Alex Traimanis CEO and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of Jewish News Syndicate.
(JNS) Amid the largest and most well-funded protest movement in Israel’s history, the democratically elected governing coalition passed the first reform in a historic process aimed at bringing Israel’s activist Supreme Court in line with the judicial limitations present in most Western democracies.
With 64 votes in favor, Basic Law: The Judiciary will limit the court’s usage of an undefined “reasonableness standard” that has long served as an unrestrained lever to overturn Knesset legislation and executive policy.
Reasonableness has often been utilized by the court to reverse laws and policies that while not in direct contradiction to laws already on the books stood in contradiction to the limited worldview of a court that is dominated by secular, left-wing justices—a minority in Israeli society.
For those who claim that Israel will no longer be governed by the rule of law, nothing could be further from the truth. Should the newly minted law go into effect, the court will still maintain its authority to rule on petitions and even overturn legislation based on established legal principles. The court will lose its authority to overturn legislation on the discretionary basis of what it deems to be acceptable or proper.
Judicial Revolution
For decades, Israel’s Supreme Court under the leadership of former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak has amassed increasing authority in landmark, self-defined rulings, shifting the delicate balance of power between the three branches of government in its own favor.
This self-proclaimed judicial revolution determined that any issue—legal, procedural or otherwise—is justiciable. It allows for petitioners to bring cases to the court without standing and enables the court to cancel legislation; force the parliament to pass laws; and hamstring the activities of the prime minister and his or her cabinet.
And it was all initially instituted without majority votes in the parliament.
Limited Reform
The reform is just one component of a larger package introduced by the government several months ago. Amid protests and pressure from all sectors of society by those uncomfortable with the right-wing makeup of Israel’s democratically elected coalition, Netanyahu rescinded the larger reform package. He and his coalition partners then engaged the opposition in weeks of negotiations—headed by Israeli President Isaac Herzog—aimed at reaching a broad-based compromise arrangement.
Negotiations Breakdown
In June, negotiations were halted suddenly by the opposition—ironically, at the moment the government voted to install an opposition lawmaker onto a judicial selection committee that is responsible for appointing new justices to the Supreme Court. The opposition had threatened to break off negotiations if their candidate, Yesh Atid Knesset member Karine Elharrar, was not installed on the committee.
Without the realistic possibility of a negotiated compromise, the coalition, in accordance with its campaign platform, advanced a singular component of its reform: to modify the reasonableness standard. The government selected reasonableness among all other reforms specifically because polls demonstrated that the issue was the most broadly understood by Israel’s public.
Opposition Used to Support Reforms
In fact, prior to the formation of the current government, several opposition leaders, including Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman and Gideon Sa’ar, have all spoken out in favor of judicial reform.
Yet once it was Netanyahu and a right-wing coalition that had both the votes and motivation to advance the overdue reforms, the very same policy that opposition leaders previously extolled was now un-kosher.
And since the initiators of judicial reform—right-wing, traditional and religious parties—were now in the driver’s seat, the opposition gave up on its previous reform-minded principles to protest the reforms with every ounce of their being.
Campaign to Paralyze the Country
While most of the protesters are typical law-abiding Israelis who care deeply for the state and its future, the organizers of the protest movement have demonstrated a willingness to tear the country to shreds while blaming all the damage—direct and collateral—on Netanyahu and his coalition partners.
Under coordination with Lapid, failed former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and an Israeli media industry hungry to push Netanyahu from office, pressure has been leveled on the government to drop the reform package by the Biden administration, American Jewish organizations and leaders, high-tech investors, international credit agencies and other entities.
Simultaneously, the opposition organized an extremely well-funded protest movement complete with the consistent unleashing of new organizations and campaign slogans printed on billboard-size signage, as well as costumes aimed at feeding headlines and photo captions for the domestic and international media. Protesters have repeatedly blocked highways and set fires on them, as well as Ben-Gurion International Airport, much to the chagrin of residents and tourists who have been caught in now-regular traffic jams over and above the ones that existed already.
Pre-Conceived Agenda
While the anti-reform protest appeared to be a genuine movement, Barak had spoken of his agenda to overthrow Netanyahu using the tools he is now employing long before judicial reforms ever rose to the top of the policy agenda. Barak, who has documented ties to American accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, was one of the shortest-serving prime ministers in Israeli history. He was permitted by the courts to negotiate a failed land giveaway to the Palestinian Authority even after he lost his governing coalition—just one example of how the Supreme Court has historically protected left-wing policies even when such circumstances could have otherwise been deemed “unreasonable.”
Barak’s colleague, Lapid, said from the moment that he was thrown from the temporary prime-minister seat he briefly held that the incoming coalition would face an opposition unlike any other that had ever been seen in Israeli history and that the anti-Netanyahu protests he led during successive election campaigns would be just a taste of what was soon to come.
In the process, Lapid, Barak and others have insidiously claimed that it is Netanyahu who is leading the nation to civil war over reforms that a plurality of Israelis understood as necessary.
Worst Domestic Crisis? Look back
Today, many are claiming that the current domestic policy crisis is the worst Israel has ever faced.
Such claims are made nearly 30 years after a left-wing government railroaded through the Oslo Accords aimed at reducing Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, and granting a P.A. led by arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat a state in the Jewish people’s biblical heartland. Such claims are also made nearly 18 years to the day after the Israel Defense Forces were forced to evacuate 8,500 tax-paying citizens from 21 established Jewish communities in Gush Katif and fully withdrew from the Gaza Strip.
