Haim Ramon is a veteran Israeli politician, having served as a legislator for 22 years, primarily under the Labor Party. Among his various roles, he served as leader of the Labor Party caucus in the Knesset; as chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee; and as a cabinet minister under Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. Ramon was also the national chair of the Histadrut, Israel’s primary trade union federation.
(JNS) In the lead-up to the 2022 national elections in Israel, the Israel Democracy Institute advocated for a novel and unprecedented shift in the balance of governmental executive-legislative power. The measures proposed by the IDI, as part of a plan to “restore stability to the electoral system,” would have significantly empowered and entrenched the executive branch against political opposition by making it much more difficult for parliament to dismiss the government and to call new elections.
By undermining the Knesset’s oversight of executive government, these measures would have enabled the (unelected) executive branch to rule with few political constraints even if opposed by an overwhelming parliamentary majority-a highly unusual scenario for any Westminster-style democratic system, in which government serves at the pleasure of parliament.
The IDI proposals were clearly geared to benefit the Israeli political center-left (which the IDI expected would win the elections): The left-wing camp could potentially muster a slim parliamentary majority to establish a government, but one which would in turn be inherently unstable, consistently and predictably at the mercy of any back-bencher who could threaten to dismantle the government at the drop of a hat. As a practical matter, the proposed changes would have guaranteed the survival (and compounded the effectiveness) of any incoming center-left government.
As things turned out, the Likud and right-wing camp won the 2022 elections and formed a government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. The IDI discreetly scrapped their proposals and began advocating for the opposite-that is, for a stronger Knesset that could constrain the executive government more effectively.
The IDI “stability” proposals were an instructive example (just one of many) illustrating this think tank’s intellectual corruption, profound partisanship and hostility to democratic values. The substantive proposals themselves were appalling from a democratic perspective, depriving the elected Knesset of its primary mechanism to oversee and limit executive power. If these had been advanced verbatim by Netanyahu’s government, the IDI and its allies would surely have been the first to decry the threat to Israeli democracy (an outcry I would have wholeheartedly joined).
The IDI had no qualms in reversing course entirely the moment it became clear their policy proposals were no longer politically expedient. As socio-political tensions in Israel reach new heights and the convulsions of the legal debate return to our midst, the time has come to talk about this vaunted institution and what it really stands for.
The Israel Democracy Institute is one of the most well-known and active think tanks in Israeli society and politics. Its name aligns with the way it generally presents itself to both Israelis and to the world: “Israel,” as in mainstream and non-partisan; “Democracy,” advancing democratic governance; “Institute,” a serious organization promoting a consistent, coherent and principled ideological agenda.
Unfortunately, for some years now, the IDI matches none of these descriptions. Considering the IDI’s relative prominence and prestige, pro-Israelis-and, perhaps, especially Diaspora Jews-must take a long, hard, cold look at this organization, its positions and its practices.
Both in official policy papers and in statements by its senior leadership, the IDI regularly espouses views that are not remotely grounded in democratic principle or practice. It has transformed itself into a champion of “substantive democracy,” code (in Israel) for limitless judicial power. Indeed, it has historically been among the most consistent and fervent supports of expanding the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over all conceivable aspects of Israeli public life. In service of abetting the Supreme Court’s quest for judicial supremacy, the IDI has relentlessly advocated for positions and policies which are manifestly at odds with any conventional democratic norms.
One characteristic example is the IDI’s alarmist description of any curb on judicial power as “the end of democracy,” even though the Israeli Supreme Court wields more power, with less legal basis, than courts in any other democracy in the world. The IDI employs the most extreme and hyperbolic terminology to describe even mundane legislative measures.
During the 2023 controversy surrounding the government’s proposed legal reforms, the IDI took out a large ad in the Haaretz newspaper warning that the reforms would “crush” Israeli democracy. I explained at the time why this ad was profoundly manipulative, stacked with false or misleading claims amounting to little more than plain deceit and hysteria. The IDI was simply lying to the Israeli public in order to maintain the juristocracy that it had helped create.
What, according to the IDI, constitutes the “end of democracy” for Israel?
To name just a few examples:
1. Greater political involvement in judicial selection
2. Subjecting departmental government legal counsel to ministerial oversight;
3. Granting the elected parliament final-say authority over legislation (in the absence of a written constitution).
Such measures may be undesirable or even objectionable, but they hardly come close to the “destruction” of democracy alleged by the IDI. If anything, all such proposals were consistent with democratic practice across the Western world, and their common theme was subjecting policies and government decisions to greater public and electoral accountability-not quite the typical demise of democracy.
Such outlandish views, essentially equating democracy with the arbitrary rule of unelected judges and of insulated bureaucrats, are routinely articulated by the IDI’s most senior scholars, including (vice president of research) Suzie Navot and (former vice president of research) Mordechai Kremnitzer. Kemnitzer’s lamenting of the end of democracy at every turn has become comical; a quick Google search yields examples from 2011, 2012, 2016, 2019 and 2025. Navot has bizarrely argued that the Israeli prime minister could not legally fire his own minister of defense, and similarly that the government could not dismiss the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency.
Never mind the law; never mind the fundamental democratic principles of civilian oversight over entities wielding violent state power.
In his book On Democracy, Robert A. Dahl contended that “control of military and police by elected officials” is among the most essential preconditions for any democracy. According to Dahl, if the military and police are not “under the full control of democratically elected officials,” democratic institutions are unlikely to endure, and their “prospects are dim.” Dahl would have certainly also taken issue with Navot’s suggestion that any appointments by politicians (including the ombudsman of judicial conduct) are inherently tainted, or with her support for the judicially invented standard of “extreme unreasonableness” as grounds to invalidate any government decision.
Though the IDI had long ago translated Dahl’s seminal book into Hebrew, IDI scholars seem not to have read it.
Further, the IDI presents itself as nonpartisan and reflecting mainstream sensibilities, while it is, in fact, far more closely aligned with the most radical fringe elements of the Israeli extreme left and regularly flirts with anti-Zionism.
Yuval Shany, a senior fellow and former vice president of research, served on the board of the radical NGO B’Tselem. This is the organization that denounces Israel’s “regime of apartheid and occupation” on its homepage and that has enthusiastically embraced the blood libel that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. As the IDI’s primary expert on international law, Shany has promoted views far from the Israeli consensus: claiming that Israel has an obligation to send aid to Gaza in wartime despite an inability to secure it; arguing against targeting organizations and individuals supporting Hamas (including Hamas police); calling for public investigations against potential or alleged violations of international law by the Israeli military and policymakers; and advocating for increased ability of Gaza residents to sue the Israeli military and government for damages.
Shany notably argued (also via IDI opinion pieces) that Israel could not use lethal military force against Gazan “protesters” entering the security perimeter and crossing the Israel-Gaza border fence-a position that contributed to Israel’s inability to monitor the border before and during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The IDI’s support for judicial intervention since Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is especially illuminating. The Institution has been among the most vocal and active advocates for constant judicial interference in military and strategic affairs-from broad national security policy down to micromanaging the menus and nutrition of Hamas Nukhba murders and rapists captured on Oct. 7. Doing so exemplifies the two points above: both the IDI’s obsession with handing judges all governing power, and the IDI’s ideological radicalism and complete deviation from mainstream Israeli public opinion.
Mordechai Kremnitzer (the democracy doomsayer), perhaps the most recognizable and prominent public figurehead of the IDI, had also served on the board of B’Tselem. Kremnitzer objected to the 2018 Nation-State law so strongly that he cried on air during a radio interview, though the unremarkable law reflected basic national consensus on a host of issues.
In 2023 (before Oct. 7), he explicitly praised senior military reservists refusing to serve as a form of leverage to influence government legislation (an approach one might call extortionate). Then, in 2024, during the war, Kremnitzer sympathized with a call for Air Force fighter pilots to avoid military service if they object to government policy, then stated that Israel was “a hair’s breadth” away from becoming a “despotic dictatorship” and seemed to endorse anti-government violence (“violent acts are permissible against a despotic dictatorship”).
This is by no means trivial:
Refusal to defend the country in protest of government policy is broadly relegated to the most extreme fringes of the radical post-Zionist left. Kremnitzer’s tacit (and sometimes, explicit) support for reservists abandoning their roles places him at odds with the vast majority of mainstream Zionist left-wing opinion. And his stance generally reflects that of IDI as a whole.
Ironically, Kremnitzer’s legal and judicial views were so beyond the pale that even the arch-activists of the Israeli Supreme Court rejected his candidacy for judicial office.
Just one more example of many is that of Anat Thon Ashkenazi, who serves as director of IDI’s “Center for Democratic Values and Institutions,” its primary arm addressing constitutional and judicial issues. Her most recent role prior to IDI was as executive director of “Itach Ma’aki: Women Lawyers for Social Justice,” a well-known radical progressive NGO.
“Itach Ma’aki” was a signatory of an open letter on Oct. 13, 2023 (only days after the massacre of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 others) calling for a “moral and humanistic approach without giving in to vengefulness.” The letter urged the “immediate cessation” of bombings against Gaza’s “civilian population”; provision of humanitarian aid; and avoiding harm to “medical facilities.” It criticized Israel’s “indiscriminate destruction” and “siege harming innocent civilians.”
There is, of course, nothing wrong with belonging to the far-left end of the Israeli political spectrum, and nothing wrong with IDI hiring whomever they please. The point is rather that the clear political leanings of IDI staff and leadership (who follow a similar pattern) reflect the institution’s heavy slant to the left and its marked distance from mainstream Israeli sentiment.
Such distance is also clearly demonstrated in the IDI’s policies and programming. In a recent example, the IDI hosted an event titled “Democracy on the Frontlines” that focused on the “weakening” of democracy by the government. Out of some 40-odd speakers, not a single one could be considered “right-wing” or conservative. Most were easily identified with the left and far-left, including former politicians and activists in radical left-wing organizations.
Perhaps most instructive (and amusing) was the IDI’s ill-fated attempt in 2013 to secure an allocation of real estate within a new government compound, reserved for national “a-political” institutions and organizations. The attempt triggered a widespread public backlash rejecting and ridiculing IDI’s claim to “apolitical” bipartisanship in light of its well-established, distinctively left-wing record. The allocation was ultimately denied.
Finally, the IDI has developed the habit of abandoning, reversing and adopting any policy position on the basis of partisan expediency. In one recent example, the IDI firmly opposed the government’s dismissal of an Israeli spy chief (the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency), advocating for the latter having “a degree of independence from the prime minister.”
Yet over the years, the IDI had espoused the exact opposite position and had stressed the importance of direct ministerial oversight of the Shin Bet. It did so in 1997 and 1998 during the enactment of key legislation, and more recently, in 2021, when the Bennett government appointed the head of the Shin Bet. In another representative example, Kremnitzer had previously praised illegal leaks and had explained why perpetrators of such leaks ought to be prosecuted only rarely, if ever; whereas more recently, he justified a criminal investigation into leaks allegedly emanating from Netanyahu’s staff or allies.
(Kremnitzer also U-turned with his position on the “Breach of Trust” criminal offense, which he had once criticized as overly vague and a tool to criminalize valid political conduct, and which he later embraced in its use against Netanyahu and other right-wing figures).
The 2022 “stability” proposals (described above), of course, also demonstrate this well. The IDI’s official (and highly anti-democratic) policy was a transparent attempt at empowering Benjamin Gantz (who IDI expected to form the next government) and his political partners, and was immediately abandoned (and reversed) the moment it became clear Gantz had lost. Far from intellectual or ideological coherence, the IDI often seems to function primarily like a political party.
More than anything, recent experience would suggest that the IDI has only one consistent guiding principle-whether a position or policy helps or harms Netanyahu and his coalition, and to hell with truth, integrity, and indeed, democracy.
In its obsession with Netanyahu and with thwarting the political right-wing, the IDI has abandoned all academic, ethical and principled pretensions, eagerly rallying behind any position detrimental to Netanyahu, even if they had previously promoted the exact opposite view. The only other discernible principle to which the IDI adheres is judicial supremacy, but in practice, this seems to align comfortably with the IDI’s blatant partisanship.
Many outside Israel still perceive the institute the way it wants to be seen-as mainstream, principled and democratic-yet it has long been none of these things. This misperception is perhaps most evident in the lineup of major American philanthropies supporting the IDI. Some Israeli NGOs and think tanks clearly match the ideology of their radical-left or anti-Zionist patrons; the IDI, however, seems to have veered far from its original mission and namesake-not because of its funders, but in spite of them.
In 2024 alone, the IDI received more than 56 million shekels (nearly 85% of its overall income) from foreign donations, the lion’s share of those through the IDI’s American funding wing.
To be sure, some of the IDI’s backers are the usual progressive left-wing suspects, yet many of the most substantial donors are mainstream, run-of-the-mill, centrist philanthropies, who likely have no idea just how radical and odious the IDI’s agenda has become. These include sizeable grants from major Jewish Federations across the United States and from familiar private family foundations, whose ideology and mission statements seem patently at odds with the IDI’s.
Perhaps most striking is the tremendous support provided by the late Bernie Marcus and by the Marcus Foundation, a philanthropy many would typically characterize as conservative or right-wing, and one which is stridently Zionist. The right-leaning Marcus Foundation seems to be the IDI’s most significant financier (according to public reports, documents and tax-filings), despite the IDI’s hard swerve to the anti-democratic left; and while the late Marcus was a historic partner in founding and supporting the IDI, one must wonder to what extent he was aware, in recent years, of the organization’s gradual radicalization.
The IDI advertises itself as “nonpartisan” and has long cultivated this image. It would seem that many well-intentioned donors, supporters and perhaps even board members have fallen for this ruse. It is high time to shed such naivety and to recognize the IDI for what it is: extremist, juristocratic, opportunistic and partisan.