Haaretz analysis Ben-Gvir’s Birthday Bash Marked Another Dark Day for Israeli Democracy

Haaretz analysis by Yossi Verter: Ben-Gvir’s Birthday Bash Marked Another Dark Day for Israeli Democracy

In Israel’s atmosphere of far-right anarchy, the gatekeepers are submissive and fearful ■ One of Netanyahu’s court cases involving favors for positive news coverage shows us how far he’ll go to stay in power ■ Smotrich badmouths Bennett more than he does Hamas

… The police brass, with the commissioner’s approval, gathered Saturday night in Kiryat Arba in the West Bank for a party that was clearly going to be attended by criminals, lawbreakers and thugs. Ben-Gvir has no normal friends; this is his environment. The police have internalized the commander’s spirit: They beat peaceful protesters, arrest them and humiliate them, while exchanging high fives with far-right activists Mordechai David and Roi Star.

In the West Bank, which has turned into a killing field for Palestinians, the settlers enjoy zero law enforcement. Jewish terror has never known such good times. … The Shin Bet security service is behaving the same way. Its head is doing exactly what he was appointed to do, undertaking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s revenge for the Qatargate affair and undermining the agency’s independence and norms that once existed. Shin Bet chief David Zini is dismantling the service from within, sowing fear and suspicion, freezing appointments and behaving like a dictator. He aims to remove the good people and replace them with dangerous types like himself – nationalist and messianic types who dream of the State of the Torah.

We have a government whose defense minister delays for months an indictment against a lawmaker in his party who revealed the identity of a Shin Bet agent, thereby endangering his life. We have a prime minister who protects his advisers suspected of security offenses and declines to fire a minister who refuses to appear for police questioning. We have a national security minister who protects a prisons commissioner suspected of crimes.

Amid all this, appointments critical to the functioning of democracy are weighed based on the criterion of total loyalty to the boss. The result is an atmosphere of complete anarchy.

Fear is in the air, like the smell of a corpse. The Supreme Court is afraid to make a decision in the case of the criminal Ben-Gvir. Seeking to steer clear as much as possible from the constitutional crisis that will erupt if their ruling is ignored, the justices forget that everyone is watching them – senior officials, army and police officers and lower court judges. Everyone recognizes the fear.

The message that is filtering down is also clear: It’s better not to confront the government or anger its agents who roam the streets, harassing and terrorizing. Let’s wait for this year’s general election, the justices have suggested, to hopefully extract us from the mud.

But the government’s thuggish behavior also has implications for the integrity of the election process itself. We can’t rely on the election if the agencies responsible for ensuring that it’s free and fair, notably the police and the Shin Bet, have been corrupted and serve the interests of the regime. Elections can be the cure for a disease, but they will have no efficacy if the process itself is tainted.

Continues…