Threat Analyst Ken Abramowitz is author of “The Multifront War”
Editor: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, President, American Center for Democracy (ACD)
See the sources for this article and more research in the Additional Reading section
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Israel’s governing coalition, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, passed the first of its legal reform provisions, restricting the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down government decisions they did not like – even though these did not violate the rule of law. Israel has no constitution, but rather has embodied it’s fundamental legal framework in “the Basic Laws” that govern Israel in the absence of a formal constitution.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has ruled against government decisions solely on the subjective basis of being “unreasonable” without any further legal justification.
This Judicial Reform was long needed.
After the summer recess, the governing coalition will continue its Judicial Reform, addressing the Supreme Court selection process, which currently allows the sitting Supreme Court judges to veto new justices not to their liking. In time, the Judicial Reform will focus on the Court’s current ability to hear cases from plaintiffs without any legal standing, as well as claims that have yet to go through the normal appeals process. In time, the reform process will focus on the Attorney General (AG) selection process and the selection process of all legal counsels throughout the various ministries, who now have the power to overrule government decisions. (In the US, the AG and the legal counsel are appointed by the President to advise, not to judge.)
Judicial Reform is needed in Israel because the Supreme Court has taken on more and more power since 1992, when then-Supreme Court President Aharon Barak slowly began changing and expanding the Court’s capacity.
Finally, after more than 30 years, the Executive and Legislative branches seek to regain the proper balance, with appropriate checks and balances, as in the United States.
Unfortunately, the loud and well-funded minority opposition parties, in conjunction with the Progressive Democrat-led American Administration, have sought to use this crucial Judicial Reform to confuse the public and lay the ground for a regime change so they can regain power, after decisively losing the last election. The wild demonstrations they have been organizing show they use the governing coalition’s Judicial Reform as a ruse. They fight the democratic process of the rightful legislator – the Knesset – to depose the Netanyahu-led coalition government. They have rejected his election as Prime Minister all along. Since yelling “Power” won’t work, they deceitfully scream, “Democracy”, as it sounds better.
The governing coalition must better educate the Israeli public this fall, so it will be less susceptible to the purposeful slander and misrepresentations of the power-grabbing minority opposition whose numerous false narratives were soundly rejected only six months ago by the Israeli people.
The Israeli police must be allowed to arrest the insurrectionist leaders of the mass illegal protests that block major highways and roads, endangering the lives of citizens, shutting down businesses, and creating chaos.
The new law curbing the Israeli Supreme Court’s justices should prevent them from any attempt to cancel it since It has been approved as a law by a majority of 64 members of the Knesset . Any such attempt will prove the Israeli Supreme Court does not care about Democracy but only about its own institutional power.
Additional Reading:
Basic Laws of the State of Israel
Israel’s Supreme Court Claims a Veto on Political Appointments – WSJ
Why I support the 2023 Israeli Judicial Reform (2) | Jean Pierre Braun | The Blogs
Barak, Aharon | Cardozo Israeli Supreme Court Project
