Defining the political nature of a state involves more than examining the fairness and frequency of its elections. Today, most independent nations strive to be among those countries whose rights and liberties of its own people are limited only by the need of the state to promote harmony and internal tranquility. In the United States, for example, when the police seek to obtain a warrant to search for evidence among the personal effects of a suspected criminal, they must first specify the purposes of the search, that is, be specific about the crime under investigation. Once the request of the police has been granted by the court and the search is performed, only the evidence regarding that crime can be used against the accused. This procedural formula makes sense if the idea is to prevent the police, whose job it is to uphold the law, from having too large a role within the judicial system. The police are to act as agents of the state with conduct aimed at finding a balance between the rights of the state and those of the individual so as to ward off state totalitarianism or rouge persecutions. Only when all legal criteria have been met does the prosecutory powers of the state determine if proceeding with the case is in the public interest. When the circumstances have shown that the government itself was criminally libel the same codes and procedures are followed to prosecute the perpetrators.

When, however, the police act within their own discretion, run their own "fishing expeditions", or use political motives to hunt individuals, we commonly refer to such a political system as a "Police State." When a government allows its police to "recommend" and enforce political detentions of its own citizens, bar entry into its borders of non-criminal political opponents, criminalize speech that disagrees with the political status quo and avenge political vendettas then we call such a political system, totalitarian.

The irony of the situation in Israel is that the police have turned on the new Likud government with the same veracity it has for the last four and a half years treated political opposition to the Labor Party policies. The "political opponents" still harassed by the police are supporters and members of the administration in "power". Israel is a functioning democracy whose mechanisms of state are controlled by those who seek to hold power and sway their own political will regardless of the democratic process. The fact that the Labor Party is no longer "running" the government is irrelevant to the forces that control daily life in Israel.

The oppression of the speech/political police continues as if Labor-created police state were still controlling the government. In fact, the political environment in Israel has not changed one iota with the new administration and because of this, the victim is now the government itself. Without exaggeration, Israel is now, with the advent of the Bar-On investigation and the recommended indictment of the prime minister, in the process of an attempted coup d'etat by the left-wing political coalition parties in Israel. The blame for this situation is rests in two camps, 1) the weakness and naivete of the Netanyahu government and 2) the undaunted opposition forces willing to stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

It was only a matter of time before either Prime Minister Netanyahu cleaned house or had his own house cleaned. Although Netanyahu might have tolerated all the mechanisms of state, most importantly the media, the police and the army controlled by the Labor Party, the opposition could not stomach his presence and pretence to power. The Likud government is a thorn in their side that they would rather live without. And for Netanyahu's lack of concern for his own constituency's freedom to think without fears of arrest, and for his lack of insight into the depths of the problem, maybe he got what he deserved. That said, it will most definitely be the beginning of the end for Israel should the Labor Party succeed in their desperate coup. This is not merely a reference to the Oslo Accords, but to the character of the society as a whole.

Indeed, the charges leveled in the "Bar-Ongate" are as illegitimate as the opposition's right to rule Israel. The "dirty business" of the entire affair is not any alleged wrong-doing on the part of Netanyahu or his government, but rather the malicious actions of the media and the police acting as party hacks for the self-styled and self-appointed Labor "Intelligentsia" that rule the country through bureaucratic and economic monopolies.

There is no direct link between the "recommendations" to indict made by the police and the original allegations asserted by the media against the prime minister. The charge was made in January 1997 by a reporter for Israel state television Channel One that Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a dirty political deal. It was claimed that in exchange for a positive vote on the Hebron agreement with the Palestinians by the coalition partner Shas Party, Shas MK Aryeh Deri would be given a plea bargain on corruption charges by the designated appointee for attorney general and Likud political crony, Roni Bar-On. Channel One asserted that Bar-On was chosen not for his qualifications to hold the job of attorney-general, but because he was willing to carry out this crooked arrangement. In conclusion, Channel One stated, there were at least three prime conspirators; the Prime Minister, Shas MK Aryeh Deri and attorney Roni Bar-On. As a result of Channel One's story, a police investigation was begun and Roni Bar-On, who held office for two days, resigned as attorney-general. Some three months have past with over a thousand of hours of police investigation and hundreds of hours of witness testimony, including from the prime minister, and none of the police recommendations have anything to do with the Hebron agreement or the original allegations leveled by Channel One. Roni Bar-On is not even among those the police have positioned for prosecution.

Israel Television's story, it turns out, was based on a single witness, Dan Avi-Yitzhak, and the "facts" Channel One aired were erroneous. Avi-Yitzhak was the classic jilted suitor. While still officially the attorney for MK Deri (Deri's case has been in the courts since Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister), Avi-Yitzhak was being considered for the attorney-general position but dismissed as a candidate because of his involvement in the Deri proceedings. Distraught over his bad luck and the ill-timing of events, Avi-Yitzhak went to a Channel One reporter who began to salivate uncontrollably at the prospects of fulfilling her role of "bringing down the government." After all, the call had gone out immediately after Netanyahu's victory at the polls that every right thinking Israeli must ask him/herself "what have I done today to bring down the government." Not lacking in her allegiance to the opposition, the Channel One reporter took the story public in an "exclusive" that made her a heroine of the Israeli jet-set. It was no surprise that the police, whose personnel had been well picked and well trained by previous Labor governments, went fishing. The police hunt was politically motivated structured to ferret out any possible charges against the prime minister in order to bring down the government. The police found nothing connected to the original allegations. What the police did manage to uncover appears to be politics as usual within coalition based governments. Nothing more and perhaps a great deal less than acts numerous Labor governments committed with abandon in trying to fill "like minded" individuals in key positions of power. Labor supporters are now saying that even if the police found only evidence of filling political positions with "like minded" individuals that that is enough to indict and Netanyahu must resign.

This entire affair is more than simply a reporter looking for the "big" story and the police being forced to look into the matter. There was a concerted effort to thwart Netanyahu's ability to redistribute the power of the government into the hands of his own party. There was a fear that all the Labor Party loyalists might be on their way out. The battle cry rang out from army personnel to city bureaucrats that they were in danger of losing their jobs and that the new government had to go. It is no coincident that the information concerning the police recommendations were leaking to the press. It is also no coincident that the fact Netanyahu was interviewed by the police was leaked to the press. And lastly, it was no coincident that the minister in charge of the police, who should have rightly been informed, had no knowledge that the police had suggested that the prime minister be indicted.

As to the charges of "breech of trust" and "fraud" that are now the recommended charges by the police against the prime minister, where were the stalwarts of democracy when true examples of such governmental crimes were committed? The Oslo Agreement, perhaps the greatest change in national policy in the history of Israel, passed the Knesset by one vote. Two of those votes were publically bought by the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. MK Gonen Segev and MK Alex Goldfarb, members of the anti-Oslo right-wing Tzomet Party, were allowed to split off from their party (by Labor-controlled Knesset approval) in order to receive political and financial favors from Yitzhak Rabin and his supporters. This episode was publically acknowledged by the Prime Minister and the ruling coalition and involved not only "breech of trust", but violations of oath and bribery.

Where was Channel One when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin personally involved himself in the criminal case against MK Aryeh Deri? It took the Supreme Court to remove Deri as a minister in the Labor government after charges had been brought against him. In his desire to force through the Oslo Accords, Rabin attempted to protect Deri by delaying prosecution and maintain the Shas Party's support for his policies.

As for political appointments of the Labor governments, the roster is far too long to enumerate. However, a talented journalist might want to look into the personal history of former Chief-of-Staff Ehud Barak, now the leading contender for the Labor Party head or the qualifications of former Attorney-General Michael Ben-Yair.

Should the Prime Minister survive the onslaught of the opposition's coup, he had better get smart and do so quickly. If Netanyahu hopes to serve his term of office he necessarily must transform more than the prime minister's office and liberate the country from the tyranny of the Labor party hacks. End, once and for all, political detentions; end, once and for all, the barring of non-criminal Jews who want to enter the country; end, once and for all, thought police and the harassment of political opponents. And finally, end, once and for all, the monolithic, state run media and the corporate monopolies controlled by the aperachiks of the Labor coalition.
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