The Judicial Appointments Committee will convene on Monday to select four new judges for the Supreme Court, and it remains unclear whether the right-wing representatives on the committee will cooperate to appoint conservative judges.
MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism) told Galey Israel radio on Sunday that "what is happening now is a setback. Instead of four judges who can hardly be called conservatives, we had seven, which is almost half the composition of the Supreme Court, and instead we find ourselves with a majority of liberals."
"It is clear to me that a conservative judge, as far as he is a conservative judge, will affect the court less than an activist or progressive judge, we know that but precisely because of this, giving up this opportunity would be a tragedy," he added.
Rothman claimed that Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar succumbed to the wishes of one committee member - Supreme Court President Esther Hayut.
"I feel this is a tragedy because I did think that the attitude that Ayelet Shaked was trying to lead could have led to some change, but the backlash from the judiciary, that included Netanyahu's cases and the formation of this government and Gideon Sa'ar's unclear and puzzling submission to Esther Hayut's dictates in this context, could certainly push people like me, like you, and a lot of people on the right who thought the change could be made gradually, to the thought that the only way is to really do what they did in Hungary or Poland or India and say: Change the method, burn everything and start over."
"It will push more people to a method where they have no choice and must make a conservative revolution and not just try to change gradually. I think there is a lot of damage in such a revolution."
"They might say, look, we sent Simcha Rothman, we sent Ayelet Shaked, we sent Gideon Sa'ar. The three of them are sitting on the Judicial Appointments Committee, the parties of all three of them included a platform to correct the justice system and here you see: They left me on the outside looking in and Shaked caved and Sa'ar joined Esther Hayut and the rest is history," said Rothman.
"It is not fun, not good, not right and unhealthy to live in a country where there is no trust in the police, the prosecutor's office, in the courts, in all government enforcement systems but this is the result of having 30 years of Aaron Barak in the system. This virus of the system must have an antivirus and the antivirus is a conservative justice. We want judges to judge based on the law and not teach us how to build a state. The moment we have such judges, the public trust will return."