The True Goal of Israel's Judicial Coup Has Been Revealed - Haaretz Editorial - Haaretz.com
A governing coalition that seeks to weaken the Supreme Court is presumably doing so because it plans to enact unconstitutional laws and doesn’t want the court to prevent this. And indeed, less than a day after abolishing the court’s power to overturn government decisions it deems unreasonable, coalition members had already realized that this was the dawn of a new day. The salad bar is indeed open – at the taxpayer’s expense, needless to say – and they can now afford to enact anything they please, with no constitutional limits and no commitment to the value of equality before the law.
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SubscribeTuesday morning, Knesset members from the United Torah Judaism party proposed a Basic Law declaring that Torah study constitutes “significant service” equivalent to military service. “People who take it upon themselves to devote themselves to Torah study for a significant amount of time will be considered as having done significant service to the state of Israel and the Jewish people, and this will have implications for their rights and obligations,” the bill says.
Many coalition members rushed to object. People close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were furious, and his Likud party said the bill isn’t on the agenda and will not be advanced. Even Shas, the other ultra-Orthodox party, claimed it hadn’t known the bill would be submitted on Tuesday, and UTJ MK Moshe Gafni said “the timing was completely unnecessary; this wasn’t announced by us.”
But their objections are worth nothing, because the only thing they are upset about is the timing. They are simply trying to obscure the legal overhaul’s goals until they gain control of the Judicial Appointments Committee and pass a law enabling the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings – the only thing they need to run wild constitutionally. It doesn’t suit them for the public to find out about the overhaul’s ultimate purpose before they complete it, lest their supporters wake up from their pro-Netanyahu slumber.
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Yet they fully support the bill’s content. The coalition agreement with the Religious Zionism party says explicitly that “in light of the importance the Jewish people has always accorded and still accords to Torah study ... a Basic Law on Torah Study will be enacted ... by the time the 2023 budget passes.” The agreements with the ultra-Orthodox parties also mandated passing, along with the state budget, a new conscription law that would exempt yeshiva students from military service. Only because of the protests against the judicial overhaul did Netanyahu postpone the approval of such a law.
Prominent supporters of the overhaul and the government have also expressed reservations about such a law on social media. Someone ought to tell them, “Wake up and smell the coffee.” It’s high time for them to understand that such a law was one of the overhaul’s main goals. This bill accurately depicts the society that the driving forces behind the overhaul want to create here. Anyone who realizes this, even if belatedly, should be out in the streets alongside their brothers and sisters who are trying to save the country from a future of utter darkness.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.