There Is No ‘Compromise’ With Netanyahu’s Tyranny

All the initiatives proposed by the president and civil society groups as alternatives to the Draconian regime change the ruling coalition is bulldozing through the Knesset have now been rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Thursday, the very day his coalition passed a law forestalling the possibility of declaring him unfit for office on grounds of conflict of interest with his prosecution for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, he saw fit, in an address to the nation, to involve himself openly in the “legal reform,” saying he has been released from the gag rule of the attorney general. (Only the naïve could have thought he was not previously involved at every stage).

While the public waited expectantly for him to respond to the call of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to stop the legislation which is tearing the army apart and endangering Israel’s security, Netanyahu instead put all his weight behind it (and in the meantime promptly fired Gallant after he did finally speak out).

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He gave the go-ahead to the coalition’s anti-democratic legislation, to start this week with the final readings of the proposal to politicize the judiciary by giving the coalition the power to select two justices of the Supreme Court and its new president.

It was only after the country plunged into unprecedented chaos in the response to Netanyahu’s firing of Gallant Sunday night – first spontaneous mass protests across the country where chants rang out of “Israel won’t become a dictatorship,” major intersections were shut down, bonfires were lit on the main highway in Tel Aviv and by Monday a declaration of a general strike by the country’s largest labor union backed, astoundingly, by the major leaders of the economy, including banks, that Likud sources said Netanyahu might suspend the legislation and reinstate Gallant.

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Israeli protesters block Tel Aviv’s highway and fill the city’s nearby streets after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the defense minister for speaking out against his government’s controversial judicial overhaul, in Tel Aviv Sunday night.Credit: NIR ELIAS/ REUTERS

The possible reversal is, however, patently tactical and the incitement against the court and the entire law enforcement system is not off the agenda.

But in the face of angry backlash from his far-right coalition partners at that he might back down, he has yet to make such a final call about a freeze.

In his national address Thursday, attempting to justify the politicization of the judiciary, he showed his true colors – yet again falsely accused the justices of appointing themselves, although they are only three of the nine members of the appointments committee, and falsely criticized the composition of the court, although 12 of its 15 justices were appointed with full consent of Likud members and although the current composition is relatively diverse including settlers, religious, women and Mizrahim.

He once again accused the Supreme Court of being a veritable tyrant which dictates and overrules the will of the people. Each of these accusations is false and the court has in fact been extremely cautious and could well be accused of being under-activist.

The Supreme Court has not prevented Israel fighting terror but has facilitated that ongoing battle, according to the former director of the Shin Bet from 2016 to 2021, amongst other things by making it clear that Israel must act within the bounds of international law.

It has not prevented Jewish settlement of the West Bank, but has rather been instrumental in facilitating it. This, in spite of the fact that this entire settlement project is regarded as illegal under international law.

The Supreme Court did not invalidate changes in the Basic Law, in 2020 introducing a rotation mechanism for prime minister, unprecedented anywhere in the world, although the changes were made solely in order to serve Netanyahu’s coalition interests. It did not strike down the Nation State Law, although it violates the right of Arab citizens to equality.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves Downing Street after meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London Sunday.Credit: TOBY MELVILLE/ REUTERS

The Court did make an immensely important contribution in guaranteeing the right to equality, which the Knesset had, in surrender to the religious lobby, persistently refused to write expressly into its Basic Laws. On this subject, chair of the Law and Constitution Committee Simcha Rothman, from the Religious Zionism party, condemned the court, charging that, in recognizing the right to equality against the will of the Knesset, it is destroying democracy. The court, in fact, saved democracy by guaranteeing the right to equality. The right to equality without discrimination on grounds of race, religion, sex, gender, ethnic identity or other social status, is the basic premise of democracy and not its destruction.

Netanyahu declared, in his speech Thursday, that “Israel will remain a democracy.” This, although all three branches of government are to be placed firmly under the tyrannical control of the ruling coalition thus defying any existing definition of democracy. The appointment of justices by the ruling coalition is a crucial blow to the legal structure of Israeli democracy. This is Machiavellian destruction fully intended to pave the way for dictatorship, with no legal forum for protest or resistance.

The dictatorship has three goals: the messianic realization of a Jewish halakhic state; impunity for corruption; and annexation of the West Bank.

1) It aims to usher in a fully halakhic state, with massive privileges to the ultra-Orthodox. Think huge increases in special budgets, state subsidies for exclusively religious education with no requirement to provide a core syllabus in mathematics or English, and full exemption from army service. It will severely disadvantage women, expanding the jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts, the segregation of women and men in public spaces, permission to discriminate against women or LGTBQ based on religious belief and refusal to sign the Istanbul Convention for prevention of violence against women.

2) It aims to cancel the repercussions of criminal indictment or conviction of coalition politicians and to shield members of the executive from legal supervision. It proposes to emasculate the “gatekeepers” in Israel’s democratic institutions, particularly the attorney general and ministerial legal advisors, as well as other senior civil servants. And it proposes to provide impunity for corruption, permitting financial and other gifts to political appointees.

3) It aims to annex the West Bank, with no negotiations for an independent Palestinian state which spells full-blown apartheid, allowing unbridled domination of Jewish settlers over the lives of Palestinians and eliminating humanitarian standards to deter military violence or settler violence against Palestinians.

The only silver lining in this persistence in passing this legislative program as is, is that Netanyahu not only rejected, but totally ignored proposals by the president and by civil society groups to moderate what his coalition has the temerity to call “legal reform.”

Any such moderating attempts must be tainted by their Draconian starting point in the coalition’s proposals of regime change from democracy to dictatorship.

Netanyahu’s rejection provides an opportunity to take these proposals off the table now and forever. There can be no negotiating with this tyrannical attempt to drag us into a messianic, corrupt dictatorship.

Dealing with details of constitutional reform in these alternative proposals is like wading through lava and ignoring its source in an erupting volcano. The only choice democrats have in Israel today is to stand firm against this hostile takeover of their thriving liberal state.

Frances Raday is the president of the Concord Research Center for Integration of International Law in Israel, The Haim Striks School of Law, College of Management and Professor of Law, Emerita at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.