#autocratic

THE WAR CABINET

Now, Netanyahu isn't an established autocrat yet, he's more of a wanna-be. Israeli news media still criticizes him, civil society still organizes against him, the judiciary still rules against him, and his opponents still have the possibility of ousting him in the Knesset, so he doesn't get to just shove all his opposition in jail on trumped up charges the way Vladimir Putin does. Instead, he's found a better way of muzzling his opposition, give them a title.

That's what the Israeli "war cabinet" is, it's how he muzzles his opposition. Now, I should be clear, a war cabinet isn't necessarily just a muzzle, sometimes it's a legitimate way to ensure support and input from across the nation for a war. But that's not what Netanyahu is using it for, and the way to tell is actually fairly simple. You see, in a true war cabinet, the leader gives up some control to his opposition in order to ensure that they're truly represented, but Netanyahu didn't do that.

You see, there are six members of the war cabinet, three full members and three observers. Of those six, four of them are either members of the Likud Party (Netanyahu's party), members of the Shas Party (one of his coalition members), or a close confidant of Netanyahu's (Ron Dermer). More importantly, only those members that are directly tied to Netanyahu have an actual portfolio (Defense for Likud member Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs for Dermer).

In other words, the opposition is in the cabinet, but has no ability to push policy and, even after policy is agreed upon, has no say in how it's carried out. However, as long as they're in the cabinet, they can't speak out publicly against the decisions made. Netanyahu has used the war cabinet to muzzle his opposition without giving them any actual power. Now, with competing voices largely silenced, we move on to Step 3.

HOW TO MAKE ATROCITIES HAPPEN

Atrocities used to be fairly common in warfare, even expected, but modern militaries actually have fairly good discipline, structure, and clear rules of operation that prevent them from doing this on any kind of large scale. In order to get a modern military to commit atrocities, you have to press it in a very specific way.

First, you have to give it an objective, preferably a vaguely defined but intensely patriotic one; bonus points if it's not practically possible. In Netanyahu's case, he ordered the military to destroy Hamas. This may be an achievable objective if Israel had spent years gathering detailed intelligence on the group and had a clear plan for how to separate Hamas fighters and leadership from the civilian population, but the ease with which Hamas carried out its 10/7 attack shows that even the first condition is not even close to being met. Destroying Hamas is an easy goal to defend in public debate, of course everyone wants to destroy Hamas, but it's not one that brings any specifics and it's certainly not something that the Israeli military can do without substantial support from both spies and diplomats even if the required preparations had actually been made.

The second step, though, is equally important; you press aggressively for results. A military given a vague mission that isn't really possible will go through the motions and not do all that much. In order to make atrocities happen, you have to push them to go hard. Bomb that building that may or may not relate to the objective, better to act than to delay! Shoot that person in the distance that may or may not be a Hamas fighter, better safe than sorry! The hospital might be a command post you say? Best to go in with full force!

By giving a vague and impossible mission and then insisting on rapid action, you can force any military to commit atrocities. Then you just wait to start Step 4.

RALLY AROUND THE FLAG

As soon as a country's military commits an atrocity, the international community will react with at least some sort of condemnation. This, at least, is as predictable as clockwork even if the consequences will vary widely. If you're an autocrat with a popularity problem, this is your moment; you're going to defend the troops with every ounce of breath in your body and, with your opposition muzzled, there will be no one to point out that the atrocity wasn't even their fault in the first place, it was yours.

And so, with one fell swoop, you identify the country as being under attack and yourself as its fervent defender, fulfilling the tactic described by Hermann Goering:

"…the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

COMPLICATIONS

Of course, it's not necessarily so simple. There are always things that can trip you up and it takes a fairly deft hand to navigate those issues. For example, if you're not careful to distance yourself, it can become obvious that you're the one responsible for the atrocity, not the military. This is where other tactics can come into play.

The most obvious one is just to deny facts that are inconvenient. This is actually what led me to write this up, an exchange I had recently in which someone denied that Israel had, in fact, struck the Iranian embassy in Damascus with an air strike in order to frame Iran's response as unprovoked aggression. This kind of thing doesn't tend to happen (at least, not outside very fringe circles) unless all four of these steps have had a pretty reasonable amount of success which is why I've expressed surprise at how quickly Netanyahu has accomplished all of this.

Facts in general, though, are the most common type of complication. Finding ways to hide, deny, or otherwise elide the fact that you're the one responsible for the atrocity, that it's not just the soldiers making hard calls on an otherwise positive battlefield, are key to making this procedure work.

It's useful for those of us who are not interested in Netanyahu's party line to note that the Israeli military is already showing signs of breaking in the ways that the US military did in Vietnam when discipline and basic chain of command broke down. Simply looking at the sheer number of Israeli soldiers posting social media videos of themselves casually looting or blowing up the homes of Palestinian civilians or shooting people on the street is enough to demonstrate fairly clearly that even basic communications discipline is in rough shape.

So far, though, Netanyahu has been able to control the narrative in Israel, even if the international narrative is turning against him. It remains to be sees if he can continue to do this.

CONCLUSION

Netanyahu has followed a pretty standard 4-step autocratic procedure in order to position himself as the protector of the country and distract from the many, many things that were making him unpopular and threating to remove him from his position of power. In fact, if you look at Israel's strike on Iran's embassy in Damascus, it appears that he's actually starting the whole process over again as the Gaza offensive stalls and he needs further distraction from his other issues.