"Israel has no democratic culture," the sociological Left likes to complain. "In Britain and the US, there are things you simply don't do, even if they're not written down," they explain. But when it comes to them, all the rules are forgotten and every institution can go up in flames, as long as they're the ones sitting on the throne when the embers cool.
Imagine a scenario: a year from now, two years, a decade. Some security crisis strikes Israel. The prime minister, doesn't matter which party, which side, which political affiliation, rushes to the Kirya in his armored car. Sitting beside him is the military secretary appointed to him by the IDF, possibly the person who spends more time with the prime minister than anyone except his wife and bodyguards.
The enemy has placed some dilemma before Israel, a hard decision that must be made. Instead of the prime minister devoting himself entirely to weighing the situation, its direct and broader implications, and the need to choose between different approaches of his policy partners, our theoretical prime minister has to think about whether the uniformed man sitting beside him is a senior officer in the service of the state under his government or a planted microphone, who will emerge in a year or two into civilian life and from there decide to pull secrets from his pocket for the benefit of your political rival, who also, entirely by coincidence, is a former senior officer in that same army.
That's what Ret. Maj. Gen. Avi Gil did yesterday. exactly what the British call "things you simply don't do."
It doesn't matter if it's Benjamin Netanyahu, Gadi Eisenkot or even Yair Golan. The prime minister's circle, especially his appointed security officials, must be bound by a wall of silence from which nothing emerges, as long, of course, as there's no suspicion of criminal activity. And even then, the address is a confidential complaint to the police, not the tempting spotlights of Channel 12.
But this isn't the first time the bourgeois Left has made use of such terrible breaking of vessels. It's no accident that the prime minister's close bodyguards were mentioned earlier. Until just a few years ago, the Shin Bet's VIP protection unit was anonymous; its members were a passing and changing background in photos of state leaders and nothing more, as a secret service is supposed to be.
But of course, this practice too was convenient as long as it served the Left in Israel, as long as Deep Throat-style testimonies under Rabin, Barak and their ilk about severe personal failings stayed under the rug. But under the Right, even this can be burned. Former senior officials in the unit came out with personal exposés about the prime minister and his family, in what in any other position with such a level of proximity would be defined as a severe breach of trust, but again, as long as the ashes are theirs, the Left will burn more and more.
This is of course without even mentioning the pilots who used their ranks and wings to hold a knife to the nation's throat, the intelligence personnel and special unit members who control those fields with a high hand thanks to a culture of friends bringing friends.
It doesn't matter if you're a Kaplanist or a Bibist, it doesn't matter if you're a democrat or a conservative, it doesn't matter if you're Left or Right. Every rational citizen (the key word in the argument) should want a wall to stand around the prime minister in the form of devoted people, devoted not to the ruler but to the rule, devoted to the personal responsibility of maintaining silence, a silence that allows prime ministers to run the state without paranoia, without the constant need to suspect the motivations of the officer or bodyguard attached to them all day.
Turning every former official, in every office, at every rank, into a gossipy teenager pulling secrets from his pocket, entirely coincidentally right before elections, or during a protest he supports, is part of the old scorched-earth culture championed by the Left. "We'll destroy the old world to its foundations," as the kibbutzim loved to sing, out of complete faith that they would be the rulers of the new world.
