"The Israeli authorities took George Orwell’s book, Ninteen Eighty Four, and made it in to a master plan."
OMG! The author expands:
"Israeli nationals are always subjected to espionage and surveillance: employers read your email, the state sets up traffic cameras, parking cameras, security cameras and protection cameras"
This, my friends, is the level of hyperbole/ignorance we have to suffer from our media here in Israel.
I'm Israeli. Employers do not read my email. I have no information on whether traffic/security cameras are more prevalent than the average here (traffic, probably so), but I doubt that makes for a "1984" scenario. In fact I seriously doubt the author actually read "1984".
Unfortunately, clowns like him now learned that instead of being seen as a joke by people who actually live here, they can publish in English and get to the front page of news sites worldwide, where people don't know what's going on in Israel and are willing to believe anything.
If we put aside the ad-hominem attack on the author, which has a record that speaks for itself, you really should look up cases in the past that perfectly exemplify a surveillance society that is prevalent in Israel - most of you which you can find on said author's blog which you are attempting to discredit.
It's not an ad-hominem attack. He stated that the author is a clown because his article is a joke (which he argued for in the paragraph above it), and not that his article is a joke because he is a clown. The more correct term you should have used is 'rude'.
"Clown" was not a good choice for word, but the author's claim that Israel is comparable to 1984 is a joke and his referrals to traffic cameras etc are ridiculous. I'm not trying to discredit him personally, his own writing does that.
What particularly irks me is that he took the opportunist route of posting it in English, knowing there's always an eager audience for any hyperbole on Israel.
(Edit: I can see why my original comment was taken as ad hominem, and apologize. Also I want to thank you for your post on setting up Heroku with Flask/pgSql which helped me a few months ago. It sucks that the first time we have any interaction is this argument. Sorry.)
Well, it looks to me as though internal Israeli politics has spilled out to the pages of Hacker News. It's okay, happens to internal American politics all the time.
You're aware that Shin Bet listens to a very significant % of phone calls originating in the West Bank, right? I've had friends who had access to intel and they described it as quote "just like 1984" (1984 reference unsolicited).
It turns out that you don't need advanced computer systems if you've got a lot of phone taps and an endless source of conscripted, arabic-conversational labor in the form of the IDF draft.
Why should they stop at Palestinian nationals? Meretz and B'Tselem are awfully anti-occupation, what if they're aiding terrorists? There's an easy way to find out..
How is the US further? I mean, not to defend the horrible state of affairs here but at least it's a minor outrage to find out 100% of phone calls might be listened to.
I really think it's more of a problem of familiarity with foreign press (which is to be expected). Americans know how to read, say, a NY Post article, which is probably filled with exaggerations, as opposed to, say, a NYTimes article.
In Israel, as in all countries, different media outlets, and sometimes different sections, or even different authors within the same organization, speak in different registers. It's hard for a foreigner to fully grasp an article without prior familiarity with the writer, that provides the necessary context.
In most jurisdictions your work e-mail belongs to the employer and not the employee and can be read and monitored by the employer. Is Israel an exception?
Frankly the Israeli situation sounds more proportionate and reasonable than many - plus groups are challenging it in court which is always a Good Thing(tm).
If you want to see the REAL masters, look no further than the UK Regulation Of Investigative Powers Act.
That gives (for example) local garbage collectors the legal powers to obtain, say, your medical records - all they need to do is establish they are 'investigating' some garbage related offence and they have access to anything they want so by saying you have disposed of some 'unauthorized' medical waste they are allowed to obtain your medical records to see if you have a genuine medical condition justifying it. It is an offence for the medical staff to refuse or to inform you that they have been handed over.
Want to send your children to your local school ? Expect 24x7 surveillance of you and your children for 3 weeks: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2248295/Second-counci... [edit: this is a different example of abuse, reply below has the correct link.]
The list is endless with over 500 different 'official' organizations entitled to mount total surveillance and the abuses of the legislation are so egregious that they read like a wild fantasy.
This is the "legal framework" which the UK PM David Cameron is assuring everyone keeps them safe from PRISM and the like.
Absolute power corrupts and this power has long ago corrupted absolutely in the UK.
[edit: originally said months and it is merely weeks, reply below has the link to the correct article. Thanks to Jabbles for pointing out the link was the wrong one.]
You're totally right, that was the wrong link, and the example I found is actually 3 weeks which is so much more reasonable for a serious crime like sending your child to the local school.
Valid points, but I don’t think it’s a comparable situation. Israel is constantly being attacked by people living on its own soil. It’s fairer to compare US intelligence gathering in Iraq with Israel’s intelligence gathering within Israel. If Arizonans were to start firing dozens of rockets a day at California, the US government would be way less civil than Israel has been to the Gazans. (And they have been, remember the detainment camps for Japanese Americans?)
NB: I count 3 instances of ‘abhor’ in the article, none of them used correctly. (The original Hebrew article speaks of נפעם, ‘excited’.)
I understand the US media is heavily skewed in support of Israel, but your comparison is not fair at all.
Why is Israel being constantly attacked on its soil? First of all because it's been aggressively expanding its borders to the expense of the local Palestinian population for the past 65 years.
Secondly Israel is a theocratic state, where citizens of different religions have different sets of rights, where the situation has been described by Israeli commentator as bordering apartheid.
It's extremely misleading to say "If Arizonans were to start firing dozens of rockets a day at California…". The Palestinians have not started randomly bombing Israel out of the blue.
Also I wouldn't use the Israeli in Gaza as a paragon of virtue: I don't think that California would start using phosphorus bombs against Arizonan civilians, since it's explicitly forbidden by the Geneva convention. But since the US have actually used phosphorus against civilians in Fallujah in 2004, maybe you're right, they would be less civil.
You probably wanted to say 'Jewish state'. Anyway I don't think I disagree with you: the surrounding countries do not want a Jewish state on their land, it was more or less imposed on them after WW2 and it has kept expanding ever since. Can you blame them for not wanting them?
Right. Israel has "kept expanding". Ignore the strategic positions that allowed them to survive (the Golan), ignore the repeated aggressions from the Sinai which made Israel have to take it and give it back several times.
Besides, are you saying that wanting someone out of some place but justifies violence? If so, expect me to come at your house and get you out of there with a rifle and don't complain when I do so.
Your second figure doesn’t include Gaza and Judea & Samaria, while your first figure does. If you would include those areas, the percentage of Arabs in the area would be over 50%.
Most people in historic Palestine, be they Jews or Arabs, can’t say their family lived there 100 hundred years a go, the population has grown twenty-fold in the last century. However, there have been Jews and Arabs in that region for thousands of years. It would be silly to deny that.
Of course, on your second point. I think one way to peace would be for Israel to simply annex the occupied territories. It's preferable to the BS situation that exists now.
Both Israelis and Palestinians have a right to (literally) the same land. I would like to see Israel extend it's democracy and rights to the Palestinians instead of putting them in open air jail (the West Bank wall reminds me of Escape from New York).
>> To say "Israel has apartheid" really cheapens the struggle of Black South Africans.
Is this something a Black South African who suffered under apartheid and is intimately familiar with the current occupied Palestine told you, or are you the Black South African yourself?
It might be useful to compare the political structures, sure.
"Cheapens the struggle of" is not a statement about political structures, it is a statement about personal experiences. I don't think it is fruitful to reduce the experiential quality of living in an oppressive regime to some calculus of cheapness, wherein Having Supreme Court Judges counts as +$10.
Cheapens not in a monetary sense, but in a moral one.
I think the experiences of Black South Africans were a lot worse than those experienced by Palestinians and Arabs within Israel. I think if people redefine "apartheid" downwards to cover any regime that people don't like then it becomes a meaningless term.
Apartheid has a definition (differing sets of rights depending on your ethnicity), and Israel just barely skirts it by dint of the West Bank being technically a temporarily occupied territory.
If you posit that the West Bank is effectively annexed and that the Israeli government has no plans to ever quit it, then technically the West Bank is governed by an apartheid system.
I don't care what you think the preferable apartheid to live under would be, much like I don't care if you'd rather be a Roman or an American slave. The morality of the political structures at play here does not depend on winning a "shittiest conditions" competition.
Neither, I read about the apartheid from reliable sources and I know the situation but also read about statistics to make sure I'm not being unfair to either side.
But what about the people who say "Israel has apartheid"? Did you ask how they can claim that? Or do you just assume that they are/have met South Africans who lived under the Apartheid?
These are different kinds of statements that require different kinds of knowledge.
Israel clearly has two categories of citizens within its borders defined by tribal distinctions (race/religion). Whether this is formally 'apartheid' is an arguement worth having, since we can look at the UN definition and Israel's actions and have a meaningful discussion from an external perspective.
Comparing the subjectivities of the lives lived under the two regimes necessitates experiential knowledge that is most likely lacking in this audience. I don't find oppression olympics arguments to be fruitful. The moral calculus of today's actions does not depend on the price paid in South Africa, The Congo, The American South, or in Revolutionary China.
I didn't say 'Israel has apartheid'. I said that some Israeli commenters have compared the situation to apartheid. I used the verb border to be specific. There is a whole wikipedia page on the argument [1] if you want to know more about it.
Israel has laws to enable members of the Jewish nation (of any religion) to immigrate to Israel. Because the whole purpose of Israel was to combat the persecution of the Jewish nation (which includes the Jewish religion and ethnicity).
Also, Israel has some laws of religious nature (Relating mostly to discouraging work on Sabbath, marriage and burial). While the religious-based laws are a PITA in Israel (marriage is a real problem for many, burial of non-Jewish soldiers can be degrading, etc), it is far from a "theocracy".
In 635 CE the Arabs stole it, control jumped around to various nations ever since, till finally the descendent's of the original local population (who never left, and lived there the entire time) regained it.
Any claim the local Palestinian population has is superseded by the original population.
Casluhim, who were killed during Ethiopic War with Egypt.
Pathrusim - nothing much is known about them.
Caphtorites, also killed during the Ethiopic War.
Canaanites, weakened by Israel and finished off by the Assyrians.
Hittites - unknown.
Perizzites, weakened by Israel, and eventually absorbed by surrounding nations.
There are some others, but nothing is known about them other than a name.
The main takeaway is that none of these exist as a distinct people anymore. Jews are the oldest inhabitants of Israel that still exist as a recognizable group. (i.e. a shared history and culture)
> [Israel has] been aggressively expanding its borders to the expense of the local Palestinian population for the past 65 years.
There are thirty times as many ‘Palestinians’ in Israel than there were 65 years a go. Meanwhile, Israel is now about half the size as it was in 1948. It’s tiny: the size of New Jersey.
In your pictures, only the last picture (current situation) shows Palestinian controlled territories. In the other images, the areas were controlled by the UK, Israel, Jordan, or Egypt. Meanwhile, the four images do show how much Israel has shrunk.
There are more Arabs in historic Palestine (the State of Israel, Gaza, Judea & Samaria) than there are Jews or Christians [1]. The current State of Israel is a lot smaller than historic Palestine (read: pre-1948 Palestine).
I understand the US media is heavily skewed
in support of Israel
My impression is the US media is heavily skewed regarding Israel, however some are skewed one way, others the other. To a smaller extent, the same is true about European media.
The mainstream US media is universally skewed pro-Israel and attempts to present a pro-Palestinian, or even less than fawning, point of view are regularly shouted down as being anti-Semitic.
Speaking of ‘Palestinians’, meaning Muslims residing in historic Palestine, is anti-Semitic. There are Palestinian Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists, etc. It’s about an area of origin, not a religion or a race. The label has been hijacked to create a false history of Muslims in the area. Please remember that Islam is a relatively young religion compared to Judaism and Christianity.
Uh...no. This is real simple. The people of Gaza and the West Bank use the demonym; Israelis do not. It is appropriate to call people what they call themselves, and so I do.
And even were it a reasonable comment on your part (it's not but it is in keeping with your rabidly pro-Israel, burn-the-Muslims worldview that your comment history demonstrates), I think using the demonym that the targets of systematic economic and cultural oppression use to describe themselves is somewhere well below the literal least we can do. (And to forestall the tired and obviously dishonest because the self-victimization is appalling: no, the Israelis don't get to have that excuse when they have the strongest military in the world completely backing any and all injustice they wish to perpetuate. Not allowed.)
I shouldn't have risen to your bait, but I'm tired and annoyed by people who would abuse America to do evil and you are one of them. You will, I am sure, leap to take the last word.
True. Of course if a large segment of those whose connection of birth and heritage to the territory that Israel effectively owned were denied citizenship in the US, we might have a similar situation. (We do have this situation with American Samoa which I think is a significant problem but it's only half a million residents so not comparable at all.)
I think going into a major back and forth though would be off-topic here. I do think the problem is not one side's fault but the fact that quite a number of sides (way more than two) want to see conflict continue because it is what they know best.
There's also the security card in Israel, which is pulled by the government every time people start to get excited about something. Economy problems? Security! Privacy concerns - shut up - Security! Administrative detention - Secu... you get the picture.
Now granted the US and Israel are products of very different histories. The Jews have been persecuted for centuries in Europe and to a somewhat lesser extent in the Middle East (the grass is always greener to some extent but the Muslims have been slightly better to religious minorities through most of history than the Christians were through the Middle Ages). The constant problems have lead to a very specific way of looking at things and I don't think one can have an historical perspective and say that the Jewish perspective is wrong in the Jewish context. The Jewish paranoia (and I mean paranoia in the security sense) is fully justified by the weight of history.
We in the US have extraordinary protections for free speech. You can stand up in a Neo-Nazi gathering and say that the time will come when people will have to finish what Hitler started and kill all Jews, and this is fully protected speech, but it is protected only because of what we went through in the US following WWII with the use of the Smith Act to prosecute people for sedition when all they did was distribute Marxist literature and try to spread Marxist ideas. So there is no such thing as a false or hateful idea before the law in the US because we don't trust the government or the courts to make that determination (interestingly if I mark bacon as kosher, the courts cannot interpret Jewish law to determine that in fact it can't be). An equal American paranoia --- where the government is the threat --- is also more than justified by the weight of history.
But what terrifies me is that since Oklahoma City, the US Government has been playing the security card all the time, and is taking more and more of our liberties. Freedom of association and the AEDPA? Security! Militarization of law enforcement? Security! Administrative detention? Security! Privacy concerns? Securi- you get the picture. And we are slowly forgetting why we have had our own different perspective.
It's precisely where we're going. I thought I had to get my ears checked when I heard Obama talking about having 100% security at the expense of privacy and convenience. A nation demanding 100% security is a police state in the simplest sense.
Agreed. And it goes like that with politics. No party even debates about economy, privacy and so on. That doesn't bring in votes. Security does. The entire concept of right/left wing in Israel is based on how nationalist a party is.
I fear that absolute surveillance is an inevitability, no matter where you live, or how "free" your country is.
It works like this: Best case scenario, you live in a country with a functioning republic, in which anyone is free to vote in anyway they choose.
A politician's worst nightmare is to be the one who was overseeing during an instance in which security disastrously failed (e.g. a terrorist attack).
The irony, of course, is that no matter how much security there is, a terrorist attack can always be successfully carried out in some manner or another.
Further, even if the government ran out of traditional hardened terrorists to oversee, they would start morphing dissidents into terrorists. So no way to stop terrorist attacks, and an ever-growing pool of terrorists. It bears repeating: you cannot stop security threats. Period.
That said, a politician's only recourse is to do something. That unfortunately means increasing security. No politician will ever stand in front of a camera and say, "You know what? I think we did everything we could, and these things are just going to happen from time to time. We'll learn from this and try to do better next time, but no guarantees. That's life." It's a truth, but we know that's not what politicians are here to tell us.
The other side of this tragic playing out of events is that, following a standard bell curve of distribution, most people are of mediocre intelligence, at best. That means they can't, for themselves, critically come to the understanding of the aforementioned maximum security problem. That means they're going to vote for the guy who promises to do more about security threats with straightforward security lockdown. They don't have the patience or intelligence to understand real policy reform that might actually lead to more security.
It's a feedback loop that will cause any bipartisan republic/democracy to inevitably succumb to a dictatorial-style surveillance state.
Do away with bipartisanship? There might be a way, but no elected leader in the US will ever implement the changes to make it happen, for the other evil politicians commit is to maintain the status quo at all costs.
>>"A politician's worst nightmare is to be the one who was overseeing during an instance in which security disastrously failed (e.g. a terrorist attack)."
And this is the weak link. Also, it is not necessarily the case. As we all know, everything from heart disease to auto wrecks are exponentially (almost infinitely) more likely than terrorism, and just as deadly. Nevertheless, we've accepted these possibilities as unavoidable aspects of existence, and ones we can manage without entering a state of hysterical, paralyzing fear combined with the surrender of all authority to concentrated, unassailable powers.
The thing that can break this loop is a cultural response that turns the person running on a "moar security" platform into an object of mockery. This is the flip side of the herd instinct: few people who want power can stand being laughed at.
Also: short term effect (arrest some people every now and then based on surveillance) vs really long term effect (slowly start to get your act together using foreign policy). Same with everything else, really.
The big thing about Israel is that they allow for administrative detention without trial. It's really hard to get worked up about surveillance when they don't even have to file charges to keep you in jail.
The point is that Israeli citizens and nationals can be held without trial indefinitely in Israel. That is not something we have to worry about here to the same extent.
Sure, maybe not to the same extent, but as long as the definition of an ‘enemy combatant’ remains unclear, American citizens can be arrested and held without formal charges or trial.
Thus far the government has shown that they are unwilling to let the Supreme Court review that regarding citizens. They would rather go to trial than let a question (where the individual was captured far from combat zones) go before the Supreme Court.
We should remember what Bush asked the 4th Circuit to do when Padilla petitioned to the Supreme Court for the second time.... Fortunately the court would have none of these games.
Laws written originally to thwart the IRA were used to detain suspects and in many cases innocent people, who happened to be Irish, where convicted after confessions were cohered out of them. Can you imagine being jailed for 90 days and being interrogated for that length of time?
It seems plausible that the same thing will happen to innocent Arabs and Muslims whom are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ok, so what the USAPATRIOT Act allegedly does (and I want to expand on this below) is allow up to 7 days of detention without habeas petitions having any effect. This can then be extended, allegedly to 6 months, and renewed every six months indefinitely. This is what the statute says. So that's what the statute claims to do.
In practice it probably does not do so. There are two reasons to think this. First you have the fact that even the Bush Administration refused to rely on this provision during either Padilla case, arguing instead that the AUMF of 2001 was the authority to detain, despite the fact that the Supreme Court had ruled in Hamdi that there was at least some Habeas Corpus protection available to those detained under the AUMF, but the exact amount was unclear. It's further worth noting that the Supreme Court threw out Padilla's first habeas petition as improperly filed when Handi was released and in the subsequent petition case (Padilla v. Hanft), the DoJ continued to argue on AUMF grounds, not on suspension clause grounds. When Padilla lost in the 4th Circuit and appealed to the Supreme Court on the second time, the government abruptly decided to charge him in federal court, and then asked the 4th circuit to vacate their decision, which the 4th circuit declined to do (I think that such an effort on Bush's part was meant to slow down the next case).
The second problem is Boumediene v. Bush (decided three years after Hamdi and Padilla v. Hanft), which held that the Military Commissions Act was a suspension of habeas, but that judges should hear habeas petitions anyway, arguing that judges had the power to grant habeas petitions even if Congress suspended the writ. This means that Congress claiming to say habeas doesn't apply doesn't in fact mean that habeas doesn't apply.
I read Supreme Court cases for fun. I suppose this means I need a life :-P
Administrative arrest in Israel isn't indefinite, there's a similar process where they ask a judge to prolong it and as a citizen I believe that they do. However from what we understand from the media, they might be asking the judges without explaining the details to them because of confidentiality.
The point is you can't ask a judge to prolong it in the US. You ask a judge for your right to be charged or released. That is why I say I don't think the six month renewals have any effect.
The thing about Israel being a surveillance state? It doesn't feel like it. I, as an Israeli, don't feel that the government is going around reading my mail even though it can totally do that.
The thing about democracies isn't that they're less likely to violate your civil rights, it's that they seem like they're less likely to do that. That's a lot of power right there.
All forms of government exists to subjugate the populace and that's easier to do the less rights the population has. The only viable state is one that's afraid of its citizens. We have a lot of power but most people don't know it. We need to spread that knowledge.
The thing about democracies isn't that they're
less likely to violate your civil rights, it's that
they seem like they're less likely to do that.
That's a lot of power right there.
Yes, yes! It is still important to use that power. But let's keep things in perspective, or else we end up, as in another comment to the OP, placing USA and China and Russia in the same basket.
I'd say the best places to learn about surveillance are China and North Korea.
I lived first 7 years of my life under the Romanian communism - they also could teach best practices in surveillance, since my parents were always careful what they said - in an era without too much electronics.
I agree, but a pedantic point: North Korea is as different from China as China is from the Western world (in this respect). It is, frankly, different from any other place on earth.
It doesn't matter the level of invasive practices in other states. It's not a competition for the most or least practices, though policy and research are worth having dialog about. This combative attitude isn't useful, in English or Hebrew.
Edit: As the first commenter of the article suggests, companies are doing far more than the government in terms of intrusion just all the time. We need to strengthen the bill of rights to not just give procedural protection from the government, but real rights that protect us all from each other.
"The authorities could approach the telecommunication providers (ISPs, mobile operators and phone operators), pay a few Shekels, and obtain answers to queries, as long as such queries relate to specific crimes or investigations. "
NSA wins - they get all records without ever needing to allude to specific crime being committed.
"out of which, almost 2,000 were related to political activities such as public disturbances."
Political activities and public disturbances are very different things. You can make public disturbances while doing political activity, e.g. protesting, but you can also beat up a cop while protesting, that doesn't mean beating up a cop becomes example of political activities.
" Israel addressed Google for subscriber information (not by the Metadata act, as it does not apply to Google), about 350 times since 2009. Google responded to most of these requests; meaning that there are 350 people in Israel that the government obtained their correspondence,"
It actually does not. It means there were 350 requests, on which in about 2/3 of them Google disclosed some data. There's no indication which data was disclosed and whether such data was correspondence or not.
"Israeli nationals are always subjected to espionage and surveillance: employers read your email, the state sets up traffic cameras, parking cameras, security cameras and protection cameras."
Parking and traffic cameras have nothing to do with government surveillance and obviously are added just to sensationalize the article, as well as allegations about email snooping by employers, which again has absolutely nothing to do with government. Both are very common and nothing specially relating to Israel.
Summarily, though the article raises a very valid question of eroding judicial overview over state surveillance - which has, unsurprisingly, the same trend in Israel as it does in the US - overly sensational tone and bunching together legitimate privacy concerns and complaints about security cameras in private places. This detracts from the quality of complaints significantly. Main message of the article - that Israel is somehow an Orwellian total-surveillance state - is false, while Israel does have the same problem as US does, this claim is exaggerated.
I didn't knew this about Israel, although the fact that the situation is worse in other parts of the worlds doesn't justify this level of Surveillance in US.
‘We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production'
1984 was not the instruction manual. It mostly deals with the ongoing operations and consequences of the police state and its surveillance. _That Hideous Strength_, its spiritual prequel (written by C. S. Lewis and published shortly before the atomic bomb, later reviewed and then ripped off by Orwell) is the instruction manual. :)
(In Orwell's defense, he did make improvements. The problem with a Lewis book, as Orwell observed, is that God exists and you know that the good guys win at the end, so the dystopian police state isn't scary enough... which is the major difference between the two in the plots.)
Was that supposed to make us feel better somehow? The "oh-you-think-you-got-it-bad" mentality disinclines me to any level of empathy or sympathy and more toward apathy.
I'm not sure what should be taken seriously if at all from it, either. But lets pretend for a moment that's irrelevant and the article does have a point:
During the last couple of days, we got to see this attitude you've demonstrated here, unfortunately, much too often - Not everybody here is from the US and it isn't all about you. Your surveillance is affecting us all but most of the discussion is about how it affects US citizens, since the rest of the world has no rights in the first place.
No need. Israel is already part of the US surveillance apparatus. Every single phone bill in the country gets shipped to an Israeli site for pre-processing..
Could this be the reason why you've had the same PM for so long? I mean who knows how he used that information on his competitors, or the campaign funders of the competitors.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been PM for 7 years total (with 10 years in between the two terms) That’s shorter than George W. Bush was POTUS. David Ben-Gurion was PM for 13 years.
This is almost certainly not the case, given that the Likud under-performed heavily in the last elections, and was outmaneuvered politically by it's three main coalition partners/rivals.
He's the president of the main right-wing party. People like that often remain head of their state for very long once they're elected (first they're sworn in and then get more mandates to "finish their job"). Examples from my home country: Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac. It may have something to do with this but you can get a way easier explanation.
OMG! The author expands:
"Israeli nationals are always subjected to espionage and surveillance: employers read your email, the state sets up traffic cameras, parking cameras, security cameras and protection cameras"
This, my friends, is the level of hyperbole/ignorance we have to suffer from our media here in Israel.
I'm Israeli. Employers do not read my email. I have no information on whether traffic/security cameras are more prevalent than the average here (traffic, probably so), but I doubt that makes for a "1984" scenario. In fact I seriously doubt the author actually read "1984".
Unfortunately, clowns like him now learned that instead of being seen as a joke by people who actually live here, they can publish in English and get to the front page of news sites worldwide, where people don't know what's going on in Israel and are willing to believe anything.