A Cornered Netanyahu Turns to His Old Friends in the GOP - Haaretz Today - Haaretz.com
WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has roundly dismissed international fears concerning his ruling coalition’s dramatic judicial overhaul – save one group of leading experts from the financial sector.
Described by U.S. ambassador to Israel Tom Nides as “the one thing that’s getting the attention of the prime minister, as it should,” Netanyahu has reportedly spent the past few weeks putting a full-court press on leading global economic thinkers in an attempt to assuage their concerns about the threats to Israel's democracy and the subsequent impact on its economy.
His efforts have clearly failed to resonate. After New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published an op-ed focusing on the negative impact the plans would have on the country’s startup and high-tech sectors, Netanyahu and his government were utterly eviscerated in the world’s leading financial publications.
The Financial Times’ Martin Wolf argued that Israel was becoming an illiberal democracy, warning of impending “crony capitalism” and that Netanyahu could be doing irreparable damage. An editorial cartoon in The Economist ridiculed the plan, depicting Netanyahu taking a club to a blindfolded Lady Justice and an independent judiciary.
Nobel Prize-winning economists Eric Maskin and Paul Milgrom also warned about the plan’s potential knock-on effect on scaring off investors and state corruption.
Now that Netanyahu’s efforts to bring the global financial sector into the fold have failed, he and his allies are turning to their familiar friends in the Republican Party.
Several key GOP senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee Jim Risch and Tom Cotton, are all visiting Israel this week and addressing the Tikvah Fund’s Hertog Forum.
The conservative think tank has played a central role in Netanyahu’s efforts to neuter the Supreme Court. It was behind the 2019 founding of the Israel Law and Liberty Forum, which aspires to create a new generation of conservative judges.
The GOP visits come as leading Democrats in both houses of Congress have pointedly expressed their fears that Netanyahu’s plans would compromise Israel’s long-standing bipartisan backing.
Republicans, meanwhile, are lending their support and endorsement of the plans via their appearances. While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is also slated to meet Netanyahu this week, the emerging optics of the partisan divide on the matter are undeniable.
Read more about the Netanyahu government's legal coup:
- ‘A dumb idea’: What Netanyahu’s judicial demolition guru thinks about his flagship law
- ‘I won’t serve a dictatorship’: Israeli reservists ramp up protest against judicial coup
- Netanyahu's coup for dummies: Israel's constitutional crisis, explained
- Israelis must prepare for a long, painful battle against Netanyahu’s judicial coup
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