"Judicial Reform" which divided Israel in '23 comes back

Post Reply New Topic

The 2023 Israeli judicial reform is a set of five changes to the judicial system and the balance of powers in Israel that was proposed in January 2023. The intent of the measures is to curb the judiciary's influence over lawmaking and public policy by limiting the Supreme Court's power to exercise judicial review, granting the government control over judicial appointments and limiting the authority of its legal advisors. The effort was led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Yariv Levin and the Chair of the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Simcha Rothman.

The Supreme Court has, for several decades, assumed the right to declare Knesset legislation unconstitutional. The reform would permit the Knesset to override such a ruling by reintroducing the legislation and approving it with a majority of Knesset members. The reform would additionally diminish the ability of courts to conduct judicial review of the Basic Laws and change the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee, so that control over the appointment of judges is effectively given to the government.

Levin and the ruling government coalition have stated that the above is the first step in their judicial reform,[4] and that additional steps are planned, including:

changing the appointment process of legal advisors to government ministries, such that they are appointed and dismissed by the ministers;

making the legal advisers' legal advice a recommendation, rather than binding on the ministers; and
making them subordinate directly to the ministers, rather than to the Justice Ministry's professional oversight.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that the reform is necessary because the judiciary has too much control over public policy, and a better balance is needed between democratically elected legislators and the judiciary.However, Netanyahu has been barred from actively taking part in the process of the judicial reform by the Attorney General, due to a conflict of interest stemming from his ongoing corruption trial.

The coalition is also advancing a number of other bills concerning Israel's judicial system and the balance of powers, including:

reforms to widen the authority of the Rabbinical Court, allowing them to act as arbitrators in civil matters using religious law, if both parties consent;
bills limiting the ability to call for a no-confidence vote and other methods for dissolving a sitting Knesset;
bills prohibiting criminal proceedings against sitting Prime Ministers (which could free the current PM, Netanyahu, from the corruption charges currently pending against him); and
bills permitting key public service positions to be positions of trust, appointed by politicians, rather than professional aappointments.

Over the past three months, the world has witnessed the tectonic disintegration of the Iranian “axis of resistance.” The swift fall of the brutal Assad regime — which killed over 500,000 civilians in the 13-year Syrian civil war and displaced half of the country’s 23 million population — was precipitated by the collapse of Hezbollah in Lebanon as a true fighting force against Israel and as the protector of the Syrian regime. Hamas in Gaza has been decimated, and there is an expectation of a ceasefire deal and the return of at least some Israeli hostages by Jan. 20, 2025. The Biden administration has also moved more forcefully against the Houthis in Yemen.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his minions continue their assault on democratic norms in Israel — particularly Israel’s independent judiciary — even in the face of a criminal arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

Notwithstanding that Israel’s judicial independence was the best argument against the ICC indictment, Netanyahu and Justice Minister Yariv Levin are steadily returning Israel to the Oct. 6, 2023 state of affairs, whereby Israel was in a state of near-civil war. The 10-month long protests against Netanyahu’s judicial coup (calling it “judicial reform” wildly understates the intended impact) ended immediately after the brutal Hamas massacres of Oct. 7.

Netanyahu appears bent on returning Israel back to Oct. 6 and internal civil war — with no real concern for the hostages nor with the basic concepts of civil society — that kept Israel distinct from its neighbors.

It is important to recall that during the first few weeks of the Gaza war, the Netanyahu government was inept and paralyzed in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack. It was the protest movement that held Israel together, mobilizing civil society to provide food, clothes and shelter for Israelis who had been living near Gaza and in the north.

It should also be recalled that members of the Netanyahu government called the anti-judicial coup protestors “traitors,” called for air force pilots leading the protests to be shot (37 of the 40 pilots in the Israeli Air Force’s 69th Air Force Squadron refused volunteer reserve duty during the protests) and even called leaders of the protests the “antichrist.” It was, however, those antichrist pilots — the 69th Squadron — that flew the missions that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

In the immediate aftermath of the ICC warrants, I wrote in The Hill that Netanyahu could be saved by the very judiciary whose independence he was trying to destroy. Now it would appear he will count on the incoming Trump administration get the ICC warrants dismissed — a dubious proposition — and in the interim he can move to destroy the independence of Israel’s judicial system.

Remarkably, even in the face of the ICC warrants and Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, he and Justice Minister Levin have reinvigorated their relentless assault on the judicial system. Levin has delayed for over 10 months the appointment of a president of the Israeli Supreme Court and four additional justices. The court is now operating with 11 of 15 justices. In the past, the president had always been the most senior member of the court.

By returning to his coup, Netanyahu seeks to control not just the executive branch — which means the legislative branch too, since as a parliamentary system, the government only serves as long as it has a majority in the Knesset — but the judicial branch as well.

A block away from the Hostages Square rally, anti-government activists and some hostages’ families and their supporters protested in front of the Begin Road entrance to IDF Headquarters.

That protest was bolstered by demonstrators from an earlier nearby event against the return of the government’s judicial overhaul.

The anti-overhaul protest, organized by the Free in our Homeland movement, started with a march from Tel Aviv’s Habima Square to the junction, also known by activists as Democracy Square. At the protest, Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, vowed to topple the government and replace it with “loyalists of Zionism and democracy.”

Golan, a former general who leads a merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties, praised the audience for showing up week after week to protest against “this horrible government.”

“You are the everyday heroes,” he said.

He accused the government of running “toxic” propaganda that promotes “lies, racism and hatred”; “dismantling the justice system and democratic institutions”; prolonging the war in Gaza as a way to stay in power; and failing to establish a commission of inquiry into events leading up to the Hamas onslaught that sparked the war, “because they know that a state commission of inquiry will find them responsible for what happened on October 7, what happened before and what happened after.”

That protest was bolstered by demonstrators from an earlier nearby event against the return of the government’s judicial overhaul.

The anti-overhaul protest, organized by the Free in our Homeland movement, started with a march from Tel Aviv’s Habima Square to the junction, also known by activists as Democracy Square. At the protest, Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, vowed to topple the government and replace it with “loyalists of Zionism and democracy.”

Golan, a former general who leads a merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties, praised the audience for showing up week after week to protest against “this horrible government.”

“You are the everyday heroes,” he said.

He accused the government of running “toxic” propaganda that promotes “lies, racism and hatred”; “dismantling the justice system and democratic institutions”; prolonging the war in Gaza as a way to stay in power

“We are the power, and with that power we’ll toss them out, dry up the poison machine, and return this nation to a discourse of sanity,” he said.

After Golan’s speech, iconic Israeli rock band T-Slam performed its 1990 protest song “Face of the Nation,” in which a corrupt politician promises material favors to people who vote for him.

Danni Bassan, the lead singer, said the band had been scheduled to perform at the weekly protest against the judicial overhaul set to take place on October 7, 2023.