Shmuel Von Weisl volunteered at Im Tirtzu in Israel where he atttended Israeli Yeshivot and was in the Paratroopers Brigade. He is currently studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economy at the University of Leeds in the UK
Last Sunday there was an anti-judicial reform protest in Jerusalem, and simultaneously there was a pro-judicial reform protest in Tel Aviv. When the two sides converged on the way back home, in the packed train towards the central train station in Modiin, it was almost impossible to distinguish one from the other within the sea of blue-and-white.
It is a stark contrast from the news-bites we see on TV and in certain publications. If you purely follow the news in English you would imagine there are guns in the streets and knives at each other’s throats. After the dramatic vote on Monday night, disgraced former PM Ehud Olmert even claimed “we have entered a civil war”.
That is simply not the case.
It is true that Israelis have a much more emotional temperament than what we are used to in the UK, and that often translates into fierce shouting matches from the streets all the way up to the Knesset’s plenum. However, this is also not the reason for the claims that we are now witnessing said civil war.
So, what really is the “national crisis” that President Herzog repeatedly bemoans?
It cannot be that Israelis are protesting in the streets, in a healthy display of a proud liberal democracy, or that business companies are exercising their free speech and freedom to act by continuously threatening to strike. Nor could it be the anchors on Channel 14 preaching for the necessity of the reforms, or the ones on channel 12 heralding the end of democracy. Actually, Alan Dershowitz called this phenomena “democracy at work”.
And for sure, it definitely isn’t the fact that Lapid and Gantz, the strongest figures in the opposition, are spearheading assault after assault on the Prime Minister and his voters – that’s been going on ever since Netanyahu was first elected in the ‘90s.
In reality, the national crisis is as follows:
1)The democratically elected government has chosen to pass a series of basic laws, which they believe will balance the three independent branches of government. The emphasis here is on “balance” and not “remove”, which was never on anyone’s agenda.
2)The familiar opposition to the prime minister – a crucial fact of life in every vibrant democracy – has been hijacked by a large body of financially backed extremists encouraging the severe weaking of the institutions that hold Israel together, an attack that carries the whiff of anarchy. All this in the name of their own personal beliefs.
Yuval Noah Harari recently wrote an article in the Financial Times, claiming that Israel will be the next Iran. The comparison was based on the fact that Israel is a nuclear-weapon-armed power in the Middle East going fundamentalist. It is important to note that far from being a passionate Zionist paper, the FT has featured many anti-Israel biases in the past.
Countless other Israeli academics have raised similar apocalyptic arguments, arguing that these reforms are the last step to a full dictatorship. In similar fashion, the media is piling on.
In the multitude of articles condemning Israel for the sin of judicial reform, one finds a common thread, one that essentially gives the game away.
Virtually every article references the awful government made up of right-wing extremists, zealots, messianic fundamentalists, racist, anti-LGBT etc. etc., but offers very little criticism of the reforms themselves.
That’s because the reforms have already been proposed, in one form or another, by many of the opposition members themselves, including Lapid and Saar, among others. Even they know that the power and discretion of Israel’s Supreme Court has no equivalent in any liberal democracy around the world.
By comparison, the first Supreme Court in the UK was only created in 2009!
Not to mention the fact that Supreme Court judges in the US are picked by the other branches of government, where the judiciary plays no role whatsoever. The proposed reforms pale in significance compared to the long history of the Supreme Court’s decades of aggregating its power over the Israeli political process.
I invite you to research the powers and the checks on those powers in other countries in order to create a fair comparison with the situation here in Israel., Where else do judges pick themselves (through a majority in the parliamentary judicial committee) and have absolute judicial review (thanks to the now-reduced reasonableness clause allowing judges to pick and choose which laws to reject solely based on their political views).
The real problem for these academics is that it’s not ‘their’ government that is doing any of this. That’s the real issue for those extremists willing to sacrifice Israel’s (and thereby their own) security.
I recommend looking into what “liberal” and “democracy” really means. I challenge anyone to find me a better form of government that successfully finds legitimacy through a majority-based system, and its crucial corollary of making sure minority groups aren’t unfairly persecuted.
Some academics have suggested that much of the extremist behaviour we are experiencing is the result of long frustration of certain political parties at the fact that the Haredi and other religious populations have birth-rates that overshadow their own. Therefore the likelihood that politicians such as Lapid, Gantz, and Michaeli will be leading the next government is increasingly diminishing with every passing generation. In other words, they might not be so keen on that majority-based governance anymore.
The result, regardless the reason, is that where vital comprehensive and fair debates should have been televised - similar to was seen with Brexit in the UK – government ministers willing to talk are inexcusably shut down in universities and public debates are nastily interrupted. Reserve-refusal is being tacitly supported by certain politicians and outlets. The same ones are openly calling for a military coup. These opposition leaders are irresponsibly supporting a degradation of national institutions.
For far too long the opposition lacked a strong and responsible leadership. It is now overridden by failed politicians attempting to claw back power in a changing Israel.
That is our national crisis.