[Salon] Israel's Protest Is Not About Democracy. It's a Class War

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-02-09/ty-article-opinion/.premium/israelis-are-fighti-for-democracy-in-an-apartheid-state/00000186-32f6-dd81-a98e-fbf73d380000

Gideon Levy Feb 9, 2023

Israel's Protest Is Not About Democracy. It's a Class War

In the end it’s a class war. The fight for democracy serves as a backdrop, a respectable cloak in terms of principle and ideology. But the real battle is inter-class and inter-cultural. The war is presumably being fought over the nature of the regime in Israel, between two sides claiming to be the real democrats. Neither of them are. Supporters of the constitutional coup claim that it will lead to democracy, which in their eyes is the tyranny of the majority (which is not democracy).

Its opponents claim with the same passion that the plan will destroy democracy, even though it could not exist at all in an apartheid state. Neither camp has any true democrats. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is certainly also motivated by his anger at the legal system and his attempt to escape his trial, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman, chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, are not democrats, they’re enemies of democracy.

But the organizers of the ironic protest demonstration on Shabbat in Efrat are not democrats either. The proposed regime change is a disaster, it heralds fascism, but the war against it is not about democracy, when most of those waging it are not democrats. A democrat would fight for democracy for everyone in his country. Most of the heroes of the present opposition have never taken an interest in the state of democracy an hour’s drive from their home, which is why it’s hard to consider them democrats.

Those bringing about the regime coup certainly aren’t interested in democracy. For them it’s only a means to fight the old order, to punish and to take revenge on the classes and the culture that have determined Israel’s conduct since its inception. The present war is therefore being fought for something more profound than the regime – the social order.

Opponents of the regime coup are the old elite, even if it that doesn’t sound good. The teachers, architects, psychiatrists, generals, environmentalists, high-tech people, economists, legal scholars and of course Aharon Barak and Ehud Barak. They all come from a very specific class in Israeli society. Opposite them stands the new elite, which is trying to pave its way brutally to center stage, after many long years in a government that failed to do so.

That’s what they’re fighting for, for recognition that they are an elite. They want a judicial override clause and a different composition for the Judicial Appointments Committee so that they will be the ones to decide who the judges will be, so that the judges will be like them, in their image. On the way they want to eliminate any legal supervision of the government – a mortal blow to democracy, but that’s also due to what they see as the distorted composition of the court.

If attorney Zion Amir were the president of the Supreme Court, it is doubtful whether they would attack constitutional supervision or change the composition of the Judicial Appointments Committee. The opponents don’t want to change the composition of the committee for the same reason: They want the judges to continue to be in their image.

Few people have any idea whether Supreme Court President Esther Hayut is an important legal scholar and whether she really is better than a candidate that the right-wing politicians would parachute in. But she’s one of ours. Never mind that the court betrayed its role for years and failed to supervise the authorities that committed war crimes. On the other hand, nobody threatened a civil war, nor did they threaten to use guns.

The class war is being conducted by people who also come from the old elite. Netanyahu, Levin and Rothman didn’t grow up in Hatzor Haglilit, but they managed to be considered the faithful and authentic voice of the lower classes. You won’t convince them that they’re wrong. Their love for Netanyahu is not something that can be easily changed. It’s far easier to fight against the legal coup if we accept the deep currents that are motivating it.

Half of Israel feels excluded. Someone managed to convince them that the reform is the hope for a change in its status, that Israel’s new Knesset, quite an embarrassing assemblage of dignitaries, is its representative, and it must be given all the power; that this is democracy. There’s no than a more dangerous lie, but the way to impede it begins with understanding its motives.