Netanyahu is hoping for a thousand Pollards

The Bibi-Bogie doctrine states that Jewishness of an American Jew comes before his American citizenship, and that Judaism means favoring Israel and betraying the homeland.

Haaretz

The Israeli government released its Bibi-Bogie doctrine to encourage Jews to spy against their own countries over the weekend. The declarations of the prime minister’s and defense minister’s joy over the release of the prisoner “Yonatan” to freedom were missing any reservations about his violation of American law. They sounded as if he did a good thing, and it was only wrong that he was caught.

These are recruiting ads for American Jews: Don’t immigrate to Israel now to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (except for Haredim, whose votes Benjamin Netanyahu and Moshe Ya’alon prefer to buy). Join the navy, tell confidentially about your secrets and endanger our relations with the American administration, military and intelligence services in Washington. It seems Netanyahu and Ya’alon are hoping for a thousand Pollards (and the FBI has been looking for them for years).

Netanyahu is consistent in his contempt for secrets, not just of foreigners, and sees classified information as a political tool; from his revealing the document prepared by Brig. Gen. Zvi Shtauber for the talks with Syria in 1995, and through to leaking the presentation on the reoccupation of Gaza from his close circles to the television news.

The Bibi-Bogie doctrine states that the Jewishness of an American of Jewish origin comes before his American citizenship, and that Judaism means favoring Israel and betraying the homeland. This follows Senator Joseph McCarthy, who suspected that American communists would prefer the Soviet center of world communism over their loyalty to their country, always, while endangering tens of millions of people with a nuclear war.

Pollard characterizes Netanyahu’s empty verbiage. The execution is hysterical. His pattern of making appointments is hasty. Witness the testimony of Efraim Halevy, the former Israeli ambassador to the European Union in Brussels who calmed King Hussein of Jordan’s stormy spirit after the Khaled Meshal affair, about his appointment as head of the Mossad after Danny Yatom resigned.

Halevy describes in his book how Netanyahu called him in Brussels to offer him the Mossad post. Halevy asked to consult with his family, but before he gave his positive answer he heard Netanyahu’s announcement on the news – in order to draw attention away from a political failure that day. Some 13 years later Netanyahu failed in his appointment of Yoav Galant as IDF chief of staff, and put hasty pressure on Benny Gantz, a general on vacation before retiring from the army, to agree immediately to the appointment so the good news could be broadcast on the Friday night television news.

That is also how he acted two months ago with his plan to appoint Gal Hirsch as police commissioner. In light of the growing criticism on the delay in appointing the police commissioner, Netanyahu forced the appointment of the deputy head of the Shin Bet security service Roni Alsheich, who as opposed to Halevy and Gantz did not want the job, but understood that saying no to Netanyahu in his time of distress would also mean giving up his chance to head the Shin Bet, whether sooner or later.

This appointment, too, which was based on a contrarian approach to that of the police – seemingly based on the scandals involving the police generals, but in practice in order to put an end to criminal investigations of the Netanyahu family – has run into problems and has still not yet been implemented. In the meantime, Netanyahu – who is avoiding any diplomatic progress – has no answer to the terrorist stabbings. The IDF needs an entire brigade in order to surround a Palestinian town and conduct searches and arrests there. One knife-wielding Palestinian is enough for the police to place a blockade and civilian curfew on an entire city of tens of thousands of people such as Kiryat Gat.

The only horizon Netanyahu is aiming for, in circles, is a Republican president to be elected a year from now. This is an futile desire, because the next administration too will preserve the basic Middle Eastern diplomatic policy continuity, just as the three Republican and two Democratic presidents did in the case of Jonathan Pollard.

There are no expectations from Netanyahu, that is who he is; and it is not realistic to assume he will change. The arrow is pointed at his obedient partners, or maybe his submissive slaves, at the top of Likud who know how he functions and where he is leading, grumbling outside the range of hearing of the leader and his family, and saluting in surrender. They are collaborators in a long-term disaster; from them – and from the other party heads in the Knesset today – Israel will not see any salvation.