“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” Hosea 8:7

Maybe you read or heard about the op-ed Tom Friedman wrote for the New York Times.

Friedman’s long association with Israel has endowed him with a deep empathy for the Jewish State, an empathy that’s tempered with a measure of constructive criticism.

I decided to cherry-pick the main points in Friedman’s article omitting content I have referred to in previous posts.

“Can Joe Biden Save Israel?” Friedman asks provocatively.

“If I could get a memo onto President Biden’s desk about the new Israeli government, I know exactly how it would start”

At this juncture I want to insert a margin note: I’m tempted to add that it would likely be filed away with the much sought after classified documents.

Back to the main text-

“Dear Mr. President,

 I don’t know if you are interested in Jewish history, but Jewish history is certainly interested in you today. Israel is on the verge of a historic transformation — from a full-fledged democracy to something less, and from a stabilizing force in the region to a destabilizing one. You may be the only one able to stop Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition from turning Israel into an illiberal bastion of zealotry.”…….

“The short story: An ultranationalist, ultra-Orthodox government, formed after the Netanyahu camp won the election by the tiniest sliver of votes (roughly 30,000 out of some 4.7 million), is driving a power grab that the other half of voters view not only as corrupt but also as threatening their own civil rights. “……

“The current crisis in Israel may be presented to Biden as an internal constitutional matter that he should stay out of. To the contrary. Biden should wade right in (just as Netanyahu did in his address to Congress in 2015) because the outcome has direct implications for U.S. national security interests. I have no illusions that Biden can reverse the most extreme trends emerging in Israel today, but he can nudge things onto a healthier path, and maybe prevent the worst, with some tough love in a way that no other outsider can.” …

“Here is my guess of how Netanyahu would respond" Friedman says,

"Joe, Joey, my old friend, don’t press me on this stuff now. I am the only one restraining these crazies. You and I, Joe, we can make history together.

And let’s, you and me, forge a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. M.B.S. is ready if I can persuade you to give Saudi Arabia security guarantees and advanced weapons. Let’s do that and then I’ll dump these crazies.” ….

“I applaud both foreign policy goals, but I would not pay for them with a U.S. blind eye to Netanyahu’s judicial putsch. If we do that, “we’ll sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”

Israel and the U.S. are friends. But today, one party in this friendship — Israel — is changing its fundamental character. President Biden, in the most caring but clear way possible, needs to declare that these changes violate America’s interests and values and that we are not going to be Netanyahu’s useful idiots and just sit in silence.

Israelis demonstrating against Yariv Levine’s proposed reform to the justice system, aren’t the only ones troubled by the coalition government’s attack on the High Court of Justice.

In an interview with Reuters, Global Ratings director Maxim Rybnikov said the agency was closely following moves Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet might make in the occupied West Bank, as well as the pledged judiciary overhaul that would cut back Supreme Court powers.

"If the announced judicial system changes set a trend for a weakening Israel's institutional arrangements and existing checks and balances this could in the future present downside risks to the ratings. But we are not there yet," said Rybnikov.

S&P rates Israel as 'AA-' with a stable outlook.

Rybnikov, the main credit analyst for Israel, said risks to the country's ratings are currently balanced but that could change. He added that if necessary, ratings action could come sooner than a planned review in May.

 “I don’t think we could have got to where we’ve got to in Israel had it not been a small liberal democracy with proper institutions,” he says. “Anything that undermines that—anything that hurts the checks and balances, anything that hurts minority rights—it’s going to have an impact. There’s no question about it.”

Investors and leaders of Israel’s powerful technology sector are expressing concern that plans by the new government to weaken the judiciary will threaten the country’s liberal democracy and business-friendly environment.

“Investors are certainly contacting us, worried,” says Assaf Rappaport, chief executive officer of Wiz, a cloud cybersecurity startup that has offices in Tel Aviv. “We all understand—the entrepreneurs in Israel and the industry leaders, but also around the world—that without a strong legal system, you can’t do real business, and the risks to business grow.”

Tech companies generate 15% of Israel’s gross domestic product and more than half of its exports. It’s the source of one-quarter of the country’s income tax revenue.

Alan Feld, the founder and managing partner of Vintage Investment Partners, whose Israel-based fund has $3.6 billion in assets under management, says he’s really concerned.

Feld was one of the signatories on a letter circulated last month by an Israeli venture capital firm, Qumra Capital, that warned about driving away tech investors.

The CEOs of Israeli unicorns Honeybook, Cato Networks, Fireblocks and Monday.com, also confirmed they were among the signatories.

“There’s certainly questions swirling about what impact this government and future Israeli demographics will have on the tech ecosystem,” says Nicole Priel, managing director of the Israel office of US investment firm Ibex Investors LLC.” She added, 

“The strength of the Israeli tech brand is its ability to produce smart minds out of universities and out of the army, and it banks on keeping the best and brightest here in Israel. If that ceases to exist, then capital inflows into Israel will also cease to exist.”

Barak Eilam, CEO of Israel’s Nice Ltd., a cloud-based software provider, cautioned that the judicial upheaval is poised to have irreparable consequences for Israel as a hub for doing business and attracting investment.

By the way, our daughter Irit Kaye has a vested interest in Nice Ltd. The company is one of her main business clients.

Prime Minister Netanyahu brushed off the criticism of the proposed changes to the judicial system. Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting he argued that the planned changes would strengthen democracy rather than hasten its end. He also maintained that the government is carrying out the will of the people.

Nonetheless, concern for Israel’s societal wellbeing was expressed in an 86-page report presented to President Isaac Herzog by The Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. The authors of the report warned that the increasing polarisation in the country could have a substantially detrimental impact on the country’s security.

The far-reaching plans for judicial change have sparked massive weekly protests and warnings by officials, industry leaders and others that the overhaul could turn Israel into an international pariah.

“The government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary could undermine democracy and set Israel on a collision course with the United States, potentially endangering crucial strategic ties with its greatest ally.” said INSS director Tamir Hayman, a former Military Intelligence chief.

Describing the recent clash between the judiciary and the coalition government, journalist/analyst Neri Zilber said:

“Other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most consequential figure in Israeli politics today is Aryeh Deri, a senior minister in the country’s hard-right religious and nationalist government and head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Mr. Netanyahu’s biggest coalition partner.

His pivotal role in the political constellation that is testing the strength of Israel’s democratic institutions was confirmed last week as the Israeli Supreme Court transformed a theoretical battle over Israeli democracy into a practical one. In a not entirely unanticipated yet bombshell decision, it ruled that Mr. Deri’s appointment as both interior and health minister was “unreasonable in the extreme” due to his repeated criminal convictions. And it instructed Mr. Netanyahu to fire him. The prime minister unwilling to be held in contempt of court, had to comply with courts directive.

Deri and his party are furious, once again they let the ethnic genie out of the bottle!

Columnist Herb Keinon Jerusalem Post said” The High Court of Justice's decision pulled a scab off a deep societal wound that has never healed, and it's a wound that helps explain Shas' strength and longevity. The ethnic genie – the feeling among many Israelis of Mizrahi descent that they are treated differently than Ashkenazim – has just been let out of the bottle and will only fan the flames of one of the worst domestic crises this country has ever faced. Many in this country – perhaps not as many as those walking around with a feeling that the current right-wing religious government has stolen their country, but a substantial number nonetheless – are carrying a deep-seated feeling that the cards are stacked against them because an Ashkenazi elite is deeply embedded in the system and not giving them an equal chance.

For some, this sounds crazy; for others, it feels real

If healing that wound was all the country had to deal with, that would be enough. But it is not all that Israel has to deal with.

     Shas party leader Aryeh Deri

Uncovering that wound now is bound to create an even more confrontational and antagonistic atmosphere, which will make dealing with all the other challenges the country is dealing with even more complicated. “

Maybe Aryeh Deri derives some consolation knowing that the Wall Street Journal published an editorial defending the Israeli government’s planned judicial overhaul and slamming the dramatic High Court decision last week to bar him from serving as a cabinet minister.

The business daily slammed the 10-1 High Court ruling Wednesday that determined that Deri’s dual appointments as health and interior minister were “unreasonable in the extreme” as a major example of judicial overreach.

I think the WSJ engaged in a bit of journalistic overreach when its editor compared the US Supreme Court with Israel’s High Court of Justice.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni.                           26^th of January, 2023

 

BOOTS ON THE GROUND VERSUS EYES IN THE SKY.

 

I confess the title is misleading. Every night IDF units are operating somewhere in or near Jenin, Nablus and other places in the West Bank apprehending wanted terrorists. They go in “Boots on the ground” and in armed vehicles guided by cutting-edge technology that pinpoints their quarry. The ever-present drones flying overhead and cloud networking are their “Eyes in the sky.”

The way we wage war is changing! A piece in the The Economist last week described the Starlink constellation as, ”one of the wonders of the world—or, more accurately, off the world.” The author told how the Starlink configuration numbering 3,335 active small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) which communicate with designated ground transceivers, has become an integral part of the Ukraine’s military and civil response to Russia’s invasion. It is not just enabling Ukraine to fight back; it is shaping its battle strategy.

A large part of the traffic flowing through the system currently comes from Ukraine.

The Institute for National Security Studies (INNS), an independent Israeli research institute and think tank affiliated with Tel Aviv University, published an article on the same topic.

“’The first digital war’ is one way to describe what’s happening in Ukraine. The flood of open-source information helps intelligence organisations obtain a precise picture of the situation, but may also lead to confusion and unfounded bias. Invariably our military affairs analysts ask, “What can Israel learn from the Ukraine experience of the past year. Namely, the correct use of open-source intelligence in times of war?”

The important change evident in this context is that whereas in the past military intelligence organisations tended to limit the use of information gathered in the open sphere and based their assessments and recommendations mainly on classified information, today such a decision would be irresponsible. It would mean dismissing the wealth of available and valuable information, and more important, ignoring a central arena of activity in war.

The potential embodied by open-source intelligence is familiar to intelligence organisations in Israel. Dramatic progress in the field has led to global breakthroughs in the ability to collect information, processing based on artificial intelligence and data fusion, as well as collaboration with the industrial sector. Nonetheless, the primary force buildup continues to lean toward classified sources, while the link between the world of classified intelligence and the world of open-source intelligence, and the involvement of civilians and civilian infrastructure in the assessment of intelligence and increased sources of information, is still deemed taboo.

One Israel TV Channel 13 panellist cautioned, “It is still too early to conclude definitively the lessons of the war in Ukraine, but the relationship between the state, military, and intelligence agencies on the one hand, and social media, commercial platforms, and the public on the other, is certainly a wake-up call. Compared to the events in Ukraine it is doubtful whether Western countries, and Israel in particular, are ready to make use of the public and private companies with the same efficiency. However, if we are unable to adopt the new approach now, we will likely not be prepared to tackle the challenges that await us.”

I was led to believe that British military intelligence authorities were slow to change their traditional conservative approach, it appears I was misled.

In November 2022, General Sir Jim Hockenhull, Commander of the UK Strategic Command, which is responsible for the UK’s military intelligence organisations, force buildup, and planning, addressed this subject at a virtual conference of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Hockenhull committed to a change of approach among British intelligence organisations.

The war in Ukraine can be seen as “the first digital war” in history. This term does not refer to fighting abilities based on advanced technology, but rather highlights the dynamic arena in the digital space, close to the battlefield and sometimes within it, with the participation of millions of people and commercial organisations connected to the internet.

The mission of intelligence organisations in war is to gather as much information about the enemy and dispel the fog of battle. Today, in the open space it is possible to find commercial satellite photos, technical data collected by media companies (location, activity loads), and a range of content collected and published by individuals on social media. Most of the information used by Ukraine in advance of and during the Russian military invasion was found in the open-source intelligence (OSINT) space. Since the information was largely unclassified, it was possible to analyse it with the help of advanced processing capabilities based on artificial intelligence and developed by the technology giants in the private sector. Data processed in the United States and Britain was easily shared with intelligence organisations worldwide, and particularly in Ukraine, without the policy barriers so familiar to intelligence agents from their routine work. The collected information provided a high-quality response to questions about the Russian invasion such as when and where, and what was the expected scope.

In the digital war, the winner will be the side that is quicker to understand how to exploit the potential of this open space.

In recent years, the world’s militaries, including the IDF, have improved their sensory abilities and increased the number of sensors and means of intelligence gathering about the enemy using advanced military technology. The Ukraine experience demonstrates that every person and every means of communication can be used as a sensor.

According to data from Ukrainian communications companies, the use of public networks helped increase the army’s range of reception and broadcast over its own communications infrastructures. Public networks are deployed with redundancy for the purpose of backup and must routinely pass tests of user and traffic load. In general, these infrastructures are more efficient and more accessible, particularly if the enemy destroys military communications systems. The Ukrainian army adopted the use of civilian infrastructures in the early stages of fighting and thus gained an advantage on the ground.

This represents a significant change in the approach to intelligence gathering, and it is impossible to ignore the ethical and moral challenges of this approach, as the information can invade the privacy of users. However, in times of crisis, such as when the Ukrainian government and people are fighting shoulder to shoulder for survival, the entire public has rallied round to lend the homeland an advantage. It is likely that in Israel too, as in the past, the public will support the IDF war effort when necessary.

While the IDF has neither rejected nor accepted the Ukrainian open-source intelligence model, it has adopted a different approach

In an article published by Business & Innovation Brig.-Gen. Aviad Dagan, director of the IDF’s Digital Transformation Administration outlined it as follows:

“A major recent advancement by the IDF has been cloud networking between all forces, including headquarters, frontline command centres and troops in the field. However, the military is starting a new digital advancement beyond the cloud.

The IDF will be building mini-clouds, or networks, for each of the armed forces and sometimes smaller subdivisions so they can process and receive data even faster than in the current network.”…”For example, a wide variety of data points could put together sensory detection of an enemy, evaluate who the enemy is, check the various IDF options within range to respond, analyse how much fuel different drones or other units have remaining and then quickly dispatch the best available targeting order,” Dagan said.

“The new AI capabilities could be of immense importance in any potential future war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the IDF has already developed a list of thousands of targets,” he said.

However, while Israel continues to place “eyes in the sky” along with cloud networking, one particular advocate of a very conservative “boots on the ground” policy, stubbornly rejects this innovation.  

Contrary to the old army ballad. old soldiers don’t “fade away.” At least not as far as former Defence Ministry Ombudsman Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick is concerned. He has been the bane of outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General   Aviv Kochavi and some of his predecessors. 

In a statement issued after the inauguration of IDF Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi on Friday, former Defence Ministry Ombudsman Major General Yitzhak Brick warned that Israel will cease to exist if it does not prepare for a multifront battle. 

Brick opined that the new IDF Chief of Staff will have a "difficult and complex legacy" and offered him advice. He called on Halevi to: "Regain the deterrence of the Israeli army and get ready for the multifront battle from now on."

He added: "The mission of the new chief of staff is difficult because the situation inside the military forces is difficult, and might push the country to a major national disaster in any future war."  

Brick called on Halevi to give up the policies of his predecessors and "carry out a full correction process inside the army."

He added: "The IDF is armed with modern and high-tech equipment to cover up its failure, mainly in light of lack of training and an acute lack of professional manpower."

Herzl Halevi has been described as an observant Jew. I’m sure he is familiar with the following passage from the Book of Job:

“Look unto the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds which are higher than thou.”

Brick’s grievances arouse a sense of déjà vu. In December 2018 Jerusalem Post, military affairs columnist Anna Ahronheim wrote about the ongoing disagreement between Yitzhak Brick and the IDF. She said the argument followed two damning reports Brick sent to senior IDF officers, the Cabinet and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. Brick called on them to investigate alleged deficiencies in training and equipment.

The Ombudsman, who was due to resign after 10 years in his position, has repeatedly warned about the military’s dire state.

His scathing report claimed that the current situation in the IDF was “worse than it was at the time of the Yom Kippur War” in 1973. The report   was for the most part rejected by then IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who said the military is in a high state of readiness and preparedness for war. “If we go to war tomorrow, we are ready. We aren’t in perfect shape, but we are ready,”

Brick’s preference for boots on the ground as opposed to eyes in the sky means mainly incursions. An outmoded and disastrous strategy.

 

Anyway, have a good weekend.

 

Beni,  

19^th of January, 2023

 YARIV  LEVIN

Last week I mentioned the legislative bombshell dropped by Justice Minister Yariv Levin and said I would try to relate to it this week. In doing so my comments are mostly borrowed, because I really know very little about law.

Many foreign newsoutlets have referred to this this topic, so I’m assuming you have been following it. Just the same, I’ll add some of the comments you might have missed. No doubt you will notice some repetition in the texts I have quoted. I decided to include them for extra emphasis.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin

Critics accused the government of declaring war against the legal system, saying the plan will upend Israel's system of checks and balances and undermine its democratic institutions by giving absolute power to the most right-wing coalition in the country's history.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a confidant of Prime Minister Netanyahu and a longtime critic of the Supreme Court, presented his plan a day before the justices were scheduled to debate a controversial new law passed by the government allowing a politician convicted of tax offenses to serve as a cabinet minister.

The proposals call for a series of sweeping changes aimed at curbing the powers of the judiciary.

Justice Minister Levin outlined a law that would enable the Knesset to override Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority of 61 votes. He also proposed that politicians play a greater role in the appointment of Supreme Court judges. In addition, Levin claimed that the public's faith in the judicial system has plummeted to a historic low, and said he plans to restore authority to the elected government, hitherto held by overly interventionist judges.

The planned overhaul has already drawn fierce criticism from Israel’s attorney general and the Knesset opposition parties. Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara warned that the new government coalition's planned legislative blitz could leave Israel with democracy in name but not in essence.

Levin presented a planned judicial overhaul that would drastically limit the authority of the High Court of Justice to block legislation and government decisions deemed discriminatory and/or undemocratic, abolish “reasonableness” as a test by which justices can weigh legality, give the government control over judicial selection, and eliminate ministry legal advisers appointed by the attorney general.

Levin said his proposals, which the new government has vowed to legislate without delay, would restore democracy and strengthen the court.

 When asked for his opinion of the proposed judicial reform Professor. Tom Ginsburg said it doesn’t look good. Ginsburg heads the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), which analyses constitutions around the world. He is one of the most cited scholars of international law in the United States.

“Under the leadership of Aharon Barak [president of Israel’s Supreme Court from 1995 to 2006], it became extremely activist. This provoked backlash in Israeli politics. A reaction that led to a kind of recalibration of the court where it is still filling its traditional role of defending fundamental rights and ensuring the integrity of the political process, but it’s not making up norms left and right, in the way that it used to. This is my perception. But it’s certainly seen as one of the leading courts around the world, its decisions are cited by others, and because of the quality of the judges and the complex issues that Israel faces, it’s seen as a strong court and an effective court, and in my opinion, a balanced court.”

“It will be a hollow democracy,” said Amir Fuchs, senior researcher at Jerusalem’s Israel Democracy Institute think tank. “When the government has ultimate power, it will use it, not only for issues of LGBTQ rights and asylum-seekers, but elections and free speech and anything it wants.”

Recent opinion polls by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) found a majority of respondents believe the Supreme Court should have the power to strike down laws that conflict with Israel’s Basic Laws, which serve as a sort of constitution.

I tend to rely more on the IDI polls than Yariv Levin’s uncorroborated claim that the public has lost faith in the judicial system.

In three extensive television interviews aired recently, Israel’s most revered jurist, the former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, pleaded with Justice Minister Yariv Levin to reconsider the sweeping judicial reforms he unveiled last week. Aharon Barak warned that they essentially give all power to the prime minister, leave citizens with no defence against the removal of any and all of their rights, and would mark the beginning of the end of the modern State of Israel.

Barak has been repeatedly targeted by Levin as the instigator of decades of untenable intervention of the Supreme Court. “He has relentlessly overruled the country’s elected politicians via an outrageous abuse of its authority, thus necessitating the new proposals to radically reduce its power.” Said Levin.

In the most anguished passage of the impassioned series of interviews, Barak, 86, said he was sorry to be depicted as “the enemy of the people.” As a justice from 1978-2006, and Supreme Court president in the last 11 of those years, Barak said that he sought to be neither overly activist nor overly conservative and to deliver verdicts that took heed of Israel’s history, Zionism and the country’s security needs.

David Makovsky The Washington Institute For Near East Policy commented; -

“Currently, domestic issues dominate Israeli political discourse, particularly the proposed overhaul of the court system, which many believe will place the country on an illiberal, even undemocratic trajectory. Large swaths of the public are also concerned that Netanyahu’s junior coalition partners will attempt to limit LGBT rights, end recognition of non-orthodox Jewish conversions abroad, tighten the Law of Return’s criteria for Jews immigrating to Israel, and extend major concessions to ultraorthodox Jews (e.g., continuing their draft exemption; increasing subsidies to yeshiva students and schools).

I want to conclude on a positive note by quoting a news item reported by Globes, Israel business news

“Mekorot Israel National Water Co. and the Israel Water Authority have launched the "Reverse Water Carrier" project in the north. The project will allow desalinated water from the Mediterranean Sea to flow inland to Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). The aim of the project, which has been set up at a cost of NIS 1 billion, is to maintain the level of the Kinneret in dry and low rainfall years.

If for some reason (usually a hyperactive spam blocker) you don’t receive my post you are welcome to access my blog site:

https://benisisraelinewsletter.blogspot.com/

 

Save the link for future reference.

 

Have a good weekend

Beni,                                       12^th of January, 2023