Avi Ohayon GPO
Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: The “Deep State”: Deep in Human History (and Today)
PM Netanyahu recently let loose with a diatribe against Israel’s “Deep State,” i.e., high-level officials in the civil service who are supposedly conspiring to undermine the country’s democratically elected leaders. Among them: the present government’s Attorney-General (Gali Baharav-Miara) whom the Cabinet has voted to dismiss (the process is long and arduous); Ronen Bar, the recently fired head of the SHABAK (Internal Security), and the State Comptroller (Matan Engelman) in charge of flushing out governmental incompetence, inefficiency etc.
Quite strangely, these three high-level officials were appointed under his own government! Strange but not surprising as it follows a pattern of Bibi’s recriminations over time – the most blatant being his hand-picked Attorney-General, Avichai Mandelblit (who earlier also served as Bibi’s Head of the Prime Minister’s Office) having no choice but to indict Bibi for three crimes – for which the PM is currently on trial. Mandelblit has been vilified ever since by the prime minister’s sycophants on social media.
All this is a mirror image of U.S. President Trump, who started the “Deep State” accusations quite a while ago. The term has also been used in Hungary and Poland to justify policies that weaken democratic checks and balances. Thus, the term “Deep State” is not merely another accusatory nickname used in “normal” political discourse but rather represents the greatest potential threat to democracies around the world since pre-World War II’s Nazism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism.
But why now? Or better put: why is it striking such a deep chord among sizable parts of the population? My surprising answer: the phenomenon in itself is not novel at all, but what is new is the radically changed media environment.
Human beings have always believed in things that they couldn’t understand or perceive: God, the Devil, supernatural forces, evil spirits, and also “other” people. The latter category included Jews’ killing Christian children for Passover matzoh-making (or the “Elders of Zion”), witches (e.g., Salem, Massachusetts), secret societies (the Masons, Illuminati, and the like). To put this in modern lingo: when things don’t go “the way you want,” there has to be some menacing force (usually human) conspiring to undermine the “normal” functioning of society.
The only difference between “then” and “now” is the far greater ability to spread such conspiratorial thinking. Centuries ago, such accusations generally remained in one’s local province because of a serious lack of mass communication. With the advent of modern mass media over the past two centuries – telegraph, telephone, radio, television, internet – the capacity to “spread the word” far and wide has grown. In today’s social media era, all one needs is a grievance and a plausible, supposed “cover-up” by the authorities to have such accusations disseminated far and wide. Among numerous, famous examples: Orson Welles’ 1938 radio-induced, War of the Worlds panic due to his fictional “aliens landing in New Jersey” broadcast; Roswell, New Mexico (1948): undeciphered aerial photos leading to accusations that the U.S. Air Force was covering up evidence of “alien space ships”; 1963 – JFK’s TV-covered assassination (how could a lone gunman have done this? it had to be a Soviet plot – or the FBI itself!); 2020s – social media allegations that Covid was started by the Chinese, or bats, or…
Two other factors can be added to this: first, modern life has become far more complex than in the past; second, population numbers have skyrocketed over this period. The result: the disconnect between common folk and the political regime has grown incommensurably. This renders the communication task (PR etc.) of elected leaders that much more difficult – and conspiratorial ideas that much easier to believe, despite the general rise of education.
Being aware of this set of circumstances, political leaders such as Trump and Bibi have turned the art of disinformation into a science. Yet, reality has a way of setting roadblocks to such prevarications. A recent example: President Trump ordered the release of all the JFK assassination files. What was found in the no-longer-redacted sections? No conspiracy at all, but rather how Americans were recruited into the U.S. spy system working against the Soviet Union.
One can expect similar things to emerge in Israel. “Qatargate” is the most recent example. It can hardly be a coincidence that Netanyahu fired the head of the SHABAK (and issued his “Deep State” speech) just as that organization started to seriously investigate the very serious goings-on in the PM’s office, with one of Bibi’s closest aides (and probably a few others too) admitting to receiving money from Qatar during the Gaza War! When the whole story emerges – whether sooner or later at trial – the Deep State will then be seen to be protecting Deep Democracy. A probably similar outcome will ensue once the judicial verdicts of Bibi’s own triple-indictment trial(s) are issued in the coming months.
Recent polls show that most Israelis are not Deep State believers; the massive protest demonstrations back in 2023 (and most recently as well) against eviscerating the judicial branch are further proof of this. Bibi, Trump, and other Deep State accusers would do well to recall the famous adage of one of America’s leading lights, Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig (PhD in Government, 1976; Harvard U) presently serves as Academic Head of the Communications Department at the Peres Academic Center (Rehovot). Previously, he taught at Bar-Ilan University (1977-2017), serving as Head of the Journalism Division (1991-1996); Political Studies Department Chairman (2004-2007); and School of Communication Chairman (2014-2016). He was also the Chair of the Israel Political Science Association (1997-1999). He has published five books and 69 scholarly articles on Israeli Politics, New Media & Journalism, Political Communication, the Jewish Political Tradition, the Information Society. His new book (in Hebrew, with Tali Friedman): RELIGIOUS ZIONISTS RABBIS’ FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Between Halakha, Israeli Law, and Communications in Israel’s Democracy (Niv Publishing, 2024). For more information about Prof. Lehman-Wilzig’s publications (academic and popular), see: www.ProfSLW.com
