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The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit also intended to use social media influencers in order to sway Israeli public opinion.
It is unclear if the IDF paid the Instagram account holders for their services. According to a source familiar with the inner workings of the unit, this is not the only time such cooperation has taken place.
In 2020, in an interview with Haaretz’s Yossi Melman, Kimhi said that his findings stand. He said that Netanyahu is a “narcissist” and an “alarmist … whose management style ignores predetermined managers and policies, and this creates noticeable flaws that are manifested in contradictory messages from those who work for him.”
Similar profiles are said to have been written by both the CIA and German intelligence years ago.
– Protesters block and march on Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv
– 50,000 protest in Haifa, police sources say
The judicial overhaul will destroy democracy, the Knesset isn’t authorized to enact such laws, and their important clauses will be struck down by the High Court: Retired justices, former attorneys general and law professors weigh
The members of Likud who could stop the carnage but continue to participate in this government will go down in history as far worse than collaborators. Petain, the ruler of Vichy France, at least believed he was saving France. I cannot believe that Nir Barkat, Avi Dichter, Gila Gamliel, Yoav Gallant, Yuli Edelsein think they are saving Israel. They know in their heart of hearts that without legitimacy, they are gambling with the entire future of the country. To you distinguished ministers and members of Knesset, I ask: Will you willingly sacrifice the country you served for the sake of a cabinet position or Knesset seat? Will you silence your conscience for that?
(10 Dec 2019)
אני מודה ל @noamr ו- @GilBahat על ה-peer review
A convoy of Israeli army veterans and former hostages who were involved in the 1976 Entebbe Operation in Uganda arrived on Wednesday to protest at Ben-Gurion Airport ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s departure to Germany for a state visit.
The convoy is part of the protest movement aimed at disrupting Netanyahu’s departure over his constitutional coup.
Recent moves by the Israeli government to undermine the power of the courts could undermine investment and spark an exodus of educated Israelis, Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron warned on Wednesday. He further declared that it was “imperative” to maintain the independence of the judiciary.
The CEO of Riskified, an Israeli fraud-prevention company, said in a staff email that the judicial overhaul could lead to an economic downturn and put Israel on the path to authoritarianism.
The deeds were filmed in many videos in which soldiers, the Border Police and vehicles of the security forces can be seen all around town. For many long hours, those forces did not stop the pogrom launched by the settlers; Palestinians who have spoken with Haaretz have said that when they tried to defend their homes, soldiers fired tear gas and threw stun grenades at them. Only at about 11 P.M. did Israeli security forces achieve control over the raging crowds. This is how the events looked.
Protests are also planned to take place at several cities across the globe, including Tokyo, London and Los Angeles.
(10 Dec 2019)
אני מודה ל @noamr ו- @GilBahat על ה-peer review
It can be very confusing when a “coup from above” takes place. On the face of it, everything looks normal. There are no tanks in the streets, and no general with a uniform sagging with medals interrupts the television broadcasts. The coup occurs behind closed doors, with laws being passed and decrees being signed that remove all restraints on the government, and dismantle all checks and balances. Of course, the government does not declare that it is carrying out a coup. It claims only that it is passing some much-needed reforms, “for the good of the people.”
– Protesters in Tel Aviv march towards city’s busiest highway, recent flash point for confrontations with police
– Protesters block access road to Ben-Gurion Airport as Netanyahu delays Italy visit
– Gantz calls on Attorney General to ban Ben-Gvir from police HQ during demonstrations
– U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with Israel’s defense minister inside airport to avoid nationwide protests
– Ben-Gvir arrives at Ben-Gurion airport: ‚I came to strengthen our forces, we won’t allow anarchy‘
– Protest flotilla of dozens of vessels set out from Haifa
– ‚No academy without democracy‘: Hundreds of students and professors demonstrate at Tel Aviv University
– IDF reservists demonstrate and block the entry to the Kohelet Forum building and offices in Jerusalem
– PM Netanyahu to travel to Italy Thursday in the midst of nation-wide demonstrations
Ever since the coup against our system of government – and the sweeping opposition to it – began, President Isaac Herzog has been doing damage to Israel’s democracy. Even if his intentions are good, at this point we have to call a spade a spade and urge him to stop.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis from different walks of life – secular and religious, left and right, Jews and Arabs – have taken to the streets to make their voices heard.
The protests themselves have spanned the northernmost tip of the country to Eilat in the far south. They have been constant in the big cities – Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa – but have also extended to isolated kibbutzim and even a couple of West Bank settlements; there are protests in city squares, historical monuments, highway bridges and hi-tech parks.
These Israelis may hail from different places and hold diverse views, if not banners, stickers and placards, but they are all united in their opposition to the government’s plans to trample Israeli democracy.
“This is a very different kind of right wing. It’s not ideological right wing or public policy right wing. This is, tragically – and I say this with tremendous sadness – something that looks a lot like a gang of thugs.”
Despite the heightened police presence and the force used by officers against protesters earlier in the week, over 180,000 Israelis protested the government’s planned judicial overhaul throughout the country on Saturday night, for the ninth week in a row.
After the demonstration ended, protesters attempted to cross the barricade that blocked off the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv. Police tried to obstruct those who broke through, but several thousand people made their way onto the main road and began marching.
(today)
Speaking at the rally in Tel Aviv, former Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin said: „This is a government of terror that crippled our national resilience. Without resilience there’s no unity. We might arrive at a civil war because of this awful government.“
What’s happening to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? The extreme mood swings reflected in both his statements and body language attest to pressure, psychological distress and loss of his senses. He quickly slips into the mindset of paranoid tyrants who live in a bubble, divorced from reality.
The bill, submitted by coalition chairman Ofir Katz, states that only the cabinet can declare a prime minister unfit or incapacitated by a two-thirds majority, and that in some cases, such a declaration would require approval by a majority of 90 lawmakers. Moreover, a declaration of incapacitation would apply to incompetence for health reasons only.
The bill is being advanced in response to the Movement for Quality Government in Israel’s petition to the High Court asking to declare Netanyahu unfit for office over a conflict of interest due to the ongoing criminal proceedings against him.
Saturday evening saw the largest protest against the far-right government’s judicial overhaul plan thus far, as the demonstrations entered their eighth consecutive week.
In addition to the main protest in Tel Aviv and the demonstration outside the president’s residence in Jerusalem, protests took place at dozens of locations throughout the country, including the Gaza border town of Sderot, the northern town of Rosh Pina, Rehovot, Eilat, Modi’in, Herzliyah, Ra’anana, Hod Hasharon, Hadera, the settlement of Efrat and dozens more bridges and junctions across Israel.
The government’s proposed legislation includes an “override clause” that would allow the smallest possible majority – 61 out of 120 lawmakers in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament – to overturn rulings by the Supreme Court. Israel does not have a constitution, and the separation between the legislative and executive branches is very weak, since the government almost always holds a majority in the Knesset.
This makes the Supreme Court the only institution with any power to review government actions and legislation passed by a parliamentary majority. Netanyahu’s government wants to strip the court of that power.
(today)
In stormy Knesset vote, Netanyahu coalition approves government control over judicial appointments and dramatically limiting Supreme Court’s ability to strike down lSixty-three lawmakers voted in favor of the bills, while 47 objected to them.
The bills, forming the core of the government’s contested judicial overhaul plan, change the composition of the Judicial Appointments Committee, which selects the country’s judges, and bar the High Court of Justice from exercising judicial review or striking down basic laws.aws
Updates
The investigation reveals extraordinary details about how disinformation is being weaponised by Team Jorge, which runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The group also works for corporate clients.
Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as “black ops”, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe.
Team Jorge, this investigation believes, works with a residential proxy provider, in order to provide its avatars with local digital identities in the form of real IPs that cannot be found by social media sites.
Team Jorge also seems to work with a cellular provider that serves AIMS in a similar manner, likely giving avatars their local numbers and supplying the infrastructure needed to grant them SMS verification.
The deliberately misleading technical infrastructure also serves to hide such actors. The process creates another layer of plausible deniability between, in this case, Team Jorge, the client and the campaign’s content, and helps them further mask the truth. Or, as Hanan put it in one presentation: „My signal is from Indonesia, the WhatsApp from Hong Kong, Telegram from Germany. And none of them are my numbers.“
From a small office building, a group of Israelis is spreading global disruption
AIPAC demands that American Jews leave their consciences and values at the door. But we will no longer automatically back a ‚pro-Israel‘ organization that supports those who subvert democracy – at home and in Israel
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee will begin a legislative blitz on Monday whose goal is to overturn Israel’s system of government. Committee chairman Simcha Rothman will try to secure passage of bills that would bar the Supreme Court from overturning unconstitutional Basic Laws and change the Judicial Appointments Committee’s composition so that representatives of the governing coalition can select the judges.
The anti-occupation bloc was also present, chanting “no apartheid government… from Sheikh Jarrah to Jenin, Palestine will be free.” Members of the group carried Palestinian and LGBTQ pride flags.
„Democracy is not built on the bodies of children. Democracy is not built on house demolitions and evictions,“ they shouted. Later in the evening, a man in the crowd reportedly attacked the bloc’s protesters and was detained by the police.
And here, not a day goes by without more business owners moving their money and their activity, or at least some of it, abroad. As a self-defense mechanism to keep its value from being destroyed. Most them aren’t declaring this. It is their own personal money that they are moving. But in the atmosphere of McCarthyism that is spreading here like the plague, they are immediately denounced as traitors. As defaming the state. Foxes in its vineyards. Journalists who report on what is happening or bring evidence from other countries that have been through similar processes are chastised and lambasted.
In a statement, the healthcare professionals‘ civil organizations said: „Israeli democracy is under brutal attack and we must not stand by. The dangerous changes promoted by the government will fatally harm the physical and mental health of the public, and healthcare in Israel. This is a matter of saving lives, and we do it out of commitment to our patients, and for the future of Israel.“
On Tuesday, protest leaders called for a shutdown of Israel’s economy next Monday in response to the far-right government’s plan to overhaul Israel’s legal system.
In the Knesset next week, the new hard-right cabinet will launch its efforts to increase the government’s representation on the Judicial Appointments Committee, the first plank in a bid to sap the strength of the Supreme Court
Anyone who derives pleasure from crudely splashing filthy water around, anyone interested in seeing what a crazy circus looks like, one that drives everyone mad and gives its audience a neurosis and a massive headache, is invited to come to the Knesset Constitution Committee, where discussions are being held on the coup against our system of government (which its sponsors dub “legal reform”).
It was a fifth weekend of mass protests in Tel Aviv and other cities, somewhat overshadowed by a bizarre social media post by a retired air force officer. According to Col. Zeev Raz, “If a prime minister stands up and assumes dictatorial powers, he’s a dead man. It’s as simple as that.”
This prime minister, who’s not quite yet a dictator, spent the weekend in Paris after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.
‚It’s important that they know their parents fought for democracy – that we fought for their future,‘ one protester who attended with her daughters and niece says
Thousands are protesting in Tel Aviv on Kaplan street, according to police estimates.
The High Court’s bombshell decision on Wednesday barred the Shas party chair from serving in the cabinet following his criminal conviction on tax evasion charges last year and subsequent suspended sentence.
In a letter read by Netanyahu at the cabinet meeting, he expressed regret over the decision and described Dery as an „anchor of experience, intelligence and responsibility.“
He was arrested after not reporting for police questioning in the wake of a tweet that he posted. The Israeli right has pegged him as an enemy of the state, for others he’s the hero of the hour. Who is ultra-Orthodox journalist Israel Frey? What drives him – and why doesn’t he regret his actions despite the high price he’s paying?
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Tens of thousands of Israelis were gathering in central Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem on Saturday to stage twin rallies against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tel Aviv District commander Maj. Gen. Amichai Ashad said in a briefing to the police on Saturday that “the policy has not changed,” and added: “We only have one interest: to allow this demonstration to take place, in its full capacity,” he said. Ashad instructed police to be “very, very sensitive, and very, very patient,” and noted that the police would only act against people who commit “vandalism and behave violently.”
At the Standing Together rally, Ayman Odeh, chairman of the left-wing Hadash party, said: „With this historic crisis there is also a huge and historic opportunity… The fascists‘ only chance is to separate us, and we won’t let them.“
After his speech, Odeh said that he was attacked by a protester. „After my speech tonight against the fascism I was verbally assaulted by a group of fscist protesters, one of them physically attacked me and was immediately pushed away by protesters around me,“ he said on Twitter.
Israel, Cohen said, will take a more pro-Russian position on the Ukraine war. Israel will not condemn Russia, he added, noting that he will speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday. The Foreign Ministry, he ceremoniously promised, will “prepare a detailed presentation to the security cabinet on the issue.”
That’s quite the statement from a man with less than 24 hours’ foreign policy experience, slated to serve as foreign minister for just a year (later returning for a further year in rotation).
The United Nations on Friday gave the Israeli right a golden opportunity and the ideal international podium in which to stand up and unequivocally declare with clarity and resolve what they claim to believe: that something the world calls “occupation” is not temporary but permanent. Instead, true to character, they whine, lament and moan. Instead of owning it, they cry foul.
For an entire year, from June 2021 to June 2022, he led a campaign of incitement, vilification and calls for insurrection against the outgoing government.
By means overt and covert, in violation of all rules of the game both in parliament and on the street, through violent thugs operating with his tacit blessing. His methods should be learned in every school for budding dictators, and every fascist cadet course.
Auch mit Deutschland soll es zumindest Gespräche gegeben haben, geht aus den Haaretz vorliegenden Dokumenten hervor. Neben den USA und Australien soll es zudem Kontakt mit Singapur gegeben haben, einem nicht-demokratischen Staat. Ob die Länder tatsächlich Produkte von Toka einsetzen, ist nicht bekannt.
Der Markt für vernetzte Geräte wie Videokameras, Kühlschränke und Autos wächst seit Jahren kontinuierlich an.
In his second comeback, Netanyahu has a chance to realize his old fantasy and land a knockout to liberal democratic Israel.
On Saturday, police in Haifa detained for questioning three Arab protesters who waved Palestinian flags and, on the same day, other police stopped a performance by the Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar in the Christmas Market in the village of Kafr Yasif, claiming that his songs incite the state (See page 3).
These events are serious. They signal a change for the worse in the attitude, bad to begin with, toward the Palestinian minority, and they seem to be an attempt to criminalize Palestinian identity. The song that led police to stop Nafar’s show was “Salam Ya Sakhbi” – about violence in Arab society.
The painful truth for American Jews is that while they have tended to worship Israeli Jews, their “cousins” have, historically, returned this feeling with a combination of amusement and contempt.
To paraphrase Ben-Gurion: Every Hebrew mother should know that she has placed her children’s fate in the hands of a prime minister, other politicians and a school system that are unworthy of it. If there was ever a justification for a civil rebellion (not violent, but also not so polite and photogenic as the social protests of the summer of 2011), here it is – in all its sickening glory.
The echoes of the explosions of the coordinated attacks in Jerusalem were still ringing, and the area had not yet been cleaned of the blood and broken glass. Politicians, seeing the promised land of power before their eyes, pounced on the opportunity they were given. Otzma Yehudit urged Likud members to stop with this “nonsense” of negotiating over forming a coalition (meaning: yield to all their demands). Religious Zionism repeated their demand that Benjamin Netanyahu convene the heads of all the relevant parties in a closed room and wrap things up. Needless to say, for the sake of security.
Israel’s new junior high school civics curriculum highlights Jewish aspects of Israel and the power of the government while reducing the focus on civil and human rights, the status of the Arab minority, judicial oversight, equal rights and other components of democracy.
According to sources in the Education Ministry, the curriculum, which was formulated over the past year by five members of the curriculum committee (all Jews, and three are religiously observant), is expected to serve as a basis for a new high school civics program in the future. It is pending final approval.
In recent years, Israel has become terrifyingly more extreme. Everything we were warned about is happening right before our eyes.
In his desperation to vacuum up every last vote on the right, to establish a government pliant enough to interfere with, if not quash, his criminal trial, Netanyahu engineered a political path to bring the far right in from the cold. He has diligently mentored their fortunes, even hosting Ben-Gvir at his home in Caesarea.
This is extremely rancid geopolitics on the Saudis’ and Russians’ part. The former are cynical, intent on raising the price of oil and increasing revenue. They’re also a political ingrate in their relationship with the United States. With the Russians, it’s all about creating discord between the United States and European Union in the hope that the EU will pressure Ukraine into accepting annexations by Russia and achieve a cease-fire.
The United States and the EU must now realize a strategic fact of life: They have no ally in OPEC.
It would be interesting to know whether there will ever be a moment when supporters of the two-state solution will acknowledge that it is unfeasible, and when they will internalize that Israel is a binational state. After all, no official declaration will be issued. There will never be an official declaration. The Israeli government will not announce “in shock, with great sadness and deep sorrow,” as in Eitan Haber’s announcement of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the death of the two-state solution, the death of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and its rebirth from the ashes as a binational apartheid state.
(26.09.2022)
in 2018, Netanyahu he okayed Germany’s sale of submarines to Egypt, but refused to tell why – even to the then-defense chief Ya’alon. The reason behind his concealment might be the biggest question yet to be answered by the State Commission of Inquiry
Although there is a certain logic in putting together all the corruption charges against Netanyahu, it is now clear that the decision of former Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit to do so has contributed to slowing down the process. Add to that the support by the High Court of Justice that no legal obstacle prevents Netanyahu from serving as prime minister despite his trial – the result is complete chaos.
Breaking News, Analysis and Opinion From Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World
The role of the High Court is to oversee and restrain the Shin Bet, not to become its abject servant. This week the court showed it fails in this duty, and also made a laughingstock of itself.
6:45 pm IDT
Forty-nine Palestinians have been killed as a result of the latest military escalation between Israel and Islamic Jihad, which lasted three days. They include five girls, 11 boys and four women.
Thirty were killed during Israeli strikes. Of those, 17 were civilians, among them three girls, a boy and four women. Botched launches of Palestinian rockets killed 19 non-combatants, including 12 children.
European lawmaker Sophie in ‘t Veld, who is a member of the Pegasus inquiry committee, told Haaretz: “If just one company has 14 member states for customers, you can imagine how big the sector is overall. There seems to be a huge market for commercial spyware, and EU governments are very eager buyers. But they are very quiet about it, keeping it from the public eye.”
(…)
“We know spyware is being developed in several EU countries. Not least Italy, Germany and France,” in ‘t Veld said. “Even if they use it for legitimate purposes, they have no appetite for more transparency, oversight and safeguards. Secret services have got their own universe, where normal laws don’t apply. To an extent, that has always been the case, but in the digital era they have become all-powerful, and practically invisible and totally elusive.”
It seems that there is no better, no more characteristic demonstration of the huge gap between the aggressively marketed image and what really occupied Netanyahu in his years at the helm. He is obviously not the only politician who likes the proximity of tycoons. Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert also liked being close to rich people and the pampering they could provide.
(Jul 1, 2022)
The second consensus – which is both more important and more interesting – is that absolutely no one in Likud, from the most junior member to the most senior, failed to cite Kahol Lavan Chairman Benny Gantz, the current defense minister, as the person they are counting on to complete the tally of 61 Knesset seats that Netanyahu needs to form a government.
It capped a week that symbolized everything that was bad about it during the little over a year it was in power: a fractured coalition, too many of whose heads were convinced they were destined to be prime minister and waged an endless campaign, mainly against one another; a coalition with too few responsible adults and too many opportunists. Above all, however, it was a coalition faced with an opposition the likes of which we have never seen: violent, vulgar, brutal, cynical, without a drop of empathy for human suffering, no matter where; that spits on the general public, including its own voters. An opposition without any red lines but with a personality cult; that is captive to a single person who seeks to escape his trial and who along the way turns every stone and scorches every bit of earth in order to completely destroy the young experiment known as Israeli democracy.
Lapid will likely seek to avoid pointless military escalation, and may rely on experienced brass until the election. He may even make a left-wing overture and meet the Palestinian president
In both style and content, Lapid’s and Bennett’s speeches distilled what is best about the government of change and served as a reminder, by way of contrast, of everything Israel left behind when Benjamin Netanyahu lost power and everything that threatens it should he regain it – a return to a politics and a public discourse of incitement, division, mudslinging, humiliation, intimidation, lies and manipulation; a return to assaults on the justice system, the police, the media and the opposition; a return to the persecution of human rights organizations and incitement against Arab citizens and their representatives in the Knesset.
This is not just about damage to Israel’s image. This is a definitive incident that revealed the full ugliness of life under Israel’s occupation. No PR in the world can repair the damage, because there is no “narrative” that justifies the Israel Police’s conduct.
This is not only about contempt for the pain and grief of the Palestinians; it is about a fundamentally wrong attitude toward the Palestinian flag. This is the flag of the Palestinian Authority – an entity established as part of a deal with Israel, a deal that among other things enshrines the security cooperation that Israel has enjoyed for almost 30 years – and it is recognized by the whole world, including Israel.
Conspiracy theories aside, it’s still apparent that Israel and Russia have some common interests – something that is seemingly inconceivable – and these interests are opposed to those of the United States and Iran.
In recent days, Russia has imposed conditions on its consent to a new nuclear deal with Iran. It is demanding an American promise that the sanctions that Washington has imposed on Moscow won’t apply to Russian relations with Iran.
Oh, how the wheel turns
In recent weeks, Netanyahu has had an opportunity to look in the eye of one of those witnesses, Nir Hefetz. But, with the exception of a few hours at the start of Hefetz’s testimony, he chose not to do so. Perhaps because the testimony gave the prosecution exactly what it was looking for. Perhaps because the trial is progressing just as it would in Netanyahu’s worst nightmares.
Those statements may sound strange. Anyone following discussion of the trial on the social media sees views that range from “the trial is collapsing” (Bibi-ists) to “What’s going on there?” (the rest of the world).
(22.11.2021)
„Who did not see with his own eyes the level of control he exercised in this area can not realize it.“
The ex-adviser called his former employer „someone who would be beyond obsession with control. His entourage knows he should never be disturbed, except for anything related to the media. He wants to know everything, down to the smallest detail. Even when he was in security meetings, he demanded that he be passed notes.“
(22.11.2021)
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu asks for permission to be excused from the remainder of the testimony of Nir Hefetz, his former aide-turned-state’s witness, in his criminal trial.
(22.11.2021)
Detailing how the then-prime minister tried to use Elovtich’s “gift” of the Walla site, Hefetz said that Netanyahu was a “control freak” when it came to his public image, and that “he could not be more controlling in all matters relating to the media and his social media channels.”
“He demands to know everything, down to the smallest detail,” Hefetz said, confirming that Netanyahu himself made the requests to change coverage at Walla.
The corruption trial of Benjamin Netanyahu took a dramatic turn Monday with the arrival of Nir Hefetz – former close aide and confidant, spin doctor, and, now, key state witness against his former boss
key prosecution witness in former Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial began testifying on Monday, one week later than planned, telling the court that the former prime minister was heavily fixated on media coverage of himself.
Nir Hefetz, a former media adviser to Netanyahu and his family, will testify in all three of the corruption cases against the former prime minister. His testimony is therefore expected to continue for quite some time.
Why does UAE – one country with a joint federal military, police and security force, need two separate NSO spyware systems held by two different leaders?
According to the prosecution’s statement, the new information is not directly connected to the testimony of state witness Nir Hefetz, a former aide of Netanyahu’s. In the wake of the announcement, Hefetz’s lawyers asked the Jerusalem District Court to postpone their client’s testimony scheduled for Tuesday.
The man who will take the witness stand in Jerusalem’s District Court on Tuesday is a refined embodiment of the Israeli power structure. Nir Hefetz was once the right-hand man of the country’s three dominant alpha males: former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes and one-time tycoon Nochi Dankner.
There’s no better indicator of the judgment and moral compass of the men who presided over the nation’s government, media and economy.
The „Pegasus Project“ investigation concluded that people across 50 countries had been targeted for potential surveillance, in what Amnesty and the media organizations said highlighted attempts to silence activists and a free press.
Yuli Edelstein did it, big-time. He said out loud what other senior Likud politicians have been whispering to journalists “not for attribution” – that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no chance of being able to form a government even after the next election. Edelstein broke the fear barrier.
I would like to address the issue of supervising phone hacking technology that is being exported by NSO Group and Cellebrite. As a former Cellebrite employee, I can say from personal experience that the company does nothing to prevent the abuse of its products by customers. It knowingly sells products and services to users of dubious repute, belonging to autocratic regimes.
Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International had access to a leak of more than 50,000 records of phone numbers that NSO clients selected for surveillance. According to an analysis of these records by the group and its partners, more than 180 journalists were selected in 21 countries by at least 12 NSO clients.
The Supreme Court is currently deliberating over Haaretz’s petition, drafted by attorney Tal Lieblich, to release transcripts of cabinet and ministerial committee meetings on the coronavirus. For more than a year, this battle has been wending its way through the courts. In addition to its demand that the full transcripts be released for public scrutiny, the petition seeks to mount a challenge in principle to a rule that automatically defines all ministerial meetings as classified – a rule that leads to documentation being buried in the archives for at least 30 years.
After 12 years in power, MK Benjamin Netanyahu adopted more than a few traits of this type: He turned the members of the government and cabinet into rubber stamps and concentrated power and numerous types of authority in his office. He undermined the principle of the separation of authorities, and especially the independence of the justice system and law enforcement, he compartmentalized the executive branch, cultivated a personal and familial cult of personality, ascribed to himself superhuman qualities, quashed the political competition in Likud and became his party’s supreme leader.
Netanyahu does a little walkabout in the plenum, glad-handling Likudniks. Interestingly, he ignores Nir Barkat whose already launched his own unofficial Likud leadership campaign.
Cohen was asked about his relationship with Packer following a Haaretz investigation, which revealed he had received a $20,000 gift for his daughter’s wedding, though the figure cited in ‚Uvda‘ was lower.
The recently retired Mossad chief, who is a close confidant of outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also asserted that „everything was done in consultation and with the approval of the attorney general“ and that Packer wanted to give „much more.“
Everyone knew it at once. Some Israelis hated the idea, others saw it as a blessing in disguise. After all, even if Israel had already lost the war, even if parallel lynch mobs of Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews were out for rival blood; even if in Israel synagogues were torched and a Muslim cemetery desecrated and sacred texts firebombed to ash, Netanyahu’s death grip on power had been rescued. By Hamas. And by the Jewish scumbag fascist supporters of terror whom Netanyahu had spent recent months coddling and courting and campaigning for.
The facts are simple: Hamas is good for Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is fabulous for Hamas. He never intended to “topple” its rule. He keeps strengthening this organization, intentionally, to weaken Israel’s interlocutors in the PA.
Hamas-Gaza is a perfect exemplar of the basic concept Ehud Barak coined in his day, and which has kept the left in the political margins for the past 20 years: There is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. This is exactly what Netanyahu wants. Hamas and Netanyahu are a long, stable, profitable romance.
But amid the pressure from the harsh state of current events, Bennett stated Thursday that a government of change was no longer on the agenda. Instead of standing in the breach during an emergency, he folded and paved the way for the worst option of all: The continued reign of the person responsible for the horrible state our country is in.
Twenty-nine chaotic and nightmarish months, during which Israel has been dragged kicking and screaming into four elections by a cynical, unrestrained, corrupt and corrupting leader, might soon come to an end. Maybe even next week. A disgraceful, dark chapter in the country’s 73 years will end.
For the prime minister, it’s all about him. Always. For him, Holocaust Remembrance Day is just another opportunity to make a political speech, a self-serving tirade. As a bonus encore, just to make things even more politicized, this year’s speech also included a warning to President Joe Biden on Iran.
Israel, Mr. Netanyahu declared, “will not be committed” to a new agreement with Iran, if such an agreement is reached as a result of renewed nuclear negotiations. In Mr. Netanyahu’s world, the year is always 1938, Iran is Nazi Germany, the world is intoxicated with appeasement and he is the improved reincarnation of Winston Churchill.
The testimony of former Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua, who alleges that Benjamin Netanyahu sought favorable coverage in exchange for regulatory relief for Walla’s owners Bezeq, is set to continue in the third day of the prime minister’s trial, just 24 hours after President Reuven Rivlin reluctantly tasked him with forming a government.
Yes, the statesmanlike one with the good looks and down-to-earth air, who has been seen washing floors and making coffee over a bonfire, all with a faux-bashful smile. He’s the person who has repeatedly prevented the country from returning to a path of sanity. This time he has relocated to the New Hope party, under the leadership of a new sucker called Gideon Sa’ar. But the ploy is the same ploy. This time too, one of the greatest obstacles to forming a government of change is Hendel’s refusal to form a coalition supported by the legitimate representatives of Israel’s Arab citizens.
But no attempt to tar the investigation as antisemitic and wage a campaign against the court can serve as a substitute for Israel’s obligation to conduct its own honest investigation into the incidents that gave rise to the complaint against it, halt the kinds of actions that put it on a collision course with the international community and cooperate with the court. A state that doesn’t consider itself to be guilty has no need to fear an investigation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose moaning bellowed out of our radios Monday morning, was at his absolute worst: crude, lying, taunting, humiliating and slandering. Not something pleasant to listen to with your morning coffee.
But mostly he sounded stressed out and frustrated.
At least Trump wasn’t stalking congressional Democrats to lure them into his camp. But to agitate, bribe and rule is the life’s blood of Netanyahu’s doctrine.
Netanyahu hasn’t merely adopted a policy of divide and conquer, the essence of colonialism, but has upgraded it, including against his own people. He has succeeded in sparking disputes within and breaking down nearly every party institution that stood in his way. He identifies his rival’s weak point, applies pressure, and the rest is history.
In the first 100 days of its imaginary government, the left would carry out a revolution. Mainly, not entirely, in its relation to the occupation, the topic that defines Israel’s identity more than any other. The first resolution passed by the left-wing government would end the siege of the Gaza Strip. In one day, as with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Strip would be liberated, its 2 million inhabitants would be free people. The sea would be open, and the border with Israel would be open and controlled. …
In essence, the left stands on three legs: the adherence to the principle of equality among all human beings, the opposition to the state’s expropriating nature of the state on both sides of the Green Line, and the striving for a society in which capital would not dominate and profits and commodoties cease to determine the value of human beings and their lives. The linkage between them explains why the left is so shrunken, having so few options for voting.
Labor was on the brink of extinction only a couple of weeks ago. Now it’s Meretz’s turn to signal polling distress. Why are Israel’s old parties of the left, once in power, now on life-support?
A year ago, Netanyahu waived his parliamentary immunity after he realized that in the Knesset elected in September 2019, he had no chance of receiving immunity. But the prime minister’s lawyers recently claimed in court that he never waived his right to parliamentary immunity, saying that the Knesset’s immunity proceedings were flawed.
It’s hard not to feel uncomfortable when we hear Gantz – who gave Netanyahu the government, betraying his voters and his partners – trying to look like someone worried about the future of the “Anyone But Bibi” camp and trying to serve as a strategic adviser.
In a speech far harsher than any delivered by a rival from the left, Elkin confirmed what Netanyahu’s fiercest enemies had been claiming all along: The prime minister had subordinated the good of the country, including its fight against the coronavirus pandemic, to his endless quest to avoid standing trial for criminal corruption.
(22.12.2020)
The coronavirus pandemic is dangerous enough on its own – but adding the considerations of a prime minister who is a criminal defendant trying to escape justice, the result is systematic disregard for the population
If the High Court does not examine the Jewish nation-state law according to norms external to the Israeli system and in accordance with criteria derived from consensual universal and international norms and values, it will justify the existence of a regime of constitutionally-mandated segregation for every ethnic dominating group trying to grant itself exclusive supremacy in any country, not only the Jewish people in Israel.
“This system allows authorities to follow everything someone does online, and even permits them to manipulate the website these users visit,” said ethical hacker Noam Rotem, from the CyberCyber podcast. “This system allows tracking of each and every citizen or resident of Israel. But it’s not just that; the system is built in such a way that it can also follow intentions or motivations, and not just specific people. For example, it can track everyone who visited the website of the protest movement against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and can even block the real website and change what people are seeing,” Rotem said.
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Let me be clear, I’m not saying that Netanyahu wants people to get sick or die. He wants the pandemic to not disappear. He does not want a return to normal. He wants the emergency period to continue, for chaos to reign, for businesses to open and close like an accordion, and for the Israeli public to cry out to the heavens: Save us, Bibi. Save us like you saved us from the dreaded nuclear threat from Iran. After all, Bibi, the world expert in sowing fear and anxiety, has no equal when it comes to spurring terrified voters to cast their ballots for Likud.
It’s important for me to be precise, because I know the mechanisms of thought enforcement in my political camp, which will want to turn my words into support for Netanyahu. I firmly oppose the lockdown, but the fact that Israel is enforcing it by using the army doesn’t make the paratroopers’ presence at checkpoints proof that “the dictatorship is already here.” Certainly no more than the curfew in Spain and the soldiers patrolling the streets there were proof of Franco’s return.
Today, none of them would even trust an agreement to buy a bicycle from him. They’ll turn their backs on him when the scent of his weakness strengthens, at which point the Bibi-ists will call them a radical leftist faction financed by the New Israel Fund.
The haters of the old elite and Mapai followed Netanyahu because he promised to destroy these groups – and indeed in this realm he has chalked up a few achievements.
A new amendment to the coronavirus law is meant to enable the cabinet to prevent demonstrations outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. This is a dangerous amendment that undermines Israel’s democratic character. Virtually its only purpose is to give the cabinet the power to prevent people from protesting in the places where they have been doing so until recently.
Carmil resents a comparison with the NSO Group. “I know the people at NSO and appreciate their know-how, but Cellebrite works in the legitimate world of the police force, whose abilities are closely controlled, unlike the world of NSO customers and others who engage in illegal and concealed activity. Cellebrite is totally on the good side, where court orders are used. We do not make tools for breaking into private entities or espionage organizations.”
If it were possible to get an answer from God, I would ask him at this time, between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, what sin did we commit to deserve such a heavy punishment?
Israel is a banana republic, from top to bottom. The cabinet ministers don’t obey the coronavirus czar, the public doesn’t (fully) comply with the directives, the prime minister lies like he breathes and so on. This has an upside. Contrary to many people’s deep fears, real fascism will never take hold here: Someone will fail to send the fax with the correct spelling of the head of the opposition, or the bus driver for the reeducation camps will fail to wake up in time in the morning.
Thousands of Israelis gathered on Saturday evening outside the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem and at other locations around the country for the 11th consecutive week, calling on the prime minister to resign in light of his ongoing corruption trial
Outside Netanyahu’s fanatic base, no one in his right mind believes Netanyahu anyway. A poll released on Sunday by Channel 13 revealed that 50 percent of the Israeli public assumes that Netanyahu’s top priority in running the country is to is avoid his upcoming criminal trial, currently slated to start in January. Only 18 percent believe that Netanyahu’s actions stem from love of country and another 14 percent cite ideological differences with the center-left.
For too long we haven’t heard on the main news shows the dozens of medical experts who say we are walking on shaking ground that will topple us into a yawning abyss when the state closes down. They’ve made a mockery of Profs. Yoram Lass, Eyal Shachar, Idit Matot, Dr. Amir Sachar and many, many others, hid them deep down under the layers of horror, from which the coronavirus czar sprouted. There are no piles of dead bodies, so many people on ventilators that the hospitals cannot cope, enormous numbers of patients in critical condition forming a bottleneck in the hospitals. And it’s doubtful there ever will be.
(19.07.2020)
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, however, has his eyes firmly set on the future. He is openly campaigning to succeed Trump as the party’s leader and to be its candidate in 2024.
„I tried to film the cops, and then they decided to arrest me,“ said photographer Tomer Appelbaum after the incident, which was captured on video. „One punched me, one kneed me and one shoved my head.“ Some of his equipment was damaged, he said.
The swearing-in will take longer than usual, both due to the emergency regulations and the surfeit of ministers, some of whom won’t have any idea what they’ll be doing in the cabinet. If the event could have a soundtrack it would probably be a requiem – a mass for the democratic rules of the game that somehow survived here for 72 years.
Eleven High Court justices unanimously legitimized the strangest, most warped governing coalition ever engineered in a political laboratory. We’ll never know if the gun pointed at their heads – the threat of a fourth election – affected their judgment.
“The disappearance of Labor and Meretz would mean the elimination of the only alternative on the left side of the political map,” writes my contemporary Uzi Baram (“Don’t be so quick to toss out the Zionist left,” Haaretz, January 20). And I ask him: Where were you and your friends during all those years when your camp held power in the country and paved the way for the extreme right that holds power today? They are only continuing the path you began, and doing so openly and also openly saying: “Truly the Lord has delivered all the land into our hands; and moreover all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of us.” But you did and you lied, you did and you deceived.
The immediate theater of friction with Iran isn’t its nuclear program but Soleimani’s legacy of military entrenchment in Syria.
On this score, despite the apparent lull in incidents in recent weeks, Military Intelligence thinks an opportunity has been created to accelerate the pace of attacks against Iran and its allies. And it has urged Israel to seize this opportunity despite its assessment that Iran and Hezbollah will respond militarily if any of their people are killed.
Attorney General Avihai Mendelblit formally submitted Benjamin Netanyahu’s 3-count indictment for corruption, fraud and breach of trust to the Knesset on Monday. Netanyahu now has 30 days to ask for parliamentary immunity. If time runs out, or if Netanyahu is refused, as currently seems likely, the pending indictment will automatically be formalized, Netanyahu’s three judges will be picked and a date for his trial will be set.
Unfortunately, history teaches that the current legislative branch has ceased to be a separate entity that can help balance the executive branch; it’s an arm of the cabinet. In effect, of the three branches of modern democracy, only two remain.
Like an obstinate commander who refuses to internalize his terminal condition, he manufactures in his feverish mind divisions and squadrons and sends them to the front. The force commanders surrounding him, whether for fear of his wrath or out of empathy and pity, play along with him. They come and go, pretending to be doing things, pretending that as long as he’s there, there’s hope. He looks at their faces and wonders what’s going through their heads. Who will defect, who will betray. Who will rise against him. …
Netanyahu’s unbridled and untethered election campaign outlined the shape of things to come if he wins: The slow and agonizing death of Israeli democracy
The importance and value of the Joint List at the present political-historical junction are greater than the sum of all the human traits, mistakes and flaws of its representatives.
Casting a ballot does not mean recognition of the state that was forced on you, but just the opposite: By voting you are forcing it and its institutions to acknowledge you, as natives of this country.
But yes, it is newsworthy, because we must continue believing that other ordinary people are reading what we write, people who are not yet speaking out. Maybe something about the gradual nature of the violence rings a bell with them: First they came for the socialists, then they came for the Jews, but we weren’t those things, so we remained silent. Then came the turn for the others, and we continued to be silent. And when thugs attacked us, there was no one left to protect us.
On Sunday, he said, he left work and noticed he was being followed. „I assumed they were police who had come to arrest me,“ said Pollak, who is also active in the organization Anarchists against the Wall. „I went into a place where I could avoid them but they got to me and pushed me to the floor,“ he says. He took some blows but after scratching his face with the knife, he says, they seemed to get spooked and fled.
Pollak did not complain to the police because „that is the last entity in the world I would turn to for protection. That’s simply not its job.“
But diplomatic “achievements” like the Bundestag decision are not just a distraction from Israel’s real problems that the Netanyahu government continues to ignore. They also remove a nonviolent Palestinian method of protest, and as a result are likely to cause damage to the future relations between the two peoples and to the security of Israeli citizens. Even those who are not convinced of the purity of the political motivations of the BDS movement must understand that the delegitimization of nonviolent Palestinian protest pushes the Palestinians, who are fighting for their national liberation, toward violence.
One of the most significant threats to Jewish nationalism, as expressed in the nation-state law, is Arab representation in the Knesset, according to a portion of the Israeli population. So I tell you, the Arab citizen: Do not give the right-wing government a prize – despair and isolation. You all have the political power to reshape public discourse in Israel by participating in elections. Use it.
And to all the citizens of Israel, from every tribe, I call to join the struggle against the elimination of democracy, to develop an Israeli society, pluralistic and prosperous, with the participation of minorities in the economy and in politics.
That might be a bigger deal, as Haaretz is a major Israeli newspaper, and having a foreign ambassador to Israel publicly condemning an Israeli paper for criticizing an incident that happened inside Israel is likely a diplomatic faux pas, and further presents the US role within Israel as politically aligned with one faction’s narrative.
Das könnte eine größere Sache sein, da Haaretz eine große israelische Zeitung ist, und einen ausländischen Botschafter in Israel zu haben, der eine israelische Zeitung öffentlich verurteilt, weil sie einen Vorfall in Israel kritisiert hat, ist wahrscheinlich ein diplomatischer Fauxpas und stellt außerdem die Rolle der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika in Israel als politisch auf die Erzählung einer Fraktion abgestimmt dar.