APOCALYPSE NOW: NETANYAHU HAS NOTHING LEFT TO OFFER BUT ENDLESS LIES AND TEMPER TANTRUMS

Apocalypse Now: Netanyahu Has Nothing Left to Offer but Endless Lies and Temper Tantrums

The Israeli prime minister couldn't stop lying this week – to the Americans, to the ultra-Orthodox and to families of kidnapped Israelis – but his silence on the situation in the North speaks loudest ■ The draft exemption crisis is a turning point in the relationship between Haredi voters and the parties that are supposed to represent them

March 29th, 06AM March 29th, 06AM

Panic seized the prime minister's office on Wednesday evening, after the bunch of incompetents occupying it realized that they had no more rabbits under their hats or sleight of hand that they could use to deceive the High Court of Justice and/or the attorney general and/or the defense minister across the ocean.

The atmosphere of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition losing power is reminiscent of the establishment of the Bennett-Lapid government, almost three years ago. A true Apocalypse Now. Again, something bad is happening on Netanyahu's watch. There are no more delays, spins or foul-smelling tricks. Starting April 1, tens of thousands of yeshiva students who shirk military service under the orders of their rabbis will start receiving, what calamity, draft notices. Never mind these calls – they'll refuse, demonstrate, block roads and set fire to dumpsters. What is truly awful is that down the road, money will stop flowing to these yeshivas.

Budget allocations to these seminaries, which have ballooned to gargantuan proportions under Netanyahu's sixth government, will be hit hard. When the last budget was passed, these allocations were excluded from the cuts made in other areas. The continued funding of yeshivas in which students' draft status has not been settled is expected to be blocked by the High Court of Justice. This amounts to almost 500 million shekels ($136 million) a year, according to some estimates. The coffers filled by working Israelis, who have fed the pools of shirkers and the leeches feeding off state resources will be emptied instantly. The party sometimes comes to an end, even when it's conducted under divine supervision.

The smug leaders of the ultra-Orthodox parties, who have not enjoyed such flourishing (and pillaging) as has befallen them in the fifteen months of the present government, failed in reading the deep undercurrents that have taken hold of Israeli society over the last year. The bounty coming their way made them dizzy. Their blindfolded eyes did not see the seething volcano waiting to erupt. They were in a frenzy. The blindness and obtuseness which made them support the judicial overhaul, that glorious earlier experience Netanyahu walked us through, derived precisely from their ability to legislate a Basic Law regarding Torah studies and from their drive to base kleptocracy as an inseparable part of Israeli governments for generations to come. Then came the October 7 massacre.

The war, with the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists alongside conscript soldiers, for inconceivably long durations, the multiple casualties in the army, the economic crisis, all of these were woes that passed over the ultra-Orthodox community and sharpened the sense of discrimination felt by other sectors of society. Along with the civil involvement that sprung up and grew to historic dimensions during the nine months of the attempted judicial overhaul, a new reality arose here.

The public that serves, fights, dies, works and makes a living, is no longer willing to swallow things which used to be accepted with only some murmur or feeble protest. There is no government, certainly not the current one, which is capable of legislating an abomination such as Netanyahu and his associates were plotting, a law exempting Haredim from the military draft and institutionalizes their avoidance of sharing the burden (raising the age limit for exemption to 35 was no red herring, meant to be removed as a spurious concession; it was the real deal). The public sentiment is not limited to the "center-left." It is shared by most Likud and religious-Zionist voters. Haredi politicians, used to dabbling in their overflowing fleshpots, did not adapt to the new reality. They continued expressing smugness and thickheadedness ("who has it bad here?" asked one of them), along with an unwillingness to compromise, while their rabbis, unconnected to anything Israeli, only recently threatened to emigrate/go to jail/die rather than allowing their fold to enlist.

The collapsing conception

Obviously, not all yeshiva students can be drafted, not now and not later. It's certainly possible to exempt a certain number of them, even thousands of exceptional students. Not all secular men are drafted either. The conversation must begin with the shirkers, but there is no Haredi politician who is willing to tell his voters the truth. The vast majority of yeshiva students are not stellar. In order to sustain this truth, an autonomous entity is at work, sanctifying the shirking. A veritable political Wild West. The number of potential inductees is not the basis of their calculations, nor is the obligation to study Torah. "We choose to live in a ghetto, and we'll remain there," said Rabbi Mordechai Blau this week, distilling the issue. Breaking down the walls between Haredi society and the Israel Defense Forces, the largest state organization, is the collapse of the old order, the one for the preservation of which the entire effective and decades-long industry of deception and lies was established in the first place.

The majority of Haredi society covers up this corruption. Rabbis and lawmakers continuously tout the message that military service is dangerous for the Torah, that it destroys one's soul and exposes draftees to the world of secularism, namely, to education, progress and enlightenment, God forfend. It's no coincidence that we don't see Haredi Knesset members at conventions of Haredi youth who do enlist in the army. They see this as something wrong that should not be accepted.

The draft crisis is viewed as a turning point by the Haredi electorate vis-à-vis the parties that represent it. These parties have failed by not providing a new law, a new and rock-solid exemption. The conception whereby politicians always succeed in providing the goods has collapsed. It's not just them. Netanyahu has also failed them. Perhaps another government, less hated by the public, could have provided a better result, they now think to themselves.

April 1 did not come as a surprise. But Netanyahu, a tireless procrastinator, dragged his feet, as is his wont, to the final minutes before midnight. When all avenues were blocked, cabinet secretary Yossi Fuchs, a lackey among lackeys, wrote a pathetic and shameful letter in which he assailed Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The former responded with a sharp letter in which she determined that the "blueprint" the government wished her to present to the High Court of Justice was devoid of any professional or legal underpinnings. Gallant, from the U.S., simply said that the emissary's words were a lie deriving from political considerations.

There is still no solution to the draft crisis, but a well-known modus operandi is already at work. This involves a campaign of lies and deception. Baharav-Mira and Gallant were immediately labeled as targets by the toxic apparatus serving Netanyahu, with the High Court of Justice soon becoming a target too, needless to say. Baharav-Miara's relations with the government enjoyed a period of grace after the war broke out. She was an irreplaceable pillar of support for the government, from anything related to running the war, up to dealing with large crises such as the court in The Hague. Not to be quoted, God forbid, were the recognition and thanks she received for her admitted exceptional professionalism.

It all ended on Wednesday. All the regular tweeters started singing the same tune, as if on order: the attorney general works for [New Hope politician and Netanyahu rival] Gideon Sa'ar, who appointed her. It's a fact: as soon as he resigned from the cabinet, she was placing hurdles before the government, with the aim of pushing for an election. Isn't that obvious?

What's the rush?

Netanyahu's temper tantrum and confusion were perfectly expressed this week by a single remark that any satirical program would be proud of. "I decided not to send the delegation to Washington," a Republican senator considered, "as a message to Hamas that could not rely on pressure" (which was ostensibly created by the UN Security Council resolution in which the U.S. abstained). Because the cameras of the Government Press Office were positioned behind the American guest, it is not possible to see whether he cocked an eyebrow and widened his eye a la Eylon Levy.

What did Netanyahu actually argue? That he poked a finger in the eye of the U.S. president, the "Zionist" according to him, a lover of Israel and savior in this terrible war, in order to play machismo with Hamas. "I hope that they have understood the message," the prime minister told the senator. Shortly afterwards, he folded, per accepted practice, and his office confirmed that a new date had been scheduled with the White House for the delegation's trip. Under this logic, it could be said that Netanyahu would owe his life to someone who risked himself to save him from being abused by a gang of thugs; he would slap the rescuer's face to send a message of strength to his abusers.

How many lies to tell him this week on this level alone? First, he lied that Hamas' answer to the hostage deal outline came after the UN resolution. It came before. That was despicable for its own sake, an attempt to hang his imbecilic political maneuver at the expense of the unfortunate families of the hostages, who only receive bitterness from him. Next: he then lied to that same senator, in order to try to minimize the damage in the U.S. That same day, he went on to lie about not approving the delegation's renewed departure. The White House had a field day in the media and our Pinocchio was forced to retract and somewhat shorten his immensely long nose.

The truly big lie underlies them all. Netanyahu did not delay the delegation's departure because of the U.S.' harsh action at the UN. That was only a convenient hanger. Exactly like the draft bill, exactly like the meeting with the families of the soldiers in captivity, for which he only found time almost six months into their hell in Gaza (Ronen Neutra, the father of Omer, who served here as a lone soldier and was abducted to Gaza, spoke in pain on Thursday about how he and other families of hostage soldiers who have American citizenship receive regular calls from senior White House officials to update them, show interest, strengthen and encourage them. Only the prime minister ignores them, until Thursday).

Netanyahu, like a drunken clown, is juggling all the balls in the air. He isn't trying to catch them all, but only the one that will cause him the least harm when it lands. In general: A hostage deal, or an operation in Rafah. For him, the hostages were always secondary and that is still true today. For everything presented to him in every aspect over the past six terrible months, Netanyahu chose procrastination. When forced to decide, he only decided on the basis of calculating his personal survival. The maneuver in Gaza, the hostage deal, the state budget, the draft crisis. Whatever.

After six months, it seems that his most painful and criminal procrastination after not dealing with the hostages, faces not to the south, but to the north. An entire region of the country remains in desperate limbo, which is also the border whose steadfastness will project onto the country's entire future. For Netanyahu, any region of the country is equal to the Gaza border area: superfluous and unimportant enough to enter his political equation. If only there were ultra-Orthodox men or hilltop youths on the border fence.

But a liar must not only pay attention to what he says, but to what he does not say. Between every lie about "total victory" and drivel about Rafah, Netanyahu has rarely talked about the north for a long time. The threats against Hezbollah and the Lebanese government are usually made by the IDF or Gallant. The prime minister does not publicly promise a solution to the situation in the north or its nature so as not to trap himself about a possible agreement there. It is reasonable to assume that Israel's increasing aggression and the deliberate leak of the latest IDF plans for the area ("a short and lethal war") lean more to a political calculation than a security miscalculation. The object is to push Hezbollah into a rut and restore the relevance of a diplomatic agreement under French and U.S. sponsorship. If only.

2024-03-29T03:04:53Z dg43tfdfdgfd