[Salon] In Netanyahu's Israel, the Gaza War Is Wrecking What Remains of Democratic Values

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-20/ty-article/.premium/in-netanyahus-israel-the-gaza-war-is-wrecking-what-remains-of-democratic-values/0000018e-5cdd-d411-a3df-dcdfbad90000

In Netanyahu's Israel, the Gaza War Is Wrecking What Remains of Democratic Values -

Dahlia Scheindlin Mar 20, 2024

On January 1, Israel's Supreme Court struck down the law abolishing the reasonableness standard, the only item of the Netanyahu government's judicial assault program that it was able to pass. Pro-democracy Israelis, exhausted from 39 weeks of tireless protest throughout 2023, were then ground down further by the October 7 trauma and the Gaza war. They hoped that at least the government's attack on the judiciary was dead for good.

Not so. The "judicial reform" – unveiled with fanfare by Likud Justice Minister Yariv Levin in January 2023 – was never an end in itself; it was a means to what Israelis now call the haficha mishtarit – the "regime coup." The most far-right government in Israel's history never gave up its battle against liberal democracy. And war is a great time for a takeover.

The government's overall aim is to "further restrict democratic freedoms and move to a more authoritarian rule," says Limor Yehuda, a legal scholar and senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Adam Shinar, a professor of constitutional law at Reichman University, described the regime coup to me as anything the government does to "strengthen its power at the expense of other branches of government, including the Knesset and professional [public] service."

The real question, therefore, is how the executive power – specifically, the prewar Netanyahu government – is inserting itself into other branches of government or the public sector. The answer is: endlessly. The examples are coming too fast to keep up.

The Israeli government's two main architects of the judicial overhaul: Justice Minister Yariv Levin, left, and MK Simcha Rothman.Credit: Danny Shem-Tov

Executive takeover

Labor lawmaker Efrat Rayten is deeply alarmed by bills and government decisions that extend executive control, often out of the headlines and under the radar due to the war. She served on the Judicial Appointments Committee under the "government of change" of 2021-22 led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.

Just this week, the Knesset passed a law boosting the number of representatives of government ministries on planning and building committees – these are ministries headed by far-right political twins, Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit (the parties of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, respectively). This may sound like a banal technicality, but that's how the takeover creeps along undetected.

Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University, said in an interview that the essence of the illiberal power grab is prioritizing political loyalty over professionalism. She noted that Education Minister Yoav Kisch has backed appointments to the Council for Higher Education in order to stack this independent body that supervises higher education policies with supporters of the judicial overhaul, thereby reducing its independence. A different bill proposes to give military reservists an exemption from courses needed for their degrees, highlighting the dismissal of professional knowledge. This is ironic, Talshir said, since the education minister is himself a pilot.

University administrations may turn to political self-policing, she noted. When a far-right campaign attacked Hebrew University sociologist Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkianfor making anti-war statements in a podcast interview, as well as accusing Israel of genocide and casting doubt on sexual violence by Hamas, the university administration moved to suspend her without waiting for the government – or anticipating political pressure.

Protesters in Tel Aviv battling with the police last month.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

Political interference in other levels of governance is spiraling out of control. In December, the director of the Government Companies Authority resigned after a Likud minister, David Amsalem, basically appropriated its powers. The authority manages the companies responsible for Israel's major resources and infrastructure, but Amsalem couldn't keep away from the golden opportunity to hand out jobs and buy political loyalty. Before and during the war, Ben-Gvir has interfered so deeply in the professional activities of his National Security Ministry and operational policing decisions that the top staff have resigned and the attorney general has admonished Ben-Gvir to refrain.

This week, Finance Minister Smotrich issued a blistering attack on the IDF chief of staff for daring to advance high-level army appointments, as is his right. (The appointments ultimately went ahead, but rhetorical attacks on the army help deflect the blame for October 7 to the military instead of the government.)

On Monday, the government tried to advance legislation transferring local authorities' power to appoint local rabbis to the Religious Services Ministry, which is run by the theocratic and cronyist Shas party. Never mind the bizarre but permanent spectacle of a putative democracy appointing clerics at all; the government is trying to centralize and deepen its theocratic grip. Following divisions in the governing coalition, the legislation was paused – for now.

On the same day, Simcha Rothman of Religious Zionism – a key proponent of the judicial assault – unleashed a virulent attack against the outgoing judicial ombudsman, former Supreme Court Justice Uri Shoham. Rothman railed against Shoham's candidacy to lead the advisory committee that reviews senior government appointments such as the IDF chief of staff, the police chief and the governor of the Bank of Israel.

Rayten of the Labor Party called the attack an "ambush" by Rothman's "proxies," since the tirade against Shoham was led by the Movement for Governance and Democracy (which Rothman founded), the McCarthyite Im Tirtzu movement and the Torah of Combat movement, whoever they are, among others. The aim is clear: Denounce judges and appoint government-friendly figures to approve government-friendly appointments.

The vision driving all of these efforts is clear: Stack the whole public sector – from authority over government companies to land planning councils to rabbis – with loyalists as the extremist government expands its power and reach, while pushing its ideological agenda ever deeper into society.

And the week isn't over yet.

The arc of justice bends backward

Other aspects of the judicial assault never quite died. Justice Minister Levin desperately wanted to reengineer the Judicial Appointments Committee to cement political control over the country. His machinations failed, but as head of the panel, he delayed convening the committee throughout 2023 despite the gaping vacancies in Israel's courts.

When the committee did begin working in late 2023, its pace was sluggish, and far-right members blocked candidates seen as too lenient on the Arab community. Most worryingly, Levin refuses to fill two Supreme Court vacancies or name a permanent president of the court. Rayten says Levin is holding the chief justice position "hostage" to ensure the appointment of government-friendly justices to replace two recently retired liberal judges, Esther Hayut and Anat Baron.

The court can't do it alone

After a year at the center of a toxic controversy, Israel's embattled Supreme Court seems wary of bearing the torch of opposition – and has been especially reluctant to oppose government actions that threaten citizens' rights during the war.

Yehuda, the legal scholar, cited the Supreme Court ruling last month that dismissed a petition to annul Ben-Gvir's appointment as national security minister, based on his criminal record – 15 indictments and 13 convictions, some for supporting Jewish terrorism.

Levin. Rothman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset last month.Credit: Noam Rivkin Fenton

Shinar, the Reichman University professor, observed that judicial restraint during wartime is not unique to Israel. But the clinical title of an unpublished paper he authored – "Constitutional Overhaul, the War in Gaza, and the Puzzle of Civic Mobilization Israel" – is misleading: It's a panic-inducing read compiling all wartime attacks on civil liberties in Israel. And since his draft, which was drawn up in December, the list has grown.

Freedom of the press was already threatened by a package of "reforms" that the communications minister tried to advance before the war, weakening the public broadcaster and empowering the nationalist, hyper-government-loyalist competitor channel. Now the communications minister, Shlomo Karhi of Likud, has leveraged the war for even more draconian proposals to stifle media freedoms, subsidize incitement and consolidate pro-government propaganda, all under cover of the wartime state of emergency.

Local and national authorities are stomping on freedom of _expression_ and demonstrations. The police have effectively banned protests against the war in Arab towns, and the Supreme Court backed the police. The police have banned anti-war protests in Tel Aviv at times too, and only reluctantly permitted anti-war demonstrations by Arab or left-wing activists.

Due process is another target. Early in the war, the government enacted temporary emergency laws allowing detainees to be held for up to 90 days without access tocounsel, while another emergency law allows higher levels of crowding in prison, contrary to previous court rulings. But the top court upheld these acts.

The court has also rejected at least four chilling habeas corpus petitions regarding Gazans who had been detained incognito, including one this week. These included two journalists from Gaza captured on October 7, while three other petitions involved hundreds of Gazans who held permits to work legally in Israel before October 7. These were annulled, and thousands of Gazans were then basically disappeared, held incognito. Many were then released in November, making some of the court petitions moot.

After the filing of court petitions by Gisha, HaMoked and other rights groups, HaMoked wrote: "never before has the Court handled with such blatant contempt petitions for writ of habeas corpus."

One wonders: Could I be detained or disappeared one day too?

The true aim: total territorial control

Many Israelis will say that these things are temporary wartime measures forced on the country and do not reflect Israel's true democratic character. But frenetic attempts at executive takeover speaks otherwise. As Rayten said, this government represents "faith-based, nationalist, annexationist [aims], it wants to control Palestinians."

On the judicial assault, former Labor lawmaker Stav Shaffir wrote this week on X, "The judicial overhaul and the Palestinian issue were linked to each other in every action, every decision and definitely in the motives. … It was the root cause." Even if the current government falls, the long-term distortions of concepts like the rule of law and justice are no less ruinous for democracy.

The film "No Other Land" documents the struggle of West Bank Palestinians to avoid expulsion. Time and again the IDF barges in to demolish homes, wells, pipes and playgrounds in a godforsaken corner of the South Hebron Hills called Masafer Yatta. Bulldozers lop off the roof of a school or a bedroom like a cupcake top, and the crude structures crumble.

The villagers repeatedly beseech the soldiers: Why? The soldiers slap down printed orders and answer, "Take it up with the law."

One brief courtroom scene in a 22-year legal battle broke my heart. The film captures stubble-chin village elders in kaffiyehs sitting in the Supreme Court looking anxious but poised, almost hopeful ahead of yet another hearing. But after two decades, the court upheld the expulsion.

For Palestinians, the law is a one-way ticket to dispossession and displacement; no logic, all mockery.

Since the war began, Sarit Michaeli of rights group B'Tselem says that Israel has ramped up its physical takeover of the West Bank, racing to establish new outposts and road networks to link them all. Roughly since the beginning of the war, over 1,000 people have been forcibly displaced from 16 different communities, the group says.

Even the Sweden-based democracy evaluation group V-Dem has downgraded Israel from a liberal democracy to an electoral (only) democracy, following the year of Benjamin Netanyahu's democratic assault. But Israelis must realize that the same system perpetrating occupation-driven violations is coming for them. The military authoritarian regime is in the DNA of what they have called democracy; the current government is its natural extension.

If Israel's great democracy movement doesn't know this by now, while the war chews up what remains of democratic values, then little will save us.