Former Mossad director Tamir Pardo on Thursday framed the government's ongoing judicial overhaul along with actions by some of the more extreme ministers as a process with parallels to the Ku Klux Klan, in an interview with KAN radio.
He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “taken the Ku Klux Klan and brought them into the government,” equating ministers Itamar Ben Gvir, Betzalel Smotrich and others with the KKK.
Pardo noted that Smotrich had called for “burning down [the Palestinian village of] Huwara. How would this come about?” he asked rhetorically.
“Likud was established as a liberal party. Look at Mahal and look at Smotrich and Ben Gvir,” he warned.
Pardo said that Netanyahu has, "aligned himself with racist and horrible parties and that his political positions are not far from them."
The former Mossad chief stated that if another country was passing some of the laws which the government is passing or working on, Israel would be attacking such countries as antisemitic.
"The leader has lost the northern direction [his moral compass]. None of what has happened would have happened if the prime minister had not led these processes forward," he said.
He dismissed theories that Netanyahu was dragged into the judicial overhaul by other coalition members like Justice Minister Yariv Levin, saying that such persons were merely carrying out Netanyahu's will.
Next, he stated, "the country is being torn into two pieces and the prime minister is not blinking" and that coalition members are expressing happiness," over the defeat of the side that is losing.
Breaking apart the IDF and the Mossad
In addition, he added that Netanyahu was in the process of breaking apart both the IDF and the Mossad.
The former Mossad chief said that through all of his years working for the Mossad and the IDF, he was able to sleep in the midst of dangerous operations situations, but that now he is having trouble sleeping at night out of dread at what will be in store for the country's future.
Moreover, the former Mossad chief said that Netanyahu has promoted a myth that he represents a downtrodden portion of the population which is getting to take back the country from some other ruling party, whereas Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009 with only an 18-month break.
Pardo had some conflicts with Netanyahu over Iran and Palestinian policy when he was director of the Mossad, but mostly kept his disagreements under wraps and carried out the prime minister's orders.
However, since the prime minister's criminal probe got serious and Netanyahu refused to resign, Pardo has been a persistent critic accusing Netanyahu of corruption and of pushing forward the judicial overhaul to allegedly free himself from the criminal trial.