The Netanyahu trial in Israel: is this anti-Trump lawfare redux?

 

Tablet magazine has published an interesting overview of the trial of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu on various allegations of corruption.  The key take-away is this:

The trial of Benjamin Netanyahu began in Jerusalem District Court over five years ago, on May 24, 2020. Since that date, Israel has become a different country, one scarred by terror attacks and international condemnation and also boasting stunning military victories. Meanwhile, judges and researchers have cast serious doubt on the evidentiary basis for all four charges against the prime minister, only one of which has of yet been dismissed and none proved in court. Yet no matter how the world changes, the trial itself marches on, immune to both the global situation and to the quality of the evidence presented in court. Instead, prosecutors regularly compel testimony from the prime minister, often several times a week, and force him to demonstrate that the matters of state for which he is responsible are of greater importance in this or that moment than remembering whether or not his wife might have asked a family friend and political supporter to purchase a Bugs Bunny doll for his son in Manhattan nearly 30 years ago.

. . .

Which is not to say that the Netanyahu trial isn’t a very serious matter: It’s the climax of a struggle between two opposing power structures over how Israel is to be governed and by whom. On one side is the machinery of electoral politics, and on the other that of the administrative state. It is also a struggle between right and left, as the right keeps winning elections while the left keeps amassing institutional power beyond the reach of voters. It is therefore also a competition between two visions of the Jewish state: The right holds a national view of liberal democracy, and cherishes the Jewish religion and tradition, while the left is increasingly progressive, globalist, and suspicious of religion and nationalism alike. Finally, it is also a class struggle between the country’s diverse, less affluent majority and the old-guard, established Ashkenazi elite. And when you have an event so cataclysmic as to simultaneously bring all three aspects—the institutional, the ideological and the sociological—to a showdown, you have a political supernova.

. . .

Netanyahu’s voters expect him to fight this legal battle to the end—ironically for the same reason that Aharon Barak would like to see it terminated: The deep state is on trial, too, and it must lose, in order for Israeli democracy to triumph.

There's much more at the link.  Recommended reading.

There will doubtless be those who argue that the Tablet article is not objective enough, or is pro-Netanyahu.  Not being an expert on Israel, I can't speak to that.  Nevertheless, I can't help but notice that the Netanyahu prosecution appears to be very similarly motivated - and the tactics used are often almost identical - as other progressive-left lawsuits in various countries against center or rightist governments and/or policies.  Brazil's courts versus Bolsonaro;  Germany's courts versus AfD, a right-wing political party;  European courts against conservative opposition to leftist European Union policies;  the "lawfare" against President Trump in America - they're so alike as to be striking in their similarity.  This seems to me to be a deliberate international onslaught against the rule of law and popular democracy by the progressive left in all its forms - and it's clearly coordinated between nations and movements, all helping each other to further their legal strategies.

For that reason alone, it's well worth paying attention to what's going on in the Netanyahu trial.  It's a microcosm of left-wing intentions and desires throughout the world.  The Tablet article exposes much of what's happening, and enables that sort of comparison.

Peter