Eugene Kontorovich: Israel’s protesters are enemies, not heroes, of democracy
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu announced Monday night he was temporarily pausing his government’s judicial-reform efforts in the face of strikes by key industries, insubordination in some parts of the military and huge protests.Jonathan Tobin: Why Did the Biden Administration Oppose Israeli Judicial Reform?
While many within the international community, as well as on the Israeli left, will attempt to portray the announcement as a triumph of democracy, it is anything but.
The reforms seek to introduce a modicum of checks and balances into Israel’s political system, where the “court” sits as a de facto unelected supreme legislative chamber that can exercise veto power over every single government action.
The assault on the proposals, apart from the telegenic protesters, was actually rooted in the state’s bureaucracy, which remains highly sympathetic to the judiciary.
For 25 years, Israel’s Supreme Court has operated entirely without democratic constraints.
Not only does the court remain unfettered by any written constitution when evaluating a law — it is guided by such nebulous principles as “human dignity” and “liberty” — it’s also seized the ability to block any government act it deems “unreasonable.”
Perhaps most confounding, judges exercise veto power over the selection of their successors, resulting in an ideologically homogenous judiciary.
To top it off, what little power the court has not assumed for itself, it has delegated to the attorney general, who can veto any government action or policy by his or her own discretion.
Israel’s fired defense chief still at work as talks begin on court overhaul compromise after mass protests In the United States, presidents can and do fire their AGs. In Israel, it is closer to the opposite.
Ignore Washington's hypocritical talk about protecting democracy. They want a weak government that won't make trouble when it comes to Iran, and they won't stop until they get one.The problem with Israel’s protests
Washington made no secret of its efforts to directly intervene in a domestic Israeli dispute....
The people who jammed the streets... see the maintenance of an unaccountable court with virtually unlimited power as the only way to maintain the Israeli left's political power even when they lose elections....
Washington is... determined... to oust a democratically elected government by any means possible.
What the White House and State Department want is more pliable Israeli Prime Minister, who will keep quiet about the nuclear threat from Iran, and who can be intimidated into not acting too forestall that deadly threat to Israel's existence.
As for behaving like a dictator, Biden's predilection for governing by executive order... even when his diktats are obviously contrary to the constitution or existing laws makes anything Netanyahu might attempt look like child's play.
[Biden's] administration apparently thinks that when Israel's Supreme Court strikes down Netanyahu's efforts to govern – on the basis of no law, and only on the judges, subjective ideas about what is "reasonable" – it's a great idea.
[E]stablishment Jewish groups... joined the liberal groups in praising Netanyahu's surrender to the mob and then had the chutzpah to laud the protesters, who sought to sabotage the country to get their way without even any attempt at balance by treating supporters of the government and reform, who clearly outnumbered the critics at the ballot box last November, as equally praiseworthy.
[T]hey also understand that the hyperbolic claims that Netanyahu and advocates of judicial reform seek to impose a dictatorship or a Torah state is pure fiction.
What Biden and his supporters want in Jerusalem isn't so much an all-powerful Supreme Court... but anything that can help oust the prime minister.
The [Biden] administration is now willing to tolerate Iran having nuclear weapons as long as they are not going to publicly flaunt them.
This attitude isn't just unacceptable to all of Israel's major political parties. It constitutes a grave threat to the security of the Jewish state that no Israeli prime minister could reasonably be expected to tolerate.
The brazen nature of Biden's attack on Netanyahu... speaks volumes about how much the administration wants an Israeli government that won't cause trouble over Iran.
The most recent electoral defeat was particularly crushing. It led large sections of the Israeli left to effectively give up on winning elections – and winning over the people of Israel. Much of the left now seems to accept that future governments will be made up of coalitions including right-wing, far-right, religious and ultra-orthodox elements.
This is the context shaping and driving the left’s support for a strong Supreme Court. The left, which now represents the interests of Israel’s technocratic elite, sees the court as a way to check the power of the elected but right-wing Knesset. Hence, it wants to vest power in judges to limit the power of elected politicians.
Analyses of the rightward shift in Israeli politics usually focus on demographics. They point out that religious and ultra-orthodox communities have higher birth rates than the secular, left-leaning sections of society. That is then used to explain the apparent right-wing trajectory of Israeli politics. But this is much too simplistic. This apparent rightward shift is not a straightforward result of conservatives having more babies.
For a start, Israel’s leftish technocratic elite is increasingly influenced by globalist and ‘woke’ ideas – indeed, LGBT rights have enjoyed a high profile at the recent demonstrations, with rainbow Pride flags being waved alongside Israeli flags. This globalist, cosmopolitan left is increasingly distancing itself from Israel’s national project – and much of the Israeli populace. This is most apparent in the military. Its elite units and officer ranks were traditionally populated by the left. Today, however, the national religious community is much more strongly represented.
The rise in support for the far-right Religious Zionism bloc also cannot be explained by demographic trends. RZ is a vile grouping that has overtly supported violence against the Palestinians and Israeli protesters. But those who voted for it often did so out of despair. For example, it is not widely known that there were 5,000 terror attacks of various sorts against Israelis last year, according to figures from the prime minister’s office. Support for RZ stemmed partly from the government’s perceived failure to tackle this problem of extreme violence.
Too many on Israel’s left, aided and abetted by their international cheerleaders, ignore all of this. Instead, they have given up on the Israeli electorate. They continue to distance themselves from Israel’s national project. And they ostentatiously wave rainbow flags at anti-government demonstrations. By doing so, they effectively position themselves against the supposedly backward nationalist majority.
Israel may be relatively small, but it is a complex society that faces unique challenges. There is a lot wrong with Netanyahu’s coalition government to say the least. But to view its judicial reforms as a dictatorial threat to democracy misunderstands the dynamic at play here. For it is not the government that is trying to entrench power in an unaccountable, unelected body here. It is the protesters and their elite backers.
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