80,000 Israelis March Against Arrogance

If a hard-left majority coalition in Israel passed new laws to limit speech that offended the woke left, or halted government funding of Haredi yeshivas and jailed any Haredi who refused to serve in the IDF, or passed a legal overhaul designed to end a prime minister’s criminal trial, would the right accept an explanation of “tough luck, we got elected and we have the power and authority to do this”? Not likely. And would we see massive right-wing demonstrations across Israel? No doubt.

They would be protesting the same thing that 80,000 Israelis protested last Saturday night in Tel Aviv: the arrogance of a majority.

There are few things I find more distasteful than political leaders who use their power to crush dissent and ram through fundamental changes without consideration of other viewpoints. I felt the same way when Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres rammed through the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s and were certain that a murderer like Yasir Arafat could turn into a man of peace.

That is arrogance.

In its first few weeks, the new right-wing government in Israel has been a daily festival of arrogance. Day after day, with the endorsement, implicit or explicit, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, we’ve witnessed the swift and looming introduction of radical shifts in government policies. No bipartisan committees, no long debates, just “our way or the highway” bureaucratic bulldozing that disregards the views of millions of Israelis.

Even if one agrees with these new policies, bulldozing is not the way. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or left, religious or nonreligious. This is about more than political ideology; it’s about the blatant abuse of power.

Bibi defenders like to argue that “to the victors go the spoils.” This new coalition, they remind us, was elected fair and square, so why can’t they do what they were elected to do?

Because, for one thing, there are legal limits that must be respected. If a government passes laws that undermine fundamental legal principles, or the very character of the state, is that legal? If a left-wing government, for example, passed a law that allows every store to open on Shabbat, would that be legal or even permissible?

You may think that allowing every store to open on Shabbat is a great idea, but still be against it because it would undermine the Jewish character of the state.

The hard-right policies of this new government undermine both the Jewish and democratic character of Israel. By imposing an intolerant Haredi-style Judaism on the population, it undermines the pluralistic, Zionist-style Judaism that balances the Jewish tradition with freedom of choice. And by coercing people into following Torah laws, power-hungry Haredi politicians create a backlash against Torah itself, oblivious to the reality that if you want to turn people away from religion, just impose it.

In pushing its legal “revolution,” the new coalition wants a radical shift of power from the courts to the politicians. Among other things, it would give the Knesset with a 61-MK majority the power to overturn High Court rulings; give the coalition complete power to appoint High Court judges; and make government legal advisors personal appointments of their ministers and block their ability to give binding legal opinions.

There’s a case to be made for reasonable legal reforms, but this heavy-handed, unilateral and maximalist approach is not it. Perhaps the most succinct argument I’ve heard against this judicial overhaul is from Deputy Attorney-General Gil Limon:

“If he who writes the law also controls whether or not to abide by the law, controls the appointments of judges that deal with the judicial purview of his decisions, and is able to override their rulings when they are not to his liking – in practice is not actually subject to the law. In this case, the government will not even be above the law – it will be the law.”

In other words, these new laws have triggered such a backlash because they’re not just laws but laws about laws. Putting aside the hysterics, many measured and knowledgeable Israel lovers are genuinely concerned.  

“We are at the beginning of a new era in which there is a new definition of democracy,” retired High Court judge and president of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, Ayala Frocaccia, said at the rally Saturday night. “Not a democracy based on values but a truncated democracy that relies entirely on the ‘will of the voter’, which no longer gives any weight to other fundamental democratic values.”

Former president Reuven Rivlin, a longtime Likud right-winger, denounced the government’s plan to restructure the legal system. “This is not a spillover into the judiciary, this is a takeover of the judiciary,” Rivlin said, advising compromise. “One cannot legislate out of feelings of revenge or outside motives.”

I can understand hard-nosed ideologues who feel so strongly about their views that they see compromise as a deadly sin. I know several of them personally. Now that they are finally in a position of power, it’s not surprising that they would want to use that power to push their policies through, regardless of what the rest of the country thinks.

The one who is harder to forgive is Netanyahu, because he’s a secular Jew who understands indispensable democratic values like religious pluralism and an independent court system, two values that his own government is now undermining. 

“I believe that a strong, independent court allows for the existence of all other institutions in a democracy,” Netanyahu said in a speech in 2012. “In places with no strong and independent court system, rights cannot be protected.”  

Of course, this was before Bibi went on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Needless to say, the fear of ending up in jail makes it difficult to trust Bibi’s motives as his government’s judicial overhauls move forward.

One wonders which coalition would win more seats if an election were held today. I would wager that it wouldn’t be the right-wing coalition Israel has now. First, the turnout from alarmed opponents would be significantly higher. And second, there are probably more than a few liberal Likud voters who have a bad case of buyer’s remorse from these first few weeks.