‘Deep state.” It is the term we hear thrown around almost daily by members of Israel’s coalition government and their media surrogates.
According to this version of events, the deep state is responsible for virtually everything that has gone wrong in the country. It allegedly leaked the video showing soldiers abusing a Palestinian detainee. It is supposedly blocking Justice Minister Yariv Levin from appointing an investigator into the affair. It is said to be controlling Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.
It has orchestrated the corruption investigations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thwarted legislation to draft tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men into the IDF, and manipulated the media, neutered the police, and even transformed generation after generation of Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chiefs and senior IDF officers into “left-wing peace activists” the moment they retire.
According to this worldview, everything comes back to the same villain: the deep state. If something fails, the deep state is to blame. If something stalls, it is the deep state pulling the strings. If the government cannot govern, it is not incompetence; it is always the deep state.
But it is time to say clearly what this narrative really is: It is an excuse.
The “deep state” has become the tool elected officials use to explain away their own failure to lead. Rather than hold themselves accountable for stagnation and bad policy, they point to a shadowy enemy that cannot be challenged, confronted, or disproven, simply because it doesn’t exist in the way they describe it.
Take the relentless attacks on the attorney-general as an example. Yariv Levin and others treat her as the embodiment of the deep state and as public enemy number one. But ask this: Who appointed her? Who recommended that she receive one of the most powerful legal positions in the country?
It was not some secret cabal. It was current Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, a member of Netanyahu’s political camp today, who, even during his brief stint out of the Likud Party, stayed faithful to his right-wing ideology. He wanted Baharav-Miara and supported her up until he rejoined Likud. Now he calls for her to be fired.
Another example is the state witnesses in Netanyahu’s corruption trials. Who are they? His own former chief of staff, a former director-general of his ministry, and a former spokesperson – all people pulled directly from the prime minister’s inner circle. Who hired them, and how did they get their jobs? The answer is obvious.
And who was police commissioner when the initial investigations against the prime minister were launched? Who was attorney-general at the time? Both were Netanyahu appointees as well.
Are all these people part of the deep state too? According to the coalition narrative, the answer is yes because the story must hold no matter what. If they were appointed by Netanyahu, they must have “fallen under the control” of the deep state once in office. In other words, no matter the evidence, the conclusion is always the same – the deep state did it.
This circular logic reveals what the accusation is really designed to accomplish – absolve politicians of any responsibility. If everything is controlled by an invisible enemy, then nobody in government is ever at fault. You can spend years in power but still claim you are “trying” to do something and that you would be able to succeed if only the deep state wasn’t in the way.
Israel's political truth is less conspiratorial than a 'deep state'
THE TRUTH is much simpler and far less conspiratorial: Israel’s leaders are not being blocked from governing. They are choosing not to govern.
They fail because politics matters more to them than policy. Coalition survival matters more than national survival. Cabinet seats matter more than the burdens borne by the public.
The ongoing battle over the ultra-Orthodox draft law is the clearest example.
The facts are uncontested. The IDF is short roughly 15,000 soldiers. Reservists who have already served hundreds of days over the past two years are being told to prepare for annual call-ups of 50 to 60 days for the foreseeable future. These same reservists form the backbone of Israel’s working class and are people who already face higher taxes, rising prices, and personal strain.
At the same time, there are between 50,000 and 70,000 ultra-Orthodox men of draft age who are not serving at all. These are not disputed numbers. Everyone in politics knows them. Everyone acknowledges the imbalance.
In any normal country that genuinely cares about fairness and national resilience, there would be an obvious solution: draft them. All of them.
Any leadership that truly respected its soldiers and working families would also do something equally simple: end state stipends to those who refuse to serve or work and redirect those funds toward lowering taxes and easing economic pressure on the people who actually carry the country – militarily and financially – on their backs.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has already outlined how redirecting stipends and yeshiva funding could enable a reduction in income taxes for nearly everyone who works. It’s not a revolutionary idea. It’s common sense.
So why doesn’t it happen?
Not because coalition leaders don’t understand that it’s right. They understand perfectly well. It doesn’t happen because, from a political standpoint, it’s inconvenient. They want to preserve the option of forming future governments with ultra-Orthodox parties. They need those alliances to maintain their path back to power after the upcoming election sometime in 2026.
And so they make a conscious choice: sacrifice the reservists, taxpayers, and working families so they can hold onto their seats just a little longer.
That isn’t the deep state at work. This is much simpler – politics.
The failure to govern is not new, nor is the attempt to find someone else to blame. Netanyahu has perfected this system over the last 17 years, during which he was prime minister for 15 years. This alone is enough to dismiss the idea of a shadowy deep state cabal since, if there is one, whose is it by now if not Netanyahu and the Likud’s?
And this is what we need to realize. If the government fails to govern, it is not because of dark forces that are tying its hands but rather because, too often, it chooses political expediency over national responsibility.
Blaming the “deep state” may be smart politics, but it is nothing more than a mask for something far more disappointing – a leadership that refuses to lead.
The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD policy forum, a senior fellow at the JPPI, and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His newest book is While Israel Slept.