Netanyahu fires Shin Bet chief who was investigating him

As Netanyahu fires Israel's gatekeepers, Israel faces a moment of democratic reckoning that will be eerily familiar to Americans

Israeli democracy has known crises, but few as concentrated, consequential and absurd as what’s unfolding now. And the chaos might sound awfully familiar to American readers: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is explicitly drawing from President Donald Trump’s playbook of democratic erosion.

Netanyahu has spent months trying to fire the attorney general, a position that in Israel’s system is independent and immensely powerful. That same attorney general is now blocking Netanyahu’s attempt to also fire the head of the Shin Bet security agency, which is separately investigating his advisers over alleged illicit payments from Qatar. The Shin Bet chief has suggested he may not recognize his own dismissal — while, in a bizarre twist, Netanyahu has just sued his predecessor. With these and other actions, Netanyahu’s government has quietly revived its 2023 assault on Israel’s justice system.

A leader desperately attempting to defang the independent judiciary that forms his greatest threat; trying to bend intelligence agencies to his personal will; and working to systematically discredit every institution — and individual — that might be able to in any way check his power. Sound familiar?

If not, maybe Netanyahu’s own words this week will serve as a helpful cue: “In America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” he wrote on X, the social media platform owned by Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk. “They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”

(“100%,” Musk replied.)

Yet Netanyahu has proved different from Trump in one critical capacity: He has been unable to wreak havoc quite as effectively as his American counterpart. He has not been able to fire prosecutors looking into the many charges against him; has not succeeded in defying the courts; and has not been able to politicize the civil service apparatus in quite the way Trump has tried with the FBI and Justice Department.

The reason for this difference lies in the structure of the two democracies. The United States, despite the multiple layers of resistance built into its federal system, has come over time to involve what has been called an “imperial presidency” with vast powers and the right to issue sweeping executive orders. Israel lacks all of that. With no written constitution to interpret, in a system that has developed ad hoc, the executive office Netanyahu holds has been able to establish fewer powers.

Israel does have a powerful judiciary, an iconic security establishment, and a traditionally formidable cadre of gatekeepers genuinely dedicated to liberal democracy — the courts and an array of civil servants led by the attorney general and “legal advisers” within government departments. Also, a civil society that is mobilized with passion to block Netanyahu.

So, while Trump has used allegations of a “deep state” to justify running rampant over every federal institution he can, there is some real truth in Netanyahu’s complaints that he is constrained by unelected civil servants and judges.