How is the faithful city [Jerusalem] become an harlot … Thy ministers are rogues and companions of thieves; everyone loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards.— Isaiah: I; 21–23.

After months of systematically undermining Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara both personally and professionally, on Monday 4 August, the Israeli cabinet, spearheaded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, voted unanimously to dismiss her. Her removal from office may take a while, since appeals have been lodged with the Supreme Court, which has already issued an injunction barring the dismissal from being carried out and may eventually rule it to be illegal. Meanwhile, the Cabinet is certain to limit Baharav-Miara’s effectiveness by debarring her from its meetings and ignoring her advice and rulings and her pending dismissal is likely to trigger a constitutional crisis.

Baharav-Miara’s firing was driven by both personal and party-political considerations. Netanyahu wants to halt his own trial, which began in 2020, on corruption charges, including soliciting and accepting gifts from millionaires. He is also keen to stymie a welter of investigations of cabinet ministers and Knesset members that are under the ultimate control of the Attorney-General; to further ultra-Orthodox efforts to pass a law granting them a blanket exemption from military service; and to promote the Israeli Right’s ongoing efforts to annex the West Bank and, possibly, the Gaza Strip. Baharav-Miara has also obstructed a host of unworthy Netanyahu government appointments to senior civil service posts.

The dismissal of the Attorney-General—who was appointed, ironically, at the behest of then justice minister Gideon Sa’ar, now a Netanyahu yes-man and Israel’s foreign minister—is the linchpin of a years-long campaign to destroy the independence of the judiciary and subordinate it to the executive branch. The legislative branch, the Knesset, has been completely under Netanyahu’s thumb since the general elections of November 2022. Earlier this year, justice minister Yariv Levin refused to recognise the election of liberal Yitzhak Amit to the presidency of the Supreme Court, declining even to meet him.

Netanyahu launched his anti-judiciary campaign—which, in Orwellian fashion, he has dubbed “judicial reform”—three years ago, following the start of his trial on charges that include bribery and fraud and that, if convicted, could land him in jail. Since the Attorney-General has the power to end the legal proceedings, by replacing Baharav-Miara with a personal stooge, Netanyahu could escape prison.

Many Israelis view the behaviour of the Netanyahu family over the years, and especially since the start of the current war, as symptomatic of the corruption of the country’s norms and values. The family has spent millions of dollars of treasury money on renovations to their private residences in Jerusalem and Caesarea, citing “security requirements.” And then there is the behaviour of Netanyahu’s two sons: Yair (aged 35) and Avner (aged 30). Since October 2023, both have been spending the war in safety abroad—in Miami and in Oxford, respectively, where Shin Bet agents act as their round-the-clock bodyguards at great public expense—instead of serving as reservists in the IDF, like most of their age cohort back in Israel. Yair Netanyahu has also published a series of posts attacking political opponents, the IDF and its chief of general staff Eyal Zamir, and the Israeli judiciary for not bending to his father’s will. Over the years, Yair has been forced to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars to individuals who have successfully sued him for libel.

The treatment of the Israeli judiciary is just one, albeit glaring, aspect of the gradual perversion of norms and corruption of the Israeli state and its institutions by Netanyahu’s coalition government, which took power in December 2022 after winning the previous month’s general elections by a razor-thin majority of the popular vote. Institutions that have long been mainstays of Israeli democracy have been undermined and worthy gatekeepers have been replaced by extremists, sycophants, and ex-cons.

The first hint of Netanyahu’s intention to bring the state under his full control was his selection of Itamar Ben-Gvir as “minister of national security,” meaning police minister. Ben-Gvir, who was barred from serving in the IDF because he is a Kahanist, is a West Bank settler and messianic fanatic who has been convicted on at least eight counts of racism, anti-Arab violence, and incitement to terrorism. On Sunday 3 August, Ben-Gvir led hundreds of Israelis into the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa compound for a prayer meeting in violation of Israeli–Jordanian agreements that allow Jews to visit the compound but bar them from praying there. Since assuming office, Ben-Gvir has appointed settlers and extremists to senior positions in the police, neutralised all police activity against settlers who have terrorised Arab inhabitants of the West Bank, and encouraged police harassment of legal anti-government protesters. For example, two middle-aged women were recently strip-searched in a police station for no conceivable reason, with Ben-Gvir’s approval.