Why Americans should care about Israel's judicial reform crisis
In both countries, there are efforts underway to curb liberal democracy
For seven months, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to streets in protest of the judicial reforms proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government.
On the whole, those reforms would severely curb the power of Israel’s judiciary, and the nation’s Supreme Court in particular, which tends to be more liberal than the Knesset, as Israel’s increasingly right-leaning Parliament is known.
Facing the potential collapse of his governing coalition, Netanyhu put the judicial reforms on pause in March. But by June, Netanyahu and his allies were looking for a new path forward. They found it on Monday, with the Knesset handing Netanyahu a victory by passing the first of those reforms.
Observers say that the developments in Israel could be a grim warning for American democracy, especially as Donald Trump seeks another term in office and the GOP he leads becomes increasingly uncomfortable with democracy.
“If Israel, at times, seems like America in microcosm, then Netanyahu’s playbook might well provide some coaching” for Trump, argues Bernard Avishai, an Israeli writer and historian who teaches at Dartmouth.
Lawrence Summers, the former Harvard president and U.S. treasury secretary, wrote on Twitter that Monday’s vote was proof that “great nations are brought down more often by internal decay than external threats.”
Summers hoped that “Americans will heed this lesson and resist the siren song of populist extremism.”
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What the ‘reforms’ mean for Israeli democracy
On Monday, the Knesset stripped the Supreme Court of its ability to act on the so-called reasonableness doctrine, which gave the high court’s judges the power to block government actions they deemed unreasonable.
The vote was 64-0 in favor, the opposition having walked out in protest.
Without the reasonableness doctrine, Netanyahu and his allies can appoint far-right figures to government posts for which they are clearly unfit, without worrying about those appointments being canceled by the courts.
Netanyahu, who is facing a number of corruption charges, can now dismiss Israel’s attorney general and install a friendlier figure in that post. In fact, some believe that he is less interested in ideological arguments in favor of reforming the judiciary — those arguments are made by his allies among the religious right and West Bank settlers — than in simply staying out of prison.
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The future of Israel
“The Middle East’s alleged only democracy is no more,” Middle East analyst Maximilian Hess wrote on Twitter after the reasonableness doctrine was struck down.
Many in Israel are experiencing a similar sense of dread. Protests erupted on Monday ahead of the reasonableness vote. Military reservists are refusing to serve, while businesses are closing in protest. The country’s stock markets took a major dive.
And the assault on judicial independence is hardly done.
“There are many more laws we need to pass as part of the judicial overhaul,” said Itamar Ben Gvir, an anti-Arab extremist who has become an influential member of Netanyahu’s government.
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What it means for the United States
On Monday, the White House said that Monday’s vote in the Knesset was “unfortunate.”
It was also possibly a sign of things to come — in the United States.
Netanyahu’s friend and ally Donald Trump is now running for president in the midst of several criminal cases against him. Those cases could be complicated if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee — and even more complicated if voters return him to the White House.
Throughout his four years in office, Trump appointed a record number of conservative judges to federal courts — including three Supreme Court justices. Judges typically pride themselves on their independence, even when it comes to cases involving presidents.
If he stays out of prison and wins a second term, Trump is “planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government,” according to the New York Times. Those efforts will certainly be challenged in federal courts, to which Trump appointed a total of 234 judges.
According to Avishai, the Dartmouth professor, both Netanyahu and Trump are acting out of a lust for power — but also desperation.
“For both, regaining or holding on to power means, among other things, subordinating judicial institutions that define and enforce the rule of law,” he writes. “That’s because both have hanging over them grave allegations of high crimes against the state.”
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