Israel:
Challenging Netanyahu and His Wars

Mar 31, 2025

This article is translated from the March 28 issue #2956 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to dismiss the head of the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, has sparked a major political crisis in Israel. His administration faces opposition from parts of the state apparatus. Thousands of people have protested across the country.

Netanyahu justified his move by claiming the Shin Bet chief committed a “professional breach of trust.” Specifically, he criticizes Bar for launching an investigation of members of Netanyahu’s entourage. They stand accused of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars for working to improve the image of Qatar, at the same time that Israel had authorized Qatar to finance Hamas, which ruled Gaza. Qatargate, as the Israeli media call it, adds to the cases of fraud, corruption, and breach of trust for which Netanyahu is currently on trial. He also was just implicated in a recent Shin Bet investigative report on the October 7 massacre, which highlighted the government’s failings.

Netanyahu also faces opposition from the judicial system. The Supreme Court suspended Ronen Bar’s ouster until April 8 while it considers appeals filed by the opposition and an NGO. Israel’s attorney general Gali Baharav-Miara is supposed to ensure that government actions are legal. She supports the Supreme Court. But Netanyahu’s cabinet voted no-confidence in her on March 23, paving the way to remove her from office.

To save his political career and avoid ending up in prison, Netanyahu needs the support of the far right more than ever. He wants to entice Jewish supremacist Itamar Ben Gvir to become national security minister again, after leaving the government because of the January ceasefire agreement with Hamas. To woo Ben Gvir, Netanyahu relaunched the war in Gaza. The Israeli army began a new ground offensive and is carrying out disastrous bombings that have killed nearly 800 people in just a few days. Residents of Gaza’s border areas have been forced to evacuate, paving the way for further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory.

Netanyahu is seeking to create right-wing national unity behind him. He is pulling out all the stops on all fronts, encouraging and supporting settlement activity in the West Bank and launching military operations in Lebanon and Syria. He feels even more empowered to do all this because he knows he can count on the support of Trump, who declared his full approval of the resumption of the war in Gaza.

A portion of the Israeli population has expressed its rejection of this headlong rush into war. Opposition politicians, families of hostages, and even several former hostages—worried about the breakdown of negotiations—called for protests, which drew tens of thousands of people. This is similar to the mobilizations against the judicial reform initiated by Netanyahu before October 7. At the protests, many people expressed their fear of having an increasingly authoritarian regime. In Tel Aviv on March 22, a large mounted screen read “Stop the mania for dictatorship.” Center-right politician and Netanyahu opponent Yair Lapid declared “the entire country should stop” if the dismissal of the head of the Shin Bet goes forward. The leader of Israel’s main trade union confederation Histadrut echoed, “I have no intention of standing by while the state of Israel is dismantled.”

These criticisms come from leaders who supported most of Netanyahu’s warlike policies. Now these criticisms are causing a political crisis. What will happen? Keeping Bar at the head of the Shin Bet as the protestors demand will not end the war in which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples are plunged, along with everyone else in the Middle East. It’s not enough to just denounce Netanyahu, denounce the growing and threatening influence of the extreme right, and denounce the resulting rise of authoritarianism. These are the logical consequences of policies that Israeli governments have pursued since 1948, denying the national rights of Palestinians.

Many Israelis are rightly concerned that the Israeli state looks less and less like the “island of democracy” it once claimed to be. But that phrase always covered up the oppression suffered by Palestinians. The Israeli population is increasingly falling victim to the oppression that the Israeli state has always visited on the Palestinians.