Netanyahu Warns: Israel Is on the Brink of a Military Coup

On Thursday night, a pale Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an eight-minute speech to the nation about the crisis we are in (Netanyahu Addresses the Nation on Judicial Reform, Refusal to Serve and Democracy). One line in the speech struck me as a Salvador Allende cry for help, bringing to mind a long list of democratically-elected rulers, often by a significant majority, who were crushed by military uprisings. The line was:

“When elements in the military try – with threats – to dictate policy to the government, this is unacceptable in any democracy, and if they succeed in dictating their threats, this is the end of genuine democracy.”

I never voted for Bibi, and I’ve been critical of his zigzagging and his chronic failures to keep promises. But I always trusted his steadfastness and resilience, his ability to come up on top many more times than not in his more than two decades in government.

I’ve never seen him anguished and afraid. Until Thursday night. In that key line, Bibi was not talking about the anarchists, nor about pilots who refuse to show up for their reserve service. He was pointing to “elements in the military,” the colonels who have taken over democratic countries, taking advantage of political crises, in Turkey, Greece, and Chile, under the guise of “saving democracy.”

The military coup has one mastermind, devoting enormous amounts of money, in the hundreds of millions, to push hordes of dedicated Israelis who remind me of the zombie armies in a Hollywood movie with their incessant cries of “Busha, busha,” their annoying zambooras, and the fact that 99% of them wouldn’t be able to explain what’s a reasonability clause, never mind explain how it would destroy democracy as we know it.

The mastermind is Ehud Barak, a narcissist who imagines the image of Jewish bodies floating in the Yarkon River as the opening scene for his glorious return to power. We have the video.

This is going to be a long diatribe, folks, brace yourselves.

MK Eichler’s Prophecy

Back in February 2016, in an extensive interview with United Torah Judaism MK Israel Itzhak Eichler (MK Eichler: If I Didn’t Trust God, I’d Have Fled Israel Long Ago), I asked him if the Haredim are prepared to run the country someday, given their burgeoning demographics. Going back to that interview I was stunned by the harsh accuracy of MK Eichler’s reply:

“We’re very afraid of taking control of the state. First, because as soon as we’ll say we want to take over, make no mistake about it, the other side, the anti-religious, will forget all the rules of democracy and all the moral values — like that cat who was trained to serve as waiter at a ball, until it spotted a mouse — on the day the secular papacy understands that there exists such a danger, the entire IDF weaponry will be utilized to defeat the ‘Jewish Hamas’ and ‘Jewish ISIS.’”

Give that one three OMGs.
MK Israel Eichler / Miriam Alster / Flash 90
Eichler then reminisced about a conversation he had with the late Justice Minister Yosef (Tommy) Lapid. Here goes:

“I complained once to a former justice minister about the activism of the courts, who were intervening in legislation without the authority to do it, disregarding the separation of powers. So, he told me, ‘Listen, forget this nonsense. When we realized that [Sephardi Haredi Shas party Chairman] Aryeh Deri and Rav Ovadia [Yosef] brought in 17 Knesset mandates (in the 1999 election), and you (UTJ) are getting stronger, we realized you were going to conquer our state. And we had two options: either declare a military coup d’état or a judicial coup d’état. We didn’t go for a military coup because we don’t trust the army’ — back then Shas received more votes in the army than the entire left…

“‘So, we decided,’ he told me, ‘to shift the balance in all the government ministries to favor the judicial system’ — empowering the Attorney General, the State Prosecutor, the government legal advisers, the attorneys, because the legal system doesn’t rely on the masses — ‘And that’s how we’ll save our country.’ And they did it. What we’re seeing today — they did it.

“And I say that as soon as they realize that they’re losing control, it will be dangerous [for religious people] to live here. That’s why I say all the time, I don’t want it. Give me Yavne and its sages (a reference to 1st-century sage Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai’s request of the Roman emperor outside the burning Jerusalem], give me what I can handle. I’ll try to make Shabbat more pleasant for people, do what I can, using democratic means, I’ll sit in the Knesset and will do whatever I can — but I don’t want to rule over you.

“Incidentally, this has been the big mistake of Religious Zionism. I had here a very important official of Religious Zionism, and I told him, Watch your tongue… He was saying, the day will come when we will have Haredi pilots, and in Judea and Samaria we already have 400 thousand Jews, and he’s spreading this all over the world. I told him, Tzadik, you don’t have a clue! You’re scaring them! They’ll fight you! Such a sweet Jew, and so naive…”

Yossi Melman’s Unabashed Realism

Yossi Melman, an intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent for Haaretz and before that, the Jerusalem Post and Maariv, on Thursday, posted an astonishingly frank article headlined: “There’s no need to euphemize, there is a rebellion here. And it is completely justified.” The Hebrew term he used for “euphemism” is “words laundry.”
Yossi Melman, Dec. 2, 2011 / Yossi Melman’s Facebook
“A military rebellion is taking place in Israel,” writes Melman. “This is the real truth. There is an attempt to play with words to avoid looking reality in the eyes. The rebels and their supporters prefer to use word-washing and linguistic gymnastics instead of saying directly that there is reluctance among the reservists. They call the phenomenon ‘voluntary cessation.’

“This rebellion is widespread and extends beyond the petitions signed by many thousands of reservists (in active service or not) in the IDF, the Mossad, and the Shin Bet. It also exceeds the thousand or more pilots, personnel of the air force headquarters, the special operation units, unit 8200 and the technology unit of the intelligence division, military physicians, and more, who did not report to the reserves or warned that they would not report if the legislative coup laws are passed.”

Melman exclaims: “It is convenient for all parties not to say the explicit words ‘military rebellion,” but to deal with the problem first and foremost you need to look at reality in the eyes and call it by its appropriate name.”

Melman then whitewashes the phenomenon that he says should be called what it is, a crawling military coup, stating: A large part of the people’s army is not ready to accept the attempt of the government, even if it is legally elected, to change the status quo and pass the coup d’état legislation (meaning the judicial reform – DI) in a hurry, without broad agreement, and due consideration. They rebel, and rightly so, to preserve democracy. They feel that the values they were raised on are being eroded and are working to prevent Israel from becoming a dictatorship.”

Suspend democracy to prevent a dictatorship. Maybe someone should tell Joe Biden that what he is stepping on Netanyahu’s neck for is a repeat of the 1973 Allende experience.

Ehud Barak: The Puppet Master

The point where MK Eichler’s astute predictions and Yossi Melman’s sugarcoated nightmare meet, is an eight-minute video interview with former Chief of Staff, Defense Minister, and the second-shortest ruling Prime Minister Ehud Barak that was recorded in 2020. The interview was part of a Forum 555 discussion that included all the leaders of the protests and disruptions we are seeing this year: Shikma Bresler, Moshe Redman, and, naturally, Ehud Barak.

?חדשות 15: חשיפה. ?

ביולי 2020 אהוד ברק התראיין בפורום 555, בראיון הוא מתאר לפרטי פרטים את המחאה שמשתוללת בישראל בימים אלו. הוידאו המלא בן שעה ורבע נמצא ביוטיוב, איגדנו את כל הקטעים המענינים ל8 דקות בלבד.

שבו רגע, תצפו בזה, אתם תהיו בהלם. אני הייתי בהלם. זה הולך ומקצין, מבטיח… pic.twitter.com/kHoyBcIINw

— ארבלאו צייד הטונות ?? (@arbelaue) July 20, 2023
In these eight minutes, Barak lays out all the issues, from slogans to civil disobedience and rebellion, the basic methods, the leaders, the general goals of the protest movement, and its ultimate goal.

Yes, folks, this coup d’état, the real one, has been in the works for at least three years, if not six and even more – similar statements that were made by Barak as far back as 2017 are floating on the Internet that doesn’t forget a thing.

To get an idea of the event that was recorded, fast-forward to minute 7:10, where the entire cabal is being introduced.

But before that, Barak states that the more clashes there are with the government, the stronger the resistance, which would lead inevitably to the government being forced to use force against the demonstrators. When the police use excessive force to restrain protesters it will only bolster the movement. Wherever the army shoots into the crowd, the government is bound to fall, Barak teaches.

A panelist says to Barak at this point (minute 5:45): “Many think that the only one Bibi fears is you. What’s the chance that you’ll try to recreate the success of 1999 (when Barak was briefly elected PM – DI)?”

“Listen, it is well known that I don’t suffer from excessive modesty,” Barak answers. “I can tell you that, objectively, if, God forbid, Bibi disappears someday next week at noon, and there’s the possibility of an escalation with Hezbollah or the Iranians, and the socio-economic crisis continues, regarding disruptions, Trump, annexation yes or no, then objectively, I am more suitable and riper than any other person in the country to take the wheel.”

And then Barak Says this: “A friend of mine, a historian, once told me, Ehud, they will call you when bodies will float in the Yarkon River. I wish to stress: not the bodies of illegally residing Palestinians from the territories will be floating, and not Israeli Arabs. The floating bodies will be of Jews that were killed by Jews.”

Barak then talked about dedicating himself to raising the necessary funds to cover all the logistics of the project, so people won’t have to pay out of pocket, but I had a hard time following his decisive and self-confident speech.

I was stuck with his vivid image of Jewish bodies floating in the Yarkon.