Why You Shouldn’t Expect Civil Disobedience From the Right - Ha’aretz
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In the coverage of the opening of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial on Sunday, many commentators spoke about a major schism in the country that would grow wider as the trial progresses. It’s been a year and a half now that Netanyahu and his proxies have been issuing direct and indirect warnings of an uprising.
Netanyahu’s Likud colleague David Amsalem said that “if anyone decided to try the prime minister on such bizarre charges, millions of people would not accept it.” Even earlier, Likud Knesset member Miki Zohar hinted that Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit was being pressured to indict the prime minister, and that if he didn’t, “people would come to him and his home and try to harm him.”
Even Netanyahu himself warned that if the High Court of Justice disqualified him from serving as prime minister, “the masses would take to the streets.” And the inciting speech that Netanyahu delivered at the Jerusalem District courthouse prior to the beginning of his trial on Sunday can be viewed as a direct, physical threat to the country’s gatekeepers and their supporters.
Given everything that has been seen and heard, including on social media, one might believe that the State of Israel was just one step away from civil war. But so far, there’s been no evidence to support that. Demonstrations in support of the prime minister have drawn just hundreds or perhaps a few thousand people. On Sunday, the gathering of demonstrators outside the courthouse included members of organizations such as Im Tirtzu, who despise the courts without any connection to Netanyahu. The crowd included right-wing activists and purported journalists skipping around, who, according to former Meretz leader Zehava Galon, looked as if they had just returned from the New Age-tinged Boombamela festival.
The threat to the rule of law posed by Netanyahu and his colleagues is real. They can pass laws, postpone hearings, carry out political shenanigans of one kind or another and let corruption run rampant, but the prospects of a popular uprising in support of Netanyahu are slim. Ironically, the reason for this is the society that Netanyahu helped create during his five terms in office.
In recent decades, Israel has become wealthier and more individualistic. The “social polarization” that’s referred to in the media is actually the alienation on the part of citizens from civil society and the various sociopolitical battles.
The process began with the privatization of government corporations and public services. It accelerated under Netanyahu when he was finance minister and later as prime minister. The result was a wider disparity between rich and poor, along with a higher standard of living for large portions of the population. Netanyahu could justify that because he could still rely on the welfare state created by Mapai, the predecessor of the Labor Party.
There is no destitution in Israel; all strata of the population receive basic health care and education and have a roof over their heads. The erosion of the middle class has been mitigated by the rise in the standard of living.
Moreover, by cultivating identity politics, Netanyahu and his colleagues worked to erase class consciousness. Instead of revolting, people directly or indirectly rely on institutions connected to the regime. Thus we are witness to some bizarre situations, like cabinet ministers standing outside the Knesset and demonstrating against the government, or a falafel seller in Ashdod who is angry at the government but cannot bring himself to blame the person who heads it.
Netanyahu has created a political culture in which people who have reached high ranks in the Israel Defense Forces and held important jobs in academia and private companies have been shoved to the margins of the Knesset, while activists and loyalists are named ministers and to senior positions in his government. From the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as defense minister to the planned appointment of Miri Regev as foreign minister, everyone is aware that the political arena is cynical, and there’s actually no one whose “word is his bond.”
Netanyahu promoted these processes slowly, until Israeli society became corroded and cynical. Israelis diverted their civic enthusiasm from diplomatic processes, which were frozen after the Oslo Accords, to their pockets – the cottage cheese protests, for example – and individual civil rights issues, like the Surrogacy Law. When it comes to political and diplomatic issues of substance, the Israeli public stays home.
Even during the disengagement from Gaza there were cries of distress and threats that the masses would take to the streets, but there was no true uprising. The voting public, from Meretz to Yamina, is too comfortable and has too much to lose. Most Israelis don’t have a substantial problem with the structure of society or the government. This means that even sworn “Bibi-ists” won’t want to burn down the clubhouse. It’s their clubhouse, and it’s precious to them.
That’s why a commentator like Avishai Ben Haim, who distorts the theories of Antonio Gramsci to argue that the elites in Israel are persecuting Netanyahu to suppress the “Second Israel,” is perpetuating a false consciousness. After all, the goals of the Second Israel and the elites are the same – both want to preserve the existing system. The elites, whether they sit in the prime minister’s residence on Balfour Street or in the Justice Ministry on Salah e-Din Street, are still Israeli-Zionist-Jewish-military.
It’s not that Netanyahu isn’t trying to be Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Viktor Orban, but the reason his supporters would never smash the foundations has less to do with him than with Israeli society itself. Yes, part of the nation admires Netanyahu, but they sanctifies the state. Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, most Israelis prefer to refrain from unraveling the status quo that Netanyahu has created: indifference to the diplomatic situation, a rush to consumerism, and the perpetuation of nationalism. To destroy the prosecution would be a nightmare, because then Netanyahu wouldn’t be able to continue using Liat Ben Ari, Avichai Mendelblit and Aharon Barak as straw men.
Even Motti Yogev, who once threatened to sic a D-9 bulldozer on the Supreme Court, was aware that the court generally backs government decisions and its activities in the territories. The fulfillment of Yogev’s dream would be a nightmare for Israel. The Supreme Court is the last fig leaf that validates the State of Israel in the eyes of the world.
The main danger of this demagoguery is that politicians might capitulate to the empty threats issued by Netanyahu, Amir Ohana, right-wing journalists and social media activists. We’ve already seen an example of this when Benny Gantz, all 1.9 meters of him, folded under Netanyahu’s pressure. The only way to stand up to this campaign of defamation, incitement and division is to call Netanyahu’s bluff, to challenge him every time he or his envoys issue a threat, and point out his moral failings.
His supporters aren’t really itching for battle, unless the battles can be fought in the trenches of Twitter. They are privileged, committed to the system, and see themselves as pillars of society – just like their counterparts on the center and the left. Netanyahu can continue to threaten as much as he likes, but in the end he doesn’t have the public’s support, only a line of ministers wearing masks.