MOSSAD AT WAR WITH ISRAEL?

A memo prepared for senior Pentagon leaders and leaked to the The Washington Post has revealed a deep rift in Israel, with the country's secret service Mossad going head-to-head with the government of Bibi Netanyahu.

According to the leaked document, Israeli spy chiefs are leading a "secret revolt" against Netanyahu's plans to reduce the power of the courts in the Israeli constitution.

According to the Post:

The leaked document labeled top secret says that in February, senior leaders of the Mossad spy service “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government, according to signals intelligence.”

By itself, the direct intervention into Israeli politics by Mossad, an external spy service forbidden from wading into domestic matters, would be a significant revelation. That the information surfaced as a result, apparently, of U.S. espionage on its closest Middle East ally could further inflame what has been a time of historic political unrest in Israel.

The document claims that elements of Mossad's leadership encouraged demonstrations against the government in “early to mid-February” and also encouraged rank-and-file members to participate. 

Since then, there seems to have been apparent attempts to paper over the cracks and pretend that Mossad and the Netanyahu government are on the same page, LOL:

On Sunday, the prime minister’s office released a statement on behalf of Mossad, describing media reports about the memo as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”

“The Mossad and its serving senior personnel have not engaged in the issue of the demonstrations at all and are dedicated to the value of service to the state that has guided the Mossad since its founding,” the statement read.

At the present moment, Israel is at a kind of crossroads between a descent into increasingly unhinged populism and resistance from more moderating influences, such as the country's Supreme Court and, ahem, Mossad.

The measures under consideration could have a dramatic impact on Israeli society. Many of the country’s thorniest issues — among them the rights of Palestinians, matters of religion and state, and minority civil rights — end up being adjudicated in Israel’s courts. The proposed overhaul would hand Israel’s parliament control over judicial appointments, eliminate judicial review of legislation and allow lawmakers to vote down Supreme Court decisions.

While grassroots Israeli voters increasingly favour more extreme measures to deal with Israel's awkward security issues, like wholesale ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the resettlement of the occupied territories, elements in the elite, like the judiciary and the secret services have more awareness of the "challenges" and "problems" this will create for Israel, which remains a solitary Jewish state in a sea of Islam, due to its founders' poor choice of location.

The opposition of Mossad against the Israeli government also explains why the only major government figure to break ranks was the Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who criticised Netanyahu's reforms in late March.

But on the other hand Israeli channel i24 thinks it's a weird Kremlin op.