"They're afraid," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once said about the Left, when we still thought that the voice of the voters mattered. But since then, "they" aren't the ones who are afraid – it's us, the people who have lost sovereignty over their fate and could, heaven forbid, wind up losing their country.
We were afraid when we saw an Israel Police commissioner bend and break before the media, and then align himself with it, because his personal and professional life were hanging in the balance. We were afraid when we realized (just like Police Chief Roni Alsheikh did) that while the police were investigating nonexistent bribery, before our very eyes a different kind of bribery – more open and more dangerous – was going on. The media was bribing law enforcement.
We were afraid when we, like Alsheikh, realized what the media was making shamelessly clear: If he gave them Netanyahu's head on a platter, they would make him the darling of the nation; otherwise, nearly every media outlet would continue to make Alsheikh's life miserable. We were afraid when we saw Alsheikh break and name one of Netanyahu's enemies as a consultant to the police and when "zero leaks" turned into a flood that was trying to sweep away a sitting prime minister.
We were afraid when we saw what was given for the unwritten deal in which the head of the Israel Police, who was the person the media hated most when he started the job, turned into Channel 10's "man of the year" by the time he left.
We were afraid when we saw the demonstrations outside the home of Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, when we saw the protesters cursing his mother's memory, when they chased him as he was shopping for groceries. Who can stand up to a Sicilian-style mafia that picks who to threaten and then threatens him that if he stands in the way of sending Netanyahu to prison, he'll be sorry. This time, it's just a warning. Next time, they'll follow through.
We were afraid when we realized that these were the same people who are horrified by the legal system and the persecution of law enforcement officials except the personal, frightening persecution of the attorney general. In the "anyone but Bibi" game, everything is allowed – including veiled threats against one of the top law enforcement officials in the country.
We were afraid when we heard one of the shady leaders of the "protest" describe the move step by step before the first case was even opened. First, he said, we'll take the police, then we'll take the State Attorney's Office, and then we'll take over – the media is already in our pockets. We were afraid to see that he was right. We were afraid when we got to know the process by which all this happened – the little country within the country that had been built up in secret – a country of functionaries that are crowned by wealthy leftist foundations, sent to study abroad, and return to Israel to take up jobs as "guardians of democracy."
We were afraid when we discovered what they are taught over there – that democracy is not the will of the majority, and there is an "essence" of democracy that is identified with a certain set of values that must be forced on the will of the majority. We were terrified to discover how much power they have and how they wielded it to bring about a change of government while hounding the prime minister who has brought Israel into its most successful decade since the state was founded. This time, it's not "they" who are scared; it's us.
It's not only Netanyahu they want to put in prison – it's everyone who stands behind him: the ignorant masses who were mistakenly given the right to decide how an election would turn out.
