Two cynics
The local press extracted from Netanyahu's "60 Minutes" interview mainly headlines regarding enriched uranium and relations with Trump. As a result, Netanyahu's response to an unusual question about Chinese involvement in the war in Iran was somewhat missed. It has been a long time since the Prime Minister looked so cautious, so intentionally vague. "Look," he told the interviewer, "different countries have different interests... Does China want its supply chain to be with the Iranians? It's not a zero-sum game... There are dangers and opportunities in everything... like in AI... there President Trump and President Xi will talk about AI... there too are dangers and opportunities..."
The PM wasn't squirming for nothing. He too knows that China is too important to clash with head-on. On one of the days of the war, someone in the Israeli top echelon wondered what would happen if the Chinese turned on the camera in the robotic vacuum cleaner in the home of an IDF Major General, and what if they decided to pass information to the Iranians about impact zones using the enormous number of [Chinese] vehicles they have in Israel (much more than in the US or Europe).
From Beijing's perspective, Israel is not a sales target, it is a strategic target—a deliberate and systematic chipping away at American influence in the heart of the Middle East and gaining a foothold in a technological-military power. While the Americans operate on the top floor through the government, politics, and military cooperation, the Chinese infiltrate through the floorboards. Perhaps Israelis should feel flattered that the two superpowers are bickering over our attention, but we need to remain careful.
China, unlike Qatar, does not support Iran out of love for the Ayatollahs, nor out of hatred for Israel. It does so because it needs chaos in the Middle East that will drain US resources and attention away from Taiwan and the South China Sea. For Xi Jinping, every dollar the US invests in interceptors for Israel is a dollar not invested in submarines in the Strait of Malacca. This quiet war is China's way of buying time in the clash of titans against the United States. The Iran war is where the Chinese are testing American boundaries and their willingness to go all the way.
The event is only getting more complicated. Take the Strait of Hormuz, for example. The Iranians are trying to create a new equation and control the world through violent control over the straits. This might be good for the Iranians, but for the Chinese, it is terrible. Why? Because while transit through Hormuz is important to the Chinese, transit through the Strait of Malacca is much more important. This is a narrow strait between Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, practically controlled by the US. 80% of China's oil imports pass through it. If the method of blocking shipping lanes becomes a legitimate means, it means the US will acquire almost absolute control over the Chinese. And that is just one example.
Another example comes specifically from Israel: the amount of military knowledge and capabilities built and tested here over the past three years is historically unprecedented. Israel is considered today around the world as a formidable power with field-tested experience. The war is the world's largest testing lab for artificial intelligence on the battlefield. When Israel disrupts UAV swarms or eliminates 20 scientists in Iran in a few seconds, it makes its superiority practical. Trump brings receipts showing that Chinese technology is inferior to the Israeli-American mind, clarifying to them that he holds the tap to the knowledge and the blockade against everything they are trying to achieve. In this battle, Israel is the US's combat R&D department, and for Trump, this is a tremendous bargaining chip.
Trump knows that the one keeping Iran alive today, even if quietly, is the empire from the East. They are the ones still trading with the Iranians while bypassing sanctions; they are the ones providing them with intelligence and even certain types of weaponry. For the Chinese, for example, air defense batteries are considered offensive weapons, but ballistic missiles are somehow defined as defensive weapons. Go figure.
Just as Israel set a goal for itself to break the Middle Eastern axis of evil, Trump set a goal for himself to break the Chinese-Russian-Iranian-North Korean axis of evil. If he disconnects the Chinese from the axis—he will weaken it significantly and bring it closer to the goal he desires so much: an absolute and indisputable victory, in a short time, and with a relatively small number of casualties.
On and off
"The Ashkenazim are a problem," they sighed this week in the coalition. They are cold, calculating, and lack sentimentality. The intention, of course, is not all Ashkenazim, but the Ultra-Orthodox ones among them. So how excited should we be about the spiritual head of the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox party Rabbi Lando's announcement that there is no longer such a thing as a "bloc" and that there is no trust in Netanyahu?
This isn't the first time. The 2022 elections opened with signs of a budding romance between the Ashkenazi Haredim and the center-left. Yair Lapid, then Prime Minister, came to wish head of United Torah Judaism Moshe Gafni a happy 70th birthday, and later asked to attend his granddaughter's wedding. Along the way, contacts were made regarding the formation of a new party and a political alliance. A confidant of the I influential Hassidic leader, the Gerrer Rebbe, businessman Yitzhak Shapira, was in touch with "Yesh Atid" about providing a safety net for the Bennett-Lapid government.
This week, the name of that same Shapira was mentioned again as the one who supposedly stood behind the Ashkenazi rebellion against Netanyahu. The logic is taken straight from the nineties, the decade when the alliance with the current Prime Minister was forged: anti-Haredi rhetoric is a cover for the center-left parties, but at the moment of truth, they are more interested in reducing the influence of the Likud and Religious Zionism parties.
It is doubtful if anyone truly believes this is possible today. Even with the less radical left wing during the Oslo years, the alliance ship sputtered and creaked, certainly not in a world of Golan, Lieberman, and Lapid. "We all know there is no one to sit with, and it's not relevant to sit with them," says a senior Haredi official, "but elections will be good because when a phone is slow or stuck, you turn it off and turn it back on and then it starts working." Interestingly, this works even with a "kosher" phone.
There is one person who believes the Haredim will go with the center-left, and that is, of course, Netanyahu. The man already dismantled one government with Lapid and Bennett in 2014 after being sold the story that the Haredim were on the verge of closing a government with the left. In his autobiography, he confessed that he was misled and made a mistake. Since this is the only mistake he admits to in the entire book, it shouldn't be underestimated.
What does this mean now? Not much. The tactical discussion about elections in September or October is important to the Likud because of the fear of running an election campaign in the summer, when opposition voters are already alert and vigilant, but coalition voters need to be woken up when everyone is abroad or on vacation. And mostly because a month and a half in the Middle East is an eternity, and as long as the regime in Iran hasn't fallen, Netanyahu needs time. He wants it to go slowly, while his rivals prefer it as fast as possible.
The Ministry of Justice has fallen
Many people endanger democracy in Israel. It is doubtful if there is anyone who endangers it more than Gil Limon. The Deputy Attorney General, the gray bureaucrat who has never been interviewed and always makes sure to stay in the background, is the main engine behind the Attorney General's move to turn Israeli administrative and constitutional law into dust and ashes.
The goal is to delay and interfere at all costs, to turn every appointment, every piece of legislation, and every procedure the government uses into an almost declaratory event, empty of content, which will always end up in the High Court of Justice. When this is done systematically, constantly, with announcements twice a day about the end of democracy, the meaning is the neutering of the majority's decision. We already learned in the constitutional seminar of Eliad Shraga and Yitzhak Amit that the majority doesn't always rule. Fine, not always, but maybe sometimes anyway?
In the background, there is purely political conduct as reflected this week in the affair of Roman Gofman's appointment as head of the Mossad. Let's leave aside the bizarre and self-unaware event where a Deputy AG appointed in a rigged tender and an AG appointed over Grunis's objections embark on a campaign for the propriety of appointments and the importance of the retired President's stance. After all, all the stinging defeats of Baharav-Miara and Limon in the High Court were when they refused to defend their client. You might say, fine, you don't always win and there are mistakes. To this, a judge once replied in a famous trial to a defendant who claimed he just got confused in recording expenses: "Fine, my friend, but maybe you can explain to me how all the mistakes are always in your favor?"
The appointment of Roman Gofman to head the Mossad is a peak—or a low—in the conduct of Limon and his gang. The number of fundamental flaws committed by the AG herself in the case exceeds the flaw that fell in the designated Mossad chief's actions. Baharav-Miara deliberately delayed her response, submitted an opinion for Grunis's eyes only, lied to the media that there was no such thing, and then sent a letter from the head of the Mossad to the High Court where he writes that he wrote it "at your request." But the High Court didn't ask, so who made Dedi Barnea think there was one? Limon and his gang are dealing a fatal blow to democracy because they are constantly changing the rules, rewriting them, what is written retreats before the oral, and yesterday's oral changes constantly, all according to interest.
The affair of the operation of the youth Almakyes will probably remain controversial. If the retired President of the Supreme Court and the outgoing Head of the Mossad believe it should disqualify Gofman from serving, and they have no ulterior motives, their words should certainly be weighed seriously. But Baharav-Miara and Limon are not in the business of improving the public service; if they were, perhaps they should have started with the rigged tenders in their own home, at the Ministry of Justice. As is customarily said in relation to other organizations – the Ministry of Justice has fallen. The next government will have to pick it up off the floor.
