Today, Explained - The Israeli-Israeli conflict

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Far-right judicial reforms have inspired what might be the largest protests in the history of Israel. If adopted, the reforms could spell the end of democracy in the world’s only majority-Jewish country. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Matthew Collette, Victoria Chamberlin and Siona Petrous, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the past weekend, Israel saw what may have been the biggest protests in the country's history. The protests were over judicial reforms. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government wants to be able to veto court rulings. We see a process where the rights of the people will be, over time, consumed by this theocratic government, and we want to avoid that. On Sunday, the prime minister's own defense minister said, hey, maybe we should take a minute, call a timeout. Netanyahu fired him. That is when things really sparked and took off and have led to a series of actions, a general strike, the closing of the airports,

many unions speaking out and mass demonstrations across the country protesting the behavior of this prime minister. The Israeli-Israeli conflict. Coming up on Today Explained. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here with Alison Kaplan-Summer, correspondent for Haaretz based in Ranana, Israel. This size protest is really unprecedented. There's never been such a huge outcry against any actions by the prime minister. Yes, there have been controversial wars. Yes, there have been huge opposition from the right on the evacuation of the settlements in Gaza,

but never has there been such huge mass demonstrations for such extended periods of time and over an issue that has nothing to do with Israel's external conflicts, with its conflicts with the Palestinians. This is completely a tear within Israeli society itself and therefore is something that Israel has never seen before. At issue here is a judicial overhaul, which sounds kind of technical and wonky. Help us understand what's going on. What is happening is not alien at the moment. We're in a populist right-wing moment across the world. We've seen what's happened in countries like Hungary and Poland, to a lesser extent in

countries like Turkey. And these are regimes in which the ruling leader who was elected legitimately in a legitimate election uses democratic means in order to impose a reality that is less democratic. A leader who feels that the judiciary, that the courts who are set up in order to protect human rights, in order to protect the rights of minorities, who are an obstacle between what the elected popular leader wants to impose and imposing it in response decides to pass legislation that weaken those courts, that weaken the checks and balances. Essentially, if this judicial package passes, whoever wins a majority of the vote, according to the Israeli system, will be able to impose any laws, any legislations that they want.

Is there like a left-right divide between the government and the courts right now? We know the government is moving farther to the right. Are the courts on the left? Well, there are various elements in the political landscape in Israel. There is the far right, which has to do with the settlers and the settlement movements. This week, the Israeli parliament voted to repeal part of a 2005 law which banned Israeli settlement construction in parts of the northern West Bank. This was a commitment that Israel's government made to the Bush administration back in the early 2000s. And so that is a left-right split that the court has considered more left-wing. But then there's another problem, and that is the issue of religion and state, in which the religious parties would like to impose legislation, for example, limiting the access of women to the Western Wall, for example. Or the big problem

that the ultra-Orthodox have with the courts is the fact that it stands in the way of putting in legislation the fact that ultra-Orthodox Israelis would not have to serve in the army because their study of Torah is more important. There's strong resistance from ultra-Orthodox society towards going into the army, except for young modern liberals who are starting to. But the mainstream stay to study the Torah in seminaries. So you've got the right, which objects to what the courts are doing. You have the religious sector, which objects to what the courts are doing. And then you have the personal interest of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is accused of crimes of bribery and breach of trust, and he is on trial. The first, known as Case 1000, accuses Netanyahu of accepting hundreds of

thousands of dollars worth of champagne, cigars, and other luxury goods from two billionaires in exchange for tax favors. And he would like to see laws passed which reduce the ability to put a prime minister on trial or keep a prime minister on trial. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank in Jerusalem, the previous wording of the law would have left the prime minister vulnerable to being labeled unfit by the attorney general if the attorney general deemed that Netanyahu was attempting to stop his three corruption cases. The judicial reform package has to do with who controls the appointment of judges. In Israel, it's not a political process. There's a committee which is partially political and partially made up of judges and partially made up of civil servants and partially made up of the head of the Israeli Bar Association. According to the package of reforms that the coalition government would like to pass, that would become, as in the United States, a much more politicized process. And Netanyahu would essentially have the ability to choose or influence the choice

of judges who might someday be the judges to whom his case was appealed. So there are all kinds of interests coming together within this coalition government who have decided that this is their top priority, that weakening the judiciary and increasing the strength of the government and their ability to impose laws that cannot be overridden by the judiciary is their top priority. Do we have any idea which of these many priorities might be foremost in the government's mind as they try to push these reforms through over the will of these protesters? Well, the cynics obviously say this is Netanyahu trying to save his own skin, that he is prioritizing these legal reforms because he is in legal trouble and he needs to save himself. There is also another senior member of his

government, Aryeh Derry of the Shas Party, who's been twice convicted of crimes, whom the Supreme Court has ruled in the past, is not able to serve as a senior minister in a government because of his criminal record, because he is a convicted criminal who has served jail time. Describing the ruling as regrettable and indifferent to the public will, Netanyahu pledged to find every legal means of keeping Derry in public office in the future. And one of the priorities of the government was to pass laws which do permit Aryeh Derry to serve as a minister. And those laws are in the process of being passed. And we are expecting the Supreme Court to strike them down. And one of the goals of

the government is to create a situation after the judicial reforms pass in which the court does not have that power to forbid a man from serving as a minister because of his criminal past. So there's all kinds of strong interests there. People say that Netanyahu is in charge and it is his top priority. Others say that there are great pressures on him from these far right and these ultra-Orthodox parties. And even if he sees that is the best path when you look at the backlash against the reforms, even if he understands that it is the politically right thing to do for him to back off from these reforms, his coalition partners will not allow him to do it, that they are threatening him that if he does not proceed full speed ahead with these judicial reforms,

they will pull out of his coalition government. And if that happens, his government will fall and he'll no longer be prime minister. I read somewhere that 6% of the country is out there protesting, at least, if not more. Are those 6% just Netanyahu's political opposition, or are these judicial reforms and his plans to enact them turning some of his even supporters against him? Well, if you'd asked me that a few weeks ago, I would have said that it's primarily, almost completely, members of the opposition and those who deeply object to these judicial reforms. But events, as they proceeded, have shown Netanyahu taking some steps that are turning even people who have supported him against him. The first turning point was a step by one of his coalition partners, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right

extremist. He ordered the police to be very rough against the protesters. He decided that they weren't being tough enough and he fired on the spot the head of the Tel Aviv district police. Reports say Itamar Ben-Gvir is planning to issue new directives authorizing police to widely expand

arrests of protesters, including cracking down on anti-government protesters blocking roads. And the real turning point was the decision of Netanyahu protesters, including cracking down on anti-government protesters blocking roads. And the real turning point was the decision of Netanyahu to fire on Sunday, Defense Minister Yoav Galant, who was a very senior general with a very storied military past. He was completely a Netanyahu loyalist, senior member of the Likud party. And he came to the conclusion that because of people within the military who were objecting to the reforms, reserve soldiers who were refusing to report for duty, he went public and he said, I believe that the prime minister of Israel should

stop with this judicial overhaul. The growing rift in our society is penetrating the Israeli Defense Force and security agencies, said Yoav Galant. It poses a clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the state. Netanyahu viewed it as a disloyal act, and he went and he fired him. And Israelis were outraged that in a democracy, a senior official going out, speaking his mind, doing what he said was right, seeing the damage that these reforms were doing to the country, listening to experts, security officials, a long line of former heads of intelligence, the current sitting chief of staff, almost everybody in the military establishment saying that this was a bad idea and it was causing damage. The last 10 living former Israeli Air Force chiefs and over 100 members, some very senior, of the country's elite military intelligence special operations division are against the reforms. It's one thing to support a judicial reform package that people will say turns Israel into a dictatorship. It's another thing to behave like a dictator. And in summarily firing this minister of defense for expressing

his measured opinion publicly, a lot of people who have no problem with the content of the judicial reforms believe that Netanyahu behaved in a dictatorial manner and switched sides. And I've spoken to people who previously were not participating in the demonstrations against the government and are now on the streets opposing Netanyahu. How do you see this playing out? What do people think might be the conclusion here? I believe that Netanyahu is stuck, essentially, between a rock and a hard place. It's clear that pushing forward as fully with these reforms is something that is not sustainable. Polls show that 60% of Israelis object to these judicial reforms as that they've been drafted.

It's not that 60% of Israelis object to any kind of reform of the judiciary. All courts need some sort of reform. And there have been legitimate criticisms of the way that the Israeli courts operate. But these particular reforms in which there are 120 members of the Knesset, it would only take votes of 61 in order to override any decision by the Supreme Court. And many, many Israelis view that as something that can't go through. This is the only hope we have. There will not be dictatorship in Israel. Never, never. On the other hand, you have these far right and ultra-Orthodox coalition partners that this is something that they've wanted for years in order to make the legislature stronger and the courts

weaker. And they are saying to Netanyahu, we won't stand with you if you back down from this. So Netanyahu is having to walk a tightrope at this point. Yes, he would love the reforms to go through, but he sees that they're not sustainable. On the other hand, he can't allow his coalition partners to abandon him because then he will be no longer prime minister. And it's clear that his priority is to stay in power, number one. And number two, do anything he can in order to mitigate the damage of his ongoing corruption trials. Alison Kaplan Sommer. She writes for Haaretz in Israel.

On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu blinked. He at least delayed these judicial reforms until after Passover. It's not quite a compromise, but it's maybe a hint that compromise is in the cards. The move prompted the Biden White House to say it would, at some point, invite Netanyahu to Washington, D.C. It's an invitation he's been hoping to get for a minute now. Israel's greatest ally in the world is inarguably the United States. The United States is home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel. How American Jews feel about what's happening in the world's only Jewish state when we're back on Today Explained.

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The vast majority of Jews on planet Earth live in two countries, Israel and the United States. And that's one of many reasons the relationship between the two countries is so important. And that's why we wanted to find out how American Jews are feeling about what's going on in Israel right now. I'm Rabbi Noah Farkas. I am the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. We reached out to the rabbi because he's been getting his hands dirty during this dispute. He was just in Israel last week lobbying for a compromise on these judicial reforms. I flew into Israel with a delegation, about 30 participants representing 20 different large Jewish communities here in the United States under the auspices of our global network called the Jewish Federations of North America

to meet with government officials, CEOs from corporations, protest organizers, and other concerned parties with what's happening in Israel around the judicial reform. Because we're all concerned about what we see happening in Israel around the judicial reform, because we're all concerned about what we see happening in Israel. And even with the prime minister pushing off the decision around judicial reform until after the Passover holiday, there's still a great amount of discord and concern. And when there is discord, concern, and conflict within the state of Israel, all of us as global Jews and Jewish leaders are rightfully concerned. Rabbi, you used the word concern or concerned several times just now. Tell me in greater detail what your concerns are in this moment. concerns that I carry and I think the Jewish community carries is the disunification or the fracturing of a Jewish community, especially in the state of Israel. Whether you're on one side

or another around this judicial reform, the questions about how we can live together, how our very, very small Jewish population living both here in the United States and in the only Jewish country in the world, how we all can not only get along with each other, but how we design a world, design a state in which we can live together and pursue our freedom together under the banner of a free Jewish and democratic state of Israel. How do you think American Jews right now view what's happening in Israel right now? And I don't mean to imply that there's only one view, but give me the spectrum. Yeah, there is a spectrum for sure.

The Jewish community in North America falls into several camps on this. The first is a supportive Jewish community that feels that it isn't our place at all, and it hasn't been our place, to decide what happens in internal Israeli politics. This has been a part of the Jewish story for a long time, that we helped create, support financially, advocate for politically, help support the cultural and dynamic changes that happen in Israel. But because we don't live there, Sean, because I don't send my own children to the army, because we're not living under the threat of rocket fire,

that we really don't have a voice to be shared there, that this is something as all free democracies and sovereign nations should decide for themselves. And there's a big camp of Jews here that believe that, and that's a very powerful story. But secondly, there are and has been a change in that cultural milieu. And that comes from Israel itself, the number of Israelis that I spoke to, who welcomed our voices, who said they need our voices, who want to co-create Jewish destiny together, both those who are living in Israel and in the diaspora. So there is a revolution happening where, in some ways,

it's more of a partnership than a supportive relationship. And that is a new voice that we're hearing, both in North America and from Israelis themselves. And what are those voices saying right now? Those voices are saying, and they fall on all sides of the spectrum. They fall on the side of the opposition that feels that this is a deep threat to the Israeli democracy. And they fall on the side of pushing for judicial reform because those who are pushing for it have felt for 75 years that their religious sensibilities have been sidelined by the court. So, and that the high court itself has become overly bloated in terms of its power

and needs to be rebalanced. Are there more people you're speaking to right now in the United States who favor what Netanyahu's doing? Are there more people who oppose it? What's the vibe you get if you're comfortable sharing? Yeah, it's hard to pin it. The vast majority of people want some version of judicial reform

in Israel. The quality and context and the type of reform, that is where the disagreement is. American Jews don't have the deep context here because they don't study Israeli constitutional or Israeli judicial law. Like, that's just not something that we grew up with. But for Israelis, you know, who understand this, it's a deep conversation. And the vast majority of them do want some version of reform. The difference is what kind of reform is appropriate in this moment. Outside your community, it feels like there's a lot of people criticizing Netanyahu, saying that he's taking Israel to the brink of, you know, being an autocratic state, maybe.

Do you think there's a change here in perhaps people being open to criticizing Israel and Netanyahu? Yeah, so just to be really clear, there's a difference between the prime minister and the state. What's happening in Israel around this legislative process, both internal in the Knesset, which is the plenum of the Congress, if you will, of Israel, and on the streets, in meeting houses, and in universities, they are examples of democracy at its best. And if you compare it to the women's revolution happening in Iran, the government of the state of Israel is not putting these protests down in the way that dictatorships do. Israel is a democracy, and it's showing its democratic bona fides every night. If Netanyahu achieves extreme judicial reforms that lessen the democratic process in Israel, or even essentially do away with democracy in Israel.

Do you think there's a chance that we need to be concerned about the survival of the state of Israel? Yeah, it's a perfectly legitimate worry and concern if the extreme judicial reform goes through. But if you see what's happening on the streets, if you see what's happening on news, if you see that members of Netanyahu's own party have come out against the extreme version of the reform, it's not a left-right issue anymore. It's really the center of the Israeli politic.

And even those on the right are against the most extreme version of judicial reform. So I'm not concerned that democracy is going away in Israel. I'm not concerned that Israel as a project and an experiment of the Jewish people is coming to an end. I'm concerned that what happens the day after a version of this reform goes through, how will those who were on the extreme, who pushed the original version of the reform, and those who are on the extreme, who are trying to use the opposition just to topple the government,

how will we all sit down with each other and decide how to move forward as a state, and as a people, and as a community. Rabbi Noah Farkas. He's the president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Avishai Artsy made our show today. He's the president of the Los Angeles Bureau of Today Explained. We were edited by Amina Alsadi and mixed by Patrick Boyd. Fact-checking by Victoria Chamberlain, Siona Petros, and Matthew Collette. you