. And indeed, Amsalem said in the same interview that Haaretz journalists should be arrested.
Judging by my sampling of reality this week, it seems the ground is already prepared. Show trials of government opponents for trivial acts of protest have already begun.
Next on the docket will be the heads of the military and the security agencies on October 7, the attorney general, left-wing journalists, the investigative TV program "Uvda," the satirical program "Eretz Nehederet," the panic-mongering TV stations, the judges, etc. In short, everyone who used to be part of the elite and must undergo reeducation until they learn to fall in line with the values of the Bibi-ist revolution.