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By Dalia Scheindlin
Ms. Scheindlin is a political scientist working on an e-book on the history of democracy in Israel.
TEL AVIV – This week’s Israeli elections are billed as yet another referendum on a former leader, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption and is attempting some other political comeback. But the country faces a much deeper and more disturbing situation. Concern: Israel’s judiciary is on trial and with it Israel’s most productive hope for democracy.
In mid-October, hard-line and ascendant religious Zionism launched a judicial reform plan it called the “Law and Justice Plan. “
Critics were outraged that the plan removed from the books a key crime in Mr. Netanyahu, “fraud and breach of trust,” while granting truly broad immunity to prime ministers, ministers and lawmakers. This has been called a “bailout for Netanyahu. ” That would make corruption the “official faith of Israel. “
The implications of the proposal go far beyond Mr. One of the biggest flaws in the US system, the plan calls for more definitive political appointments than judicial ones, in contrast to the balanced mix of politicians, judges and civil servants. of the bar today, and would weaken the role of the attorney general.
Most surprising is the attempt to eliminate judicial review: the plan would make it very difficult for the Supreme Court to strike down legislation deemed contrary to basic rights, and Parliament could almost re-enact that law, dissolving a much-needed restriction. on the force of government and on majority rule.
Vacations in Israel come and go, but this effort is a fleeting trick. For years, the Israeli right has embarked on a vitriolic anti-judicial crusade, while the center and left have clung to an ideal of judicial independence. Efforts have been based on ambiguity or even opposition to the much older law, limitations on government, and liberal values dating back to Israel’s early years.
Israel does not have a formal written letter. Although UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947, which provided for the identification of the state the following year, stipulated the creation of a charter, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox leaders insisted before and after the status quo of the state that the Torah is Israel’s “eternal. “letter. ; the leading rabbis disdained the inauguration of the Supreme Court in 1948. Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, also opposed a letter; He needed no restrictions on his rule and had to keep the orthodox parties in his coalition. Moreover, a charter establishing certain human rights would have been inconvenient to perpetuating martial law, movement regulations, and the surveillance regime that controls Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel.
After 1967, when Israeli agreements expanded to the spaces occupied during the Arab-Israeli war, territorial nationalists and devout Israelis came to see the Supreme Court, and even Israeli law itself, as an impediment to their plans. It generated enmity, even if those decisions were limited and temporarily circumvented through the triangle of government, military, and settlers coordinating policy to keep the deal growing. Israel has also adapted its legislation to govern unequally, beating settlers under civil law and Palestinians under martial law.
Since the beginning of the state, Israeli lawmakers continually tried to pass a bill of rights but failed, most commonly blocked by devout parties. It was not until 1992 that legislators followed two “Basic Laws” on human rights. These laws protect a diversity of rights, adding life, property, non-public freedoms, privacy, and selection of employment or profession. Liberal Israelis cling to it as an anchor, despite representing only a basic bill of rights, with no particular promises of freedom of speech and association. , while no particular Israeli law promises equality for all, leaving it to the courts to protect those rights through interpretation. Have.
However, for some time in the 1990s and 2000s, that legislation played a role in a more liberal philosophy of Israeli law and society, with the exception of deepening the profession of Palestinians and the violent clash of the army in those same decades. But a more competitive right: The wing government came to force in 2009, led by M. Netanyahu.
The government temporarily passed a series of intolerant laws to intimidate civil society, demonize warring parties to the occupation, and target Arab citizens. The culmination of this intolerant legislative frenzy was the 2018 “nation-state” law, a new basic law that elevates Jews to the category of greater prestige than all other citizens.
Right-wing parties have also turned their attention to undermining judicial review, in order to protect their bigoted and nationalist agenda. Shaked, who was justice minister and a member of the Jewish Home, a right-wing Likud party, pushed aggressively, but usually unsuccessfully, to weaken the justice system. Right-wing editorials and think tanks initiated a steady drumbeat that sabotaged the credibility of the judicial authorities. This year, an ultra-Orthodox lawmaker said he was seeking to demolish the Supreme Court.
For a time, Netanyahu himself gave the impression of being above the anti-judicial fray. But around 2018, when corruption investigations into him were closed, Netanyahu opposed what he called fabricated deals, political conspiracies and “tainted” investigations. . He called “investigator investigators,” and critics called him seditious. The right-wing public had been told for years that the judicial formula was robbing them of their country; Now they think he was stealing from his prime minister.
The Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, has tracked a precipitous drop in public acceptance at the Supreme Court over the past decade, most commonly among right-wing Jewish respondents.
If parties backing Netanyahu’s bloc, an alliance of right-wing, devout and ultra-Orthodox parties, win the election this week, the next government would probably still have the legitimacy to dismantle judicial restrictions as much as possible.
It is possible that this would not only help Mr. Netanyahu comply with the law, but would also remove the constraints of an intolerant calendar in its own right. Religious Zionism has drawn up plans to deepen Judaism’s grip on public life in Israel, restrict those eligible for immigration under Israel’s return law, and in the face of Supreme Court attempts to protect immigrants and asylum seekers from African countries from deportation or imprisonment.
But the main target of the right is the land itself. Religious Zionism’s legal plan blatantly explains what many on the right want: it would seek to re-legislate a law the court struck down in 2020, retroactively legitimizing West Bank settlements. Words: Judicial reform serves de facto annexation.
Whatever happens on Tuesday, Israel’s attacks on the judiciary deepen the country’s longstanding skepticism about equality, human rights and democracy itself, raising questions about the long-term values here.
Dahlia Scheindlin is a political scientist and member of Century International. He is publishing an e-book on the history of democracy in Israel.
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