"A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs, as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time." Sounds familiar.
October 10, 2023

Here's some dramatic foreshadowing of the likely outcome of a second Trump term, from Morning Joe. A head of state dealing with indictments, and an unholy alliance with right-wing religious extremists? Check.

"In an editorial entitled 'Netanyahu Bears Responsibility For This Israel-Gaza War,' the editorial board of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writes, in part, 'Above all, the danger looming over Israel in recent years has been fully realized. A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs, as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time. This was the reason for establish this horrific coalition and the judicial coup advanced by Netanyahu, and for the enfeeblement of top army and intelligent officers who were perceived as political opponents. The price was paid by the victims of the invasion,'" Mika Brzezinski read aloud.

Joe Scarborough called it 'an extraordinarily harsh editorial."

"From an Israeli newspaper, literally hours after these attacks. You usually don't see that, but it seems to underline something that you've picked up in your reporting, I've picked up in my reporting from talking to Israelis and people connected with Israeli intel services, military services. That is a deep and lingering distrust of the people that Netanyahu was surrounded by," he said.

"I had one person, been telling me for a year -- I shared this with you last night -- I won't give his name. Everybody knows him. But he said that what he hears every time he goes to Israel or talks to Israelis, talking about the security situation there, he says, 'You have pilots who are secular, and you have their mechanics who are Orthodox.

"He said, 'there is a divide -- been saying this for a year -- there is a split. There is a divide that runs straight through the military and that runs straight through the intel services, and this past week, sadly, I'm afraid, we saw the results of that."

"Obviously, it's too early for us to know exactly what led to this intelligence failure and this tragedy, but in the months before these Hamas attacks, Israel was as divided politically as I've ever seen it," David Ignatius said.

"I've been covering Israel for 40 years. The security elite, the officers of military intelligence, of the Mossad, the internal security are as you were suggesting. For the most part, secular Israelis, they live in Tel-Aviv and Haifa. They see Israel as a modern dynamic, secular state, and they grow increasingly suspicious of Bibi, prime minister Netanyahu and his alliance with the ultra orthodox, largely based in Jerusalem, who have a very different vision of what Israel should be.

"That split, i think, any historian who writes this story in future decades will look at the degree of division in Israel that preceded this horrible attack and will, I think, certainly from Hamas as they watch the daily news from Israel, they saw signs of a country coming apart politically. Thousands of Israelis demonstrating in the streets. Army reservists saying they wouldn't show up for duty because they felt so angry as what they saw as Prime Minister Netanyahu's attack on the state."

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