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“Israel’s parliament on Monday approved the first major law in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plan to overhaul the country’s justice system, triggering a new burst of mass protests… Lawmakers approved a measure that prevents judges from striking down government decisions on the basis they are ‘unreasonable.’” AP News
Here’s our previous coverage of Israel’s judicial reforms. The Flip Side
The right supports the reforms, arguing that they are necessary to restrain Israel’s courts.
“This week, according to sources ranging from the Biden White House to Moody's to The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, Israel entered into a period of serious existential danger. What prompted this crisis? Not a potential Iranian nuclear attack; not the presence of violent terrorist groups embedded in Judea, Samaria and Gaza…
“No, according to our foreign policy elite, the breaking point is the Israeli government's passage of a mild version of a judicial reform. That reform curbs the overweening power of the Israeli Supreme Court, which declared in the 1990s that it had the unilateral ability to strike down executive actions by simply declaring them ‘unreasonable.’ Now, the Israeli Supreme Court will still be able to strike down executive actions — but they'll have to ground their rationale in actual law.”
Ben Shapiro, Creators
“Israel’s Supreme Court, for three decades, has been acting without ‘clear, objective limits.’… It wades into issues such as military tactics, Cabinet appointments, and economic policy that, in most representative democracies, are considered beyond judicial review. It often does so based not on any explicit provisions of law but merely on the judges’ sense of a policy’s ‘reasonableness.’…
“Imagine how Biden would squeal if he forced a tax hike through Congress, only for Justice Clarence Thomas and four colleagues to strike it down because they thought it unreasonable.”
Editorial Board, Washington Examiner
“Over the years, the court, and later the attorney general, used reasonableness to force the firing of senior officials including cabinet members, block and delay military operations, raise and lower taxes and welfare benefits and bar major foreign-policy initiatives. Elsewhere in the West, such judicial actions would be considered plainly illegitimate.”
Avi Bell, New York Post
“The judiciary primacy might work if the Israeli court’s decisions were grounded in some kind of statutory authority, traditional legal framework, or even existing regulation and law. But there is no Israeli constitution. The court’s decisions are often arbitrary, politically expedient, constantly evolving, and sometimes contradictory. The court regularly blocks laws passed by center-right governments simply because judges claim policy is unreasonable…
“Why only center-right governments? Because the entrenched judges (with their allies in the Israeli bar) appoint their own successors in perpetuity. There is no accountability to either the popular will or a constitutional tradition. Imagine the American left’s outlook if the Supreme Court’s originalists could simply tap their own replacements without any input from senators or the president.”
David Harsanyi, The Federalist
The left is alarmed by the reforms, arguing that the courts are a necessary check on the legislature’s power.
The left is alarmed by the reforms, arguing that the courts are a necessary check on the legislature’s power.
“In Israel’s parliamentary system, the prime minister controls not just the executive but also the legislature through his majority coalition in parliament. And there are no separate state courts and legislatures. Without judiciary oversight, the prime minister and his bloc have little to stop them as they push their agenda…
“For Netanyahu, it’s a fight for his survival. For Israel, it is a battle over the character of the country. Will it remain a modern, pluralist democracy — a Jewish-majority nation with a secular government — or will it become a nationalist religious country with laws that reflect religious tenets, with less respect for pluralism and individual rights and perhaps more authoritarianism.”
Frida Ghitis, CNN
“Once checks on government power will be removed, [Netanyahu’s] coalition can move forward with its substantive agenda: strengthening its hold on the West Bank… increasing financial support to ultra-Orthodox Jews and enshrining their exemption from military duty; curtailing advancements made by the L.G.B.T.Q. community; scaling back women’s rights, especially those regarding religiously driven gender segregation and marriage and divorce; and advancing the rights and interests of Jews over other groups…
“Consider the following from the past few weeks: a proposal to expand the use of admission committees in small towns that effectively prevent Arabs and other minorities from living in predominantly Jewish municipalities; a law that would authorize the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extreme right-wing politician convicted of supporting the Jewish terrorist organization Kach, to detain citizens he and other officials believe pose ‘real harm to public security’; and expansive changes in media regulations that would politicize the agency in charge of television broadcasts.”
Adam Shinar, New York Times
“Contrary to the far right’s pledge, the government did not enact its plan to subordinate the appointment of Supreme Court judges to politicians. Nor did it grant the coalition the ability to override judicial decisions. In other words, Israel’s democracy—flawed as it is—remains intact, for now… But whether or not Israel erodes its democratic guardrails in the months ahead, its people have already lost something similarly essential: basic social trust…
“Polls consistently show that two-thirds of Israel’s citizens oppose the ruling coalition’s unilateral overhaul of the judiciary… They do not believe that Netanyahu, let alone the extremist allies he depends upon to maintain his power, will be more reasonable than the unelected Supreme Court. And they do not believe that the coalition will stop with this small salvo.”
Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic
