Consider This from NPR - The Judicial Overhaul That Has Torn Israeli Society Apart

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

On Monday, Israel's parliament voted into law a key measure to overhaul the country's judiciary. The measure prevents judges from striking down government decisions on the basis that they are "unreasonable." The law strips Israel's Supreme Court of a key check on the power of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. This marks the first big move in a broader effort to weaken court oversight of senior officials. It comes after six months of protests from Israelis concerned that their government will have unchecked power. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defending it, saying this law is the essence of democracy and will allow the elected government – his government – to carry out its agenda. We hear from concerned protestors outside Israeli parliament — many citizens are afraid that their way of life is in danger. Dahlia Scheindlin is a political analyst from Tel Aviv, she explains what this new Israeli law says about the state of democracy there.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. We've been hijacked by elections. They are legislating things that they are not allowed to legislate. Changing of the system itself. A historic and polarizing day in Israel. Israeli psychologist Michael Weiss is among those protesting. Israel's far-right government passed a law today to weaken a key power of the judiciary, despite public outrage.

Before the vote, protesters were hoping for a compromise to keep the law from passing. I do hope that at the end there will be some kind of compromise with the opposition, but it's not sure that that will happen. And if it will not happen, we will be beginning dictatorship. The measure passed uncontested after lawmakers who opposed it walked out in protest. The law strips Israel's Supreme Court of a key check on the power of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. It prevents judges from striking down government decisions on the basis that they are unreasonable. This marks the first big move in a broader effort to weaken court oversight of senior officials. Netanyahu is defending it, saying this law is the essence of democracy and will allow the elected government, his government,

to carry out its agenda. This is the moment that hundreds of thousands of protesters had been fearing for months. Arbel Moyal protested outside parliament today. I'm feeling horrible. Everyone is feeling horrible. The law is passed. They want to make Israel full of dictatorship. They want to pass laws that will discriminate LGBT, discriminate Palestinians, discriminate the Supreme Court, and discriminate all the human rights. Many Israelis are afraid their way of life is in danger. The judicial overhaul has torn Israeli society apart. Coming up, we look at what this new Israeli law says about the state of democracy there.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, July 24th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Protesters say Israel's democracy is under threat and that the new law limiting the Supreme Court's authority gives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too much power. To get a sense of what all this says about the state of democracy there, I spoke with political analyst Dalia Shindlin, who joined

us from just outside Jerusalem. Dalia, I know you're normally based in Tel Aviv. As I say right now, you're in a village near Jerusalem. What does it feel like there today? Well, I think I feel here like people do everywhere in the country, which is very, very concerned. I would say even nervous. About half of Israelis who did not vote for this government. Plus, from all polling we know, a certain slice of people who did vote for the government are deeply opposed to the legislation that was passed today, which essentially removes one of the tools that the Supreme Court has used to place constraints or to reject government decisions on occasion. Now, this is what we call the reasonability basis. It's a legal reasoning that derives from British law that has been around in the Israeli system,

and that the court has used when people have challenged a government decision. Sometimes it's, for example, the appointment of a minister who is under suspicion of corruption or has recently been convicted of corruption, which more recently the court ruled was extremely unreasonable. This is a legal basis that the right wing parties that currently hold the government have been trying to get rid of for a long time because they don't want any constraints on the executive. So just practically speaking, I'm trying to understand this. This is if the government does something that the Supreme Court thinks is unreasonable, the court used to be able to block it. And as of today, with this new law, they won't be able to. Is that the gist? Yeah, that's the gist of it. Many feel like that could open the door for legitimizing corrupt figures in government in general, and not just at the ministerial level,

but at every level. You know, another one of the chief concerns is that the government could hire inappropriate people in government who essentially corrode the idea of accountable and responsible government and can fire people at will if they don't conform to the government's, you know, perspective on everything. Now, some people might say, but that's called being allowed to govern. Well, there is no such thing in a democracy as governing without checks and balances on state power. Stay with that point, checks and balances, separation of powers, because when we're taking on this question of whether this new law threatens democracy, democracy looks and operates quite differently in Israel than how we understand it here in the U.S. It does. And I think that this is something that I think has been misleading over the years,

in the sense that the rest of the world has often looked to Israel as essentially a model democracy on some level. And I think that it is worth realizing that Israel can't be compared to Western democracies that are, most of the time, at peace. Israel has essentially always been either at war or involved in a protracted military occupation, which is anti-democratic by nature. It's fundamentally undemocratic. But the second major issue is that Israel has declined to build some of the key institutional pillars of democracy from the start. There is no constitution, for example.

There is no constitution, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. We have no real separation between the legislature and the executive powers because it's a parliamentary system. The executive government is drawn from a majority of parliamentarians. We only have a single chamber of our parliament, unlike nearly all other democracies. There is no regional representation or accountability. We are a single constituency, pure proportional representation system. No president with a veto. Our president is ceremonial and we're not part of international courts. We don't even have term limits on the prime minister because it's a party system. And then going directly to the courts, because that's what this new law deals with, you know, here in the U.S. there are, of course, all kinds of questions about perceived politicization of

the Supreme Court. How about in Israel? Well, that accusation has been around for a long time. I think that the point I was trying to make about the lack of structural checks and balances in Israel's democracy is that there's only two formal institutional constraints on the power of the executive. One is elections, and the other is the independent judiciary. And I think that from the moment the Israeli right wing took a populist turn, and when I say populist, I mean ultra-nationalist and certainly targeting citizens such as critics of the government, civil society, the Arab Palestinian minority in Israel, left-wingers. And this goes back about a decade. When that happened, then people began challenging these policies and bills and legislation in the Supreme Court. And the right-wing leadership, and this has been across the board of right-wing leadership,

certainly over the last 15 years, became furious that the court would even hear some of these cases, very occasionally rule against either legislation or parts of legislation. And thus began the theme, very, very consistent, almost unrelenting theme that the court is imposing a sort of liberal dictatorship on the people who have voted for right wing values. You know, the accusation is that the court has imposed an unwanted universalist liberal perspective on the country. was indicted, he himself, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, became one of the biggest critics in the assault on the Supreme Court and the judiciary and other judicial figures, as if there's a deep state trying to suppress the true will of the people. So square this with the argument that the conservative right in Israel would make, that they are saying this new law will restore the balance of powers there. I've seen the justice minister being quoted saying this is an effort at fixing the justice system. Fact check that for us. Oh, yes. Well, I mean, that is the big theme of the government. Even the prime minister this

evening said this is not the end of democracy. This is the realization of democracy. I can't square that for you. What it does is remove one of the few constraints that exist on the power of the executive. The only way I can explain it to you is what the government means. What they mean is that once there are elections, nothing should constrain what the government does with the mandate that it's been given by the people because the majority rules. Now, I'm setting aside the fact that the current coalition parties didn't actually get a majority of all the votes cast. Okay, that is our political system. They were the only ones able to form a coalition. They came very close to 50%. Let's leave that aside. They are the elected government.

But in no democracy that I know of can one branch of government do anything it wants because it won elections without any other constraints. And what cancelling the reasonability basis for Supreme Court rulings on executive power does is simply weaken one of the very few constraints we have on state power. I think that regardless of what the Israeli conservative side says, any American conservative should realize that unchecked power of the central government, which is all we have here, is bad for the citizens. Now, you cannot redefine democracy to be a stripped down form of elections alone. The idea of majority rules has never been the meaning of democracy. It's always been a matter of protecting a representative government and protection of the individual. You can't do that without checks and balances on power. You can't

do that without protecting institutionally the full range of civil rights. Without those, elections aren't meaningful anyway. Dahlia Schindlin is a policy fellow at the think tank Century International and a columnist for the publication Haaretz. Earlier in the episode, you heard reporting from NPR's Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.