What happened at the Capitol can happen at the Israeli Knesset - comment
We have daily protests on our streets – against the prime minister, against the police, against the IDF draft bill. Everyone is protesting about something.
By YAAKOV KATZUS Capitol Police stand detain protesters outside of the House Chamber during a joint session of Congress on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress held a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. A group of Republican (photo credit: DREW ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES)
Israel, like the United States of America, is no stranger to violence. Both countries have sadly been devastated by terrorist attacks and have seen their political leaders assassinated.But watching the images of thousands of people breach the Capitol on Wednesday with the encouragement of the US president seemed like a new low for what was supposed to be a beacon of democracy to the world.The Capitol was breached, the president let it happen and even pushed people to do it, and when the time came for him to call for it to stop, he couldn’t bring himself to do so. And while in the end President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory was certified early Thursday morning, America has to go through a reckoning to understand how it reached this point, and how it will hopefully never find itself there again.As Israelis though, we have to ask ourselves whether something like what happened at the Capitol can happen at the Knesset. Is it possible that we will one day see anarchists and terrorists running through the Chagall Hall like they did through the Rotunda, or through the Plenary like they did through the Senate Chamber?As much as it pains me to write this, we cannot rule out this possibility.What happened in Washington can one day happen here in Jerusalem. Discussions in Israel on Thursday naturally focused on the operational mistakes that allowed the protesters to enter the Capitol. Where were the police? Where was the National Guard? The rally was not a secret. Everyone knew it was happening. People wanted to know why security was not beefed up.While those are important questions, they only scratch the surface. There will be an investigation in the US, and the security agencies will learn the tactical lessons. But the thought that something like this cannot happen in Israel because Israelis are better at security or intelligence is not only arrogant, but naïve. It is the same sentiment that people used to share until November 4, 1995, when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Until then, people were sure that something like the JFK assassination could never happen in Israel. It did.The reason what happened at the Capitol can happen here is because we already have all the same ingredients. We have daily protests on our streets – against the prime minister, against the police, against the IDF draft bill. Everyone is protesting about something.In addition, we have a prime minister like the US president who daily attacks the police, the attorney-general, the courts and the media. The cases against the prime minister are referred to as an attempted coup, and together with senior members of his party, they call on people to resist.The prime minister openly pushes a narrative that he and his followers are second-class citizens, and that a deep state – the justice system in this case – is out to bring him down because he is from the Right and they are from the Left.
Sound familiar?This does not mean that Benjamin Netanyahu is like Donald Trump. He isn’t. Netanyahu has incredible intellectual depth, and has achieved great things for the State of Israel during his tenure as prime minister.But then again, many Americans probably didn’t think that what happened on Wednesday would ever happen – that Capitol police would need to draw their guns to keep a mob off the floor of the House of Representatives.But that is what happens when democracy – its values and its institutions – are consistently and systematically attacked, eroded and dismantled. Violence is a potential next step.That is why what happened in DC can happen here. To make sure it doesn’t, we need to wake up now.
