The Left’s Latest Unhinged Efforts to Take Down Netanyahu

If you are like me, you are probably largely confined to your home as our governments enact powerful decrees to deal with the impact of coronavirus.

Israel has closed its borders to all nonresidents, and every day, more rules get handed down to tell us how far and for what we can venture out. For my family, it’s not a particularly hard adjustment to make, as we have a park next door and I work mostly from home.

Nevertheless, as Stephen Flurry pointed out in today’s Trumpet Daily Radio Show, it’s stunning how democracies are increasingly looking like dictatorships as freedoms we have enjoyed are swept aside.

In Israel, along with the strong-armed coronavirus response, there is another attack on democratic norms taking place. But contrary to most in the media, I’m not talking about the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I’m talking about the undemocratic ploys at play to remove him.

In Israel, there is a powerful and unhinged effort to overturn the result of the election. It’s shocking. It’s real. And it’s becoming increasingly obvious to everyone.

You will recall that on March 2, Israel voted in its unprecedented third election within a year.

The vote was called to break the political deadlock and hopefully give either Prime Minister Netanyahu or rival Benny Gantz the needed 61-seat majority in the Knesset.

Even though Netanyahu’s Likud party won a record 36 seats in the vote, his right-wing religious coalition only garnered 58 seats collectively. Nevertheless, it was more than Gantz’s Blue and White party, which only grabbed 33 seats. Combined with his preelection coalition of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party and the left-wing parties, Gantz only had 46 seats total.

Understandably, in the early hours of March 3, Netanyahu declared victory.

While still three seats short of a majority, he was in a far better position than Gantz to somehow wrangle a few extra seats. It was assumed that Netanyahu would be appointed by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin the first opportunity to form a coalition.

But that’s not what happened.

Soon after Netanyahu’s victory speech, rival Gantz decided to break a campaign promise and welcomed the backing and support of the Joint List, a group of Arab parties who together received 15 seats in the election. Together with the Arabs, Gantz would have the 61 seats necessary to form a majority.

Of course, there is nothing wrong about welcoming an Arab into your government. Indeed, Likud and others have Arab representation inside their parties.

However, the Joint List is made up of anti-Zionist Arab leaders whose stated goal is to destroy Israel’s foundational status as a Jewish state.

Historically, the Joint List has been anathema to the major Jewish parties. No ruling government has included the party inside a coalition because of its extreme anti-Zionist views. Indeed, this is likely why Blue and White said repeatedly before the election that it would not join forces with the Joint List. More Israelis would have voted for Netanyahu if they knew Gantz was going to break his promise.

Nevertheless, facing a shortfall in votes, Gantz accepted the support of the anti-Zionist Arabs. And with the 61-seat majority, he was given the first opportunity to form a government.

In truth, though, Gantz is not planning on entering into a formal coalition with the Joint List. He is just planning on staying with them long enough to get rid of Netanyahu.

In an unprecedented act, Gantz plans to use the allotted six weeks he has to form a coalition to instead pass laws forbidding Netanyahu from forming a government in the future.

While Gantz’s moves are technically legal, he is upending decades of electoral and Knesset precedent in order to remove Netanyahu and gain power for himself.

According to Israeli law, the creation of new laws must be overseen by the speaker of the Knesset. Historically, the speaker belongs to the same party as the prime minister and, as such, is currently occupied by Likud’s Yuli Edelstein. But in order for Gantz to advance the anti-Netanyahu law, Blue and White has asked that there be a vote in the interim Knesset to replace the speaker of the House.

Such a move would be a first in Israel’s history. Edelstein initially said he would not conduct the unprecedented vote. However, on Tuesday, Israel’s Supreme Court intervened in an unprecedented fashion and dictated to Edelstein that the vote must go forward by Thursday.

If Edelstein is replaced by a Blue and White candidate, as seems likely, two bills will come before the Knesset for vote. The first would seek to impose a two-term limit on prime ministers, which would automatically exclude Netanyahu from taking office. The second will overturn an Israeli law that allows a prime minister to remain in office while under indictment until he is formally convicted. Netanyahu has been under indictment by the attorney general, and so this law is directly targeting his future rule.

In both cases, the laws are specifically against one man: Netanyahu.

On March 2, almost half of Israelis effectively voted for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue serving in that office, knowing full well that he was under indictment. This was about 500,000 more people than who voted for Gantz’s stated coalition.

For Gantz to then defy the will of half the nation in some legislative sleight of hand during a caretaker Knesset in order to remove the people’s choice is a power grab unprecedented in Israel’s history. It effectively tells half the nation that their vote didn’t count.

Israeli media is full of stories of how Netanyahu is destroying democracy in Israel. However, it is hard to think of a more undemocratic process than is being enacted by Gantz and his make-believe majority coalition.

Gantz is destroying the fundamental truism of the democratic process that the people decide who will lead the nation.

In democracies, you need to win at the ballot box. Gantz is attempting to change the rules after the vote and disqualify the leading vote getter.

Such a strategy is dangerous. If Gantz is unable to unseat Netanyahu through this process, he will likely be forgiven by Israel’s rabid left-wing media. But the voters won’t soon forget. If he is unsuccessful at removing Netanyahu and a fourth election ensues, it’s hard to see how the Blue and White party will survive.

The result would likely be a greater groundswell of support for Netanyahu.

If you think any of this sounds a little familiar, you aren’t wrong.

For over three years, the radical left in the United States has tried desperately to overturn an election result. And yet through the Russia collusion hoax, Ukraine hoax, impeachment and the current attempt to blame the president for his handling of coronavirus, U.S. President Donald Trump has emerged stronger than ever.

There is a parallel phenomenon taking place in Israel with attacks by the legislature, the media and the judiciary against the leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu.

As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has written extensively, President Trump is overseeing a stunning resurgence in America, even as the radical left tries to unseat him.

As Mr. Flurry has revealed, this resurgence in the United States, as well as the attempt of the radical left to fundamentally change the nation, was prophesied in the biblical book of Kings. 2 Kings 14:27 states that at time when the nation of Israel was about to be blotted out, God saved the nation by the “hand of Jeroboam.”

In Israel, we see a similar temporary resurgence taking place under the leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu. As theTrumpet.com managing editor Brad Macdonald wrote in “A Prophesied Resurgence in Israel?” Netanyahu has overseen a decade of stunning growth, economically and militarily, in Israel. But as with President Trump, we also see successive attempts to overturn his rule. This latest ploy by Blue and White to side with Arab parties that literally want to destroy Israel as a Jewish state clearly falls into this category.

Wherever the election process and Israel go from here, it is clear that something unprecedented and undemocratic is taking place to remove Netanyahu. For the moment, the prime minister and President Trump seem to be holding back those forces.

If you would like to understand more of this latter-day prophecy, as well as the motivating factor behind the unhinged attempts to take down Israel’s leaders, please read Mr. Flurry’s landmark article “Saving America From the Radical Left—Temporarily.”