From the moment on Jan. 4 when Justice Minister Yariv Levin introduced his plan to overhaul Israel’s judicial system, the controversy was not over whether reforms were needed (they are), but over whether Levin went too far.
Well, this just in: The architect of the judicial overhaul himself has admitted that it went too far.
In an interview with Channel 14 two weeks ago that came online Monday, Levin admitted that criticism of a key part of his plan was “genuine.” Why? Because, as he says, “in a system in which a coalition majority can choose an unlimited number of justices, we’ll find ourselves in a situation in which a coalition, which in any case controls the government and the Knesset, would also take control over the Supreme Court of Justice within the space of a single term of office — bringing about a situation in which all three branches of government become one.”
In plain talk, Levin describes exactly what critics complained about from the start– the overhaul was an undemocratic power grab that took complete control of the High Court and hence all three branches of the government.
How dangerous was the power grab? Levin acknowledged that it “could ultimately cause a constitutional crisis…and cannot be allowed in a democratic state.”
What could have triggered such astonishing candor from a politician? Maybe Levin felt guilty that his overhaul caused such havoc in the country and was looking for some sympathy. Maybe he wanted to hype some late minor amendments he made to his plan. But as David Horovitz writes in Times Of Israel, even under the amended legislation the coalition “still has heavy influence over the appointments of any further justices in each government term… still gets to choose the Supreme Court president, and thus to determine the composition of High Court panels, and still has full control over the appointments of judges to the lower courts, meaning that all judges in the system know that they answer to political masters.”
In other words, the overhaul is still a blatant power grab. But the story gets worse. Levin’s original bill was actually approved by the Knesset in its first reading on February 21, more than 6 weeks after weekly protests had broken out throughout Israel. Who could have imagined that while hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated week after week, the man behind the plan agreed with them?
And what did the coalition do during these fateful weeks? Instead of pausing to reassess, they doubled down and attacked the protestors, maligning them as “anarchists” who just wanted to take the government down, or Nazis who were destroying democracy, or sore losers who couldn’t tolerate losing, or secular Israelis going against the religious and Mizrahi working class, or any other insult that would change the subject from their blunder.
As for Bibi, even though he knew the overhaul would undermine democracy, he shamelessly tried to claim the opposite, which further damaged his credibility.
By attacking the legitimacy of the protests from the beginning, Bibi and the pro-overhaul forces only served to poison the atmosphere, both in Israel and the U.S. Instead of a people arguing and debating a fundamental constitutional issue, we became two armies fighting one another.
Because Bibi allowed the civil strife to escalate for so long, it has now taken on a life of its own and exacerbated religious and ethnic fissures in Israeli society.
Because Bibi allowed the civil strife to escalate for so long, it now has taken on a life of its own and exacerbated religious and ethnic fissures in Israeli society. The Passover pause on the overhaul, which few Israelis believe is real, was too little too late. Trust in Bibi has frayed. Most Israelis understand that staying on the throne is Bibi’s #1 priority, and if that means appeasing his extremist partners, so be it.
None of this means we should let Bibi off the hook. Even if many have lost faith in him, we must insist that he take responsibility for his divided nation. As the leader of the country and a man who doesn’t shrink from pressure, healing his nation must come before everything, including his coalition.
As the leader of the country and a man who doesn’t shrink from pressure, healing his nation must come before everything, even his coalition.
When he recites the Haggadah Wednesday night and gets to the part about how each generation sees enemies trying to destroy us, he ought to remember that our Sages didn’t mean fellow Jews.
