Trump, Netanyahu and ‘Deep States’ (Yossi Alpher- April 7, 2025)
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote: "In America and Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people's will. They won't win in either place!" Can you explain?
A. The explanation is multi-dimensional. Both Trump and Netanyahu refer frequently to a “Deep State” that by any objective standard does not exist in either the US or the Israeli context. That quote also hints at a broad phenomenon whereby Trump has become an object of emulation by authoritarian leaders globally. Netanyahu is a key case-in-point. And Israel’s current “Qatargate” scandal poses the frightening question of who is ‘deepstating’ whom.
Q. Start by defining what a deep state is and is not.
A. According to the Cambridge online dictionary, a deep state consists of “organizations such as military, police, or political groups that are said to work secretly in order to protect particular interests and to rule a country without being elected.” In recent years, a leader like Trump or Netanyahu who, once elected, attempts to alter the constitutional checks and balances of a democratic system and is frustrated precisely by that system, has responded by labeling institutions within that system, without justification, ‘deep state.’
Q. Did you ever encounter a real ‘deep state’ in your work?
A. The original use of the term ‘deep state’ was, to the best of my knowledge, in Turkiye prior to the end of the twentieth century. Turkiye’s Deep State consisted of the country’s security and intelligence establishment, which often operated without the knowledge of its democratic institutions like the parliament and the foreign ministry.
In 1958, Israel entered into a strategic security alliance, “Trident,” with Turkiye and Iran. In Turkiye’s case, the alliance lasted decades. The two countries engaged in secret strategic cooperation--e.g., the two army chiefs-of-staff once planned a joint invasion of Syria from north and south--without the knowledge of Turkiye’s democratic institutions.
About a decade ago, long after Israeli-Turkish relations had soured, I queried a high-level Turkish diplomat about that alliance. “We were strategic partners,” I reminded her, only to confront a blank stare and abject denial on her part. The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s narrative of Turkish-Israeli relations simply did not mention Trident.
Here it bears noting that Israel’s role in Trident was approved in Jerusalem by the prime minister and Foreign Ministry. In Israel, Trident represented strategic policy conceived at the highest level and known to the establishment. It also bears noting that Turkiye under President Erdogan, however distasteful his pro-Islamist and thuggish policies, does not appear to have a deep state: there is no gap between the president and his intelligence establishment and army.
Q. And Israel?
Just to clarify, regardless of Netanyahu’s complaints--he recently went so far as to dub the Israeli security establishment a “junta”-- Israel does not have a deep state. Neither does the US.
It is Israel that interests us here. Ben-Dror Yamini reminded us in Yediot Aharonot on Sunday that virtually all the judges, generals, spy chiefs, holders of the state purse-strings, and senior government officials whom Netanyahu today accuses of being “Deep State” are his own appointees over a span of more than 15 years. “Considering the government’s priorities and the nature of its decisions,” Yamini writes provocatively, “most Israelis would feel much better if indeed there were a strong deep-state mechanism at work. But there is none.”
I take exception to Yamini’s implied approval of an imaginary anti-Netanyahu deep state. But it is significant because Yamini himself is a right-of-center columnist.
Q. Talk a bit about authoritarian emulation of Trump. . .
A. This is worrisome. Everywhere you look--Israel, Turkiye, Russia, Hungary, India--authoritarian leaders are invoking Trump and his policies regarding state finances, the judicial branch and the security establishment. And territory: there is an in-your-face correlation between Trump’s overt greed regarding Greenland and the ease with which Netanyahu approves IDF ‘temporary’ expansion into Syria and Lebanon and in Gaza and the West Bank. I don’t hear Trump calling Netanyahu to order.
(Here it is interesting to note that Israel and Turkiye, both apparently feeling reassured by Trump’s behavior, are encroaching on Syria’s territory from the south and north, respectively--albeit without coordination and in an atmosphere of mutual hostility.)
Netanyahu and Hungary’s PM Orban just held an unprecedented three-way conversation with Trump. Indeed, Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary this past week is understood as an overt snub to the rest of Europe, where Gaza-related International Court of Justice arrest warrants await Netanyahu. Meanwhile, the pro-Trump media in the US increasingly dismisses the European Union as weak and feeble. Lest Netanyahu forget: France and the UK were active participants a few months ago in the air defense of Israel against Iranian missiles. The EU and NATO are Israel’s strategic depth vis-à-vis the Islamist world.
Q. That Islamist world includes Qatar, a funder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Prior to October 7, 2023, Qatar allied with Israel in funding Gaza-based Hamas. It is now accused of high-level sabotage and bribery in Israel, in cahoots with Netanyahu’s corrupt government.
A. Reserve General Noam Tibon, one of the individual heroes of October 7, 2023, summed it up recently: “An enemy country [Qatar] successfully penetrated the holy-of-holies of the State of Israel and advanced its interests through the PM’s Office and his trusted advisers.” This produced influence campaigns against the families of the hostages. It produced false accusations regarding Egyptian intentions toward Israel that threatened to raise tensions between Cairo and Jerusalem.
If there is a deep state to be found anywhere, it is one operated by Qatar in Israel, with the full knowledge of Israel’s prime minister. “The Qatar story is but one symptom of a chronic disease that threatens to dismantle Israel’s security strength from within,” adds Tibon.
Q. Where else in Israel is that disease rampant?
A. Here are three outrageous examples that can be traced directly to the prime minister. First, and worst, to keep his right-messianic coalition together, Netanyahu has restarted the Gaza war and effectively frozen attempts to free additional hostages. More and more Israeli strategic and military observers today understand that this is a counterproductive reversal of national priorities.
As we write, the IDF is conquering the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza for the fourth time. Or is it the fifth time? It is easy to lose track while Gazans are being starved and slaughtered yet again. Mysterious schemes seem to be afoot to encourage emigration by homeless Gazans to Albania, Indonesia, and breakaway provinces of Somalia. These are hopeless schemes, all eventually denied by the countries in question. No wonder Netanyahu is welcomed in Europe only in semi-fascist Hungary.
Second, still on behalf of his unholy coalition, Netanyahu continues to ensure that Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) youth are not conscripted. Meanwhile, the IDF lacks manpower. More and more reservists are avoiding yet another round of service. If anything ever “dismantled Israel’s security strength from within,” this is it.
And third, Netanyahu has hopelessly entangled his personal legal problems--he is on trial on three counts of corruption--with the security establishment. This is the exact reversal of his ‘deep state’ obsession. He is trying to fire Shin Bet Head Ronen Bar because he, the prime minister, has ‘lost confidence’ in Bar. The latter just explained in a letter to the High Court of Justice how Netanyahu tried to recruit Bar’s connivance in avoiding his corruption trial: “Netanyahu demanded of me [to inform the courts] that the security situation does not permit him to testify continually in his trial. That is what generated his claim of loss of confidence. The Head of Shin Bet is not the prime minister’s ‘trusted servant’.”
Q. Bottom line?
A. Deep State? Likud Member of Knesset Moshe Saada just explained that the next head of Shin Bet must emerge “from the correct political circles.” Now we get it: the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, must become Netanyahu’s own private Deep State!
So what is really new here? Step back and observe: Israel is now the target of manipulation by one Arab state, Qatar, which is trying to sabotage Israel’s relations with another, Egypt, and all at the expense of a third Arab people, the Palestinians. Isn’t this just business as usual in the fragmented, undemocratic Arab world? Isn’t this but one additional aspect of Middle East normalization? Isn’t Israel now just ‘one of the guys’ in the neighborhood?