Intelligence Leaks and the Consequences of Israel's Resistance Coup

by Jonathan S. Tobin

• What the demonstrators are attempting is — despite their virtue-signaling about their devotion to democracy, and venting their fears about Netanyahu and his allies installing a dictatorship — nothing less than an anti-democratic coup of their own.
• President Joe Biden is supporting their efforts for reasons of his own, which have to do with Washington's desire for a weaker Israeli government that won't make trouble about appeasing Iran.
• The truth is that those... who are cheerleading for the protests, are not primarily interested in preserving the unchecked power of the judicial establishment that is essentially anti-democratic. What they want is to overturn the results of the last election, and somehow ensure that the nationalist and religious voters who gave Netanyahu a clear Knesset majority are essentially disenfranchised.
• Israel's liberal establishment fears that the leftist parties that represent its interests can never win another election, and so they have done everything they can to undermine Netanyahu with protests akin to the color revolutions that sought regime change in the former Soviet Union.
• Having succeeded in creating chaos, they now have the chutzpah to blame Netanyahu for the dangers they have brought about that are undoubtedly harming Israel's security as well as sowing dissension with its allies.
• Having convinced themselves that the lies about Netanyahu threatening democracy are true, the Israeli left and its foreign enablers may have rendered themselves insensible to the potentially catastrophic repercussions of their efforts.

Having convinced themselves that the lies about Netanyahu threatening democracy are true, the Israeli left and its foreign enablers may have rendered themselves insensible to the potentially catastrophic repercussions of their efforts. Pictured: Anti-government protesters burn pictures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 27, 2023 in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

Israel's government was doing damage control this past weekend and, for a change, it wasn't about its losing battle to pass judicial reform, dissension over the surge in Palestinian terrorism or the threat from Iran. Or at least, not directly. Instead, it was put in the unenviable position of having to deny a report published in The New York Times and widely reported elsewhere about leaks from secret Pentagon documents detailing the U.S. intelligence activity.

Continue Reading Article