Netanyahu Juggles Explosive Agenda, Saving Coalition's Fate at Cost of Israel's Demise - I
A few hours after the Supreme Court decided that an expanded panel of justices would hear the petitions against the constitutionality of a law barring the attorney general from declaring the prime minister incapacitated, a response arrived from the organized crime ring known as the “heads of the governing coalition” (or for short, Justice Minister Yariv Levin).
In a thuggish, brazen press statement of the type we’ve seen before (against the attorney general, for instance), these senior politicians informed the court that “it has no authority to overturn a Basic Law … or to determine that a Basic Law will take effect at a later date … and it has no authority to overturn the results of the election.” Words like “coup” or “putsch” weren’t said explicitly, but that was the implicit message.
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When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang threatened the investigators in his corruption cases, we hoped it wouldn’t extend to the prosecutors. When they threatened the prosecutors, especially the lead prosecutor in his trial, as well as the attorney general, we hoped it wouldn’t extend to the judges. Now, the country’s highest court is also being directly threatened.
No leader of an organized crime ring would have dared to threaten the Supreme Court president and its justices. Not the Abergil brothers, not Zeev Rosenstein, not Amir Mullner. There are basic norms that you don’t violate – unless you’re the prime minister or the justice minister. Or any of their gang.
To add a satirical dimension to the statement, Levin wrote, “the Israeli public now needs calm, dialogue and agreement. At a time like this, responsibility and restraint are needed from all the branches of government.” Too bad he didn’t sign it with the current in slogan – “because we’re brothers.”
Justice Minister Yariv Levin, last year.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg
Even as these lovely words were still echoing through the fuel-saturated atmosphere, an excerpt emerged from yet another interview, the 22nd (but who’s counting?), that Netanyahu has given to the foreign media. This time, it was the economic news site Bloomberg.
During the next Knesset session, he said, I’ll pass a law changing the composition of the Judicial Appointments Committee, and then that’s it. Either the law will pass with support from the parliamentary opposition or with public consent, he added.
He said something similar immediately after the Knesset’s summer recess began in a Hebrew-language video. In English, it sounds more impressive.
Incidentally, what does “public” consent mean? That he’ll find two academics who will lend a hand to the final product? To date, not a single serious jurist in Israel or abroad has backed this horrific insanity.
Bloomberg felt into the trap Netanyahu set for it and published a sensational headline – “Netanyahu is pulling back on judicial revamp.”
After seven months of a public, political, legal and security crisis that has been covered throughout the world, one would expect such a well-regarded media outlet to understand what every Israeli schoolchild knows: that changing the Judicial Appointments Committee’s composition, together with ending the courts’ power to overturn government decisions it deems unreasonable, which has already passed, are the heart of the judicial overhaul.
Israel's Supreme Court, last week.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
It's true that back in the day, coalition members also talked about the attorneys general law, which was meant to replace the jurists in government ministries with consiglieri. That (apparently) has been dropped. A law enabling 61 of the Knesset’s 120 MKs to override Supreme Court decisions has also been dropped (until further notice), but we might find it in the same package as the law to legalize ultra-Orthodox draft-dodging, whose passage the ultra-Orthodox parties are demanding at the start of the winter session in October.
So now, it’s all clear: Between November and January 2024, the Knesset will deal with the two most explosive bills imaginable – giving the ultra-Orthodox a mass exemption from army service (in exchange for an extra few hundred shekels in combat soldiers’ paychecks) and turning the Judicial Appointments Committee into a political body.
Members of Netanyahu's coalition celebrating last month after passing the law eliminating the reasonbleness standard.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
The ultra-Orthodox parties gave Netanyahu an ultimatum – the exemption in exchange for the committee. That’s the deal; there is no other. A Knesset majority exists for passing both. The effect on the country, in every possible field, will be even more disastrous than what we’re seeing today.
By the end of the year, there will be no more reserve army, there will be no functioning economy, there will be no public medicine. Anyone who can will flee the country. If Netanyahu doesn’t pull back, he will be responsible for committing a strategic terror attack that will bring about Israel’s demise. All the Arabs will have to do is come and pick up the loot from the floor.
When that’s where we’re headed, we have nobody to rely on but the protesters. When the conscription law joins the party, hundreds of thousands of people will join the protests. And when a million people besiege the Knesset, the government will be forced to capitulate.