Former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, whose family, to quote the far left newspaper Ha'aretz "also served as ambassadors for liberal American Judaism" warned that the current Israeli government's handling of the judicial reform issue is harming the US-Israel relationship.
“If the Israeli government were to go down a path where a large number of its own citizens and many fellow democracies in other countries really question whether Israel was still adhering to those democratic principles of rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, it would obviously be detrimental to the close bond between the U.S. and Israel,” Shapiro told CNN on Monday.
Shapiro stated that the way the Netanyahu government has handled the controversy surrounding the judicial reform constitutes “a kind of historic political mismanagement,"
Shapiro served as the US Ambassador to Israel under the Obama Administration from 2011-2017.
His comments come as the Otzma Yehudit party announced that Prime Minister Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had agreed to freeze the judicial reform legislation until the Knesset's summer session to allow for negotiations with the opposition on the issue.
Last week, Walla correspondent Barak Ravid reported that US President Joe Biden had told Netanyahu that he had never seen such anxiety in Israel as has been created by the current controversy over the judicial reforms.