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A law professor worries Israel could become the next Hungary
(JTA) — Israel’s new governing coalition has been called the “most right-wing” in the nation’s history. That’s heartening to supporters who want the country to get tough on crime and secure Jewish rights to live in the West Bank, and dismaying to critics who see a government bent on denying rights to Israel’s minorities and undermining any hope for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While the far-right politics of new government ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir have drawn much of the world’s attention, a series of proposed changes to Israel’s judicial system has also been raising hopes and alarms. On Wednesday, new Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced an overhaul that would limit the authority of the High Court of Justice, Israel’s Supreme Court. It would put more politicians on the selection committee that picks judges, restrict the High Court’s ability to strike down laws and government decisions and enact an “override clause” enabling the Knesset to rewrite court decisions with a simple majority.
Levin and his supporters on the right justify these changes as a way to restore balance to a system that he says puts too much control in the hands of (lately) left-leaning judges: “We go to the polls, vote, elect, and time after time, people we didn’t elect choose for us. Many sectors of the public look to the judicial system and do not find their voices heard,” he asserted. “That is not democracy.”
Critics of the changes call them a power grab, one that will hand more leverage to the haredi Orthodox parties, remove checks on the settlement movement and limit civil society groups’ ability to litigate on behalf of Israeli minorities.
To help me make sense of the claims on both sides, I turned to Tom Ginsburg of the University of Chicago, where he is the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law and co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, which gathers and analyzes the constitutions of all independent nation-states. He’s also a Jew who has transformed a former synagogue on the South Side of Chicago into a cutting-edge arts space, and says what’s happening with Israel’s new governing coalition “raises my complicated relationship with the country.”
We spoke on Friday. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You have written about law in Israel, which lacks a constitution but relies on a series of “basic laws” to define its fundamental institutions. You’ve written that the Israeli judiciary had become “extremely powerful” — maybe too powerful — in imbuing the basic laws with a constitutional character, but worry that the current reforms will politicize the court in ways that will undermine Israeli democracy.
Tom Ginsburg: The proposed reforms were a campaign promise of certain elements of this coalition who have had longstanding grievances against the Israeli judiciary. The Israeli judiciary over the last decades has indeed become extremely powerful and important in writing or rewriting a constitution for Israel, promoting human rights and serving as a check and balance in a unicameral parliamentary system where the legislature can do anything it wants as a formal matter. A lot of people have had problems with that at the level of theory and practice. So there have been some reforms, and the court has, in my view, cut back on its activism in recent decades and in some sense has been more responsive to the center of the country. But there’s longstanding grievances from the political right, and that’s the context of these proposals.
A lot of the concerns about the new government in Israel are coming from the American Jewish left. But in an American context, the American Jewish left also has a big problem with the United States Supreme Court, because they see it as being too activist on the right. So in some ways isn’t the new Israeli government looking to do what American Jewish liberals dream of doing in this country?
Isn’t that funny? But the context is really different. The basic point is that judicial independence is a really good thing. Judicial accountability is a really good thing. And if you study high courts around the world, as I do, you see that there’s kind of a calibration, a balancing of institutional factors which lead towards more independence or more accountability and sometimes things switch around over time.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin holds a press conference at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, Jan. 4, 2023. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
You mean “accountability” in the sense that courts should be accountable to the public.
Right. The Israeli promoters of these plans are pointing to the United States, in particular, for the proposals for more political involvement in the appointment process. On the other hand, in the United States once you’re appointed politically, you’re serving for life. There’s literally no check on your power. And so maybe some people think we have too much independence. If these proposals go through in Israel, there will be a front-end politicization of the court [in terms of the selection commission], but also back-end checks on the court [with the override clause that would allow a simple majority to reinstate laws struck down by the Supreme Court]. So in some sense, it moves the pendulum very far away from independence and very much towards accountability to the point of possible politicization.
And accountability in that case is too much of a good thing.
Again, you don’t want courts that can just make up rules. They should be responsive to society. On the other hand, you don’t want judges who are so responsive to society that there’s no protection for the basic rights of unpopular minorities.
What makes Israel either unique or different from some of the other countries you study, and certainly the United States? Part of it, I would guess, is the fact that it does not have a constitution. Is that a useful distinction?
They couldn’t agree on a single written constitution at the outset of the country, but they have built one through what you might call a “common law method”: norms and practices over time as well as the system of “basic laws,” which are passed by an absolute majority of the Knesset, where a majority of 61 votes can change any of those. But while they’re not formally entrenched, they have a kind of political status because of that term: basic law.
By the way, the Germans are in the same boat. The German constitution is called the Basic Law. And it was always meant to be a provisional constitution until they got together and reunified.
If you don’t have a written constitution, what’s the source of the legitimacy of judicial power? What is to prevent a Knesset from just passing literally any law, including ones that violate all kinds of rights, or installing a dictator? It has been political norms. And because Israel has relied on political norms, that means that this current conflict is going to have extremely high stakes for Israeli governance for many decades to come.
Can you give me a couple of examples? What are the high stakes in terms of democratic governance?
First of all, let me just say in principle that I don’t oppose reforms to make the judiciary more independent or accountable in any particular country. But then you obviously have to look at the local context. What’s a little worrying about this particular example is that several members of this coalition are themselves about to be subject to judicial proceedings.
Including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Right. And for example, they need to change the rules so that [Shas Party chairman] Aryeh Deri can sit in the cabinet despite his prior convictions. That indicates to me that maybe this isn’t a good-faith argument about the proper structure of the Israeli, uncodified constitution, but instead a mechanism of expediency.
Any one of these reforms might look okay, and you can find other countries that have done them. The combination, however, renders the judiciary extremely weak. Right now, it’s a multi-stakeholder commission that nominates and appoints judges in Israel, and the new coalition wants to propose that the commission be made up of a majority of politicians. We know that when you change the appointments mechanism to put more politicians on those committees, the more politicized they become.
Think about the United States process of appointing our Supreme Court judges: It’s highly politicized, and obviously the legitimacy of the court has taken a big hit in recent years. In Israel, you’d have politicized appointments under these reforms, but then you also have the ability of the Knesset to override any particular ruling that it wanted. Again, you can find countries which have that. It’s called the “new commonwealth model” of constitutionalism, in which courts don’t have the final say on constitutional matters, and the legislature can overrule them on particular rulings. But I think the combination is very dangerous because you could have a situation where the Knesset — which currently has a role in protecting human rights — can pick out and override specific cases, which really to me goes against the idea of the rule of law.
You mentioned other countries. Are there other countries where these kinds of changes were enacted and we saw how the experiment turned out?
The two most prominent recently are Hungary and Poland, which are not necessarily countries that you want to compare yourself to.
Certainly not if you are Israel.
Right. There’s so much irony here. When the new Polish government came in in 2015, they immediately manipulated the appointment system for the Constitutional Court and appointed their own majority, which then allowed them to pass legislation which probably would have been ruled unconstitutional. They basically set up a system where they were going to replace lower judges and so they were going to grow themselves into a majority of the court. And that’s led to controversy and rulings outside the mainstream that have led to protests, while the European Union is withholding funds and such from Poland because of this manipulation of the court.
In Hungary, Victor Orban was a really radical leader, and when he had a bare majority to change the constitution he wiped out all the previous jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. I don’t think the Israeli government would do that. But still there is this kind of worrying sense that they’re able to manipulate interpretation of law for their own particular political interest.
Another thing I want to raise is the potential for a constitutional crisis now. Suppose they pass these laws and the Israeli Supreme Court says, “Well, wait a minute, that interferes with our common law rules that we are bound by, going back to the British Mandate.” It conflicts with the basic law and they invoke what legal scholars call the “doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendments,” which is basically saying that an amendment goes against the core of our democratic system and violates, for example, Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic society. Israel has never done this, but it is a kind of tool that one sees deployed around the world in these crises. And if that happened, then I think you would have a full constitutional crisis on your hands in Israel.
Supreme Court President Aharon Barak speaks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a ceremony in the Supreme Court marking 50 years of law, Sept. 15, 1998. (Avi Ohayon)
What does a constitutional crisis look like?
Suppose you have sitting justices in Israel who say, “You know, this Knesset law violates the basic law and therefore it’s invalid.” And then, would the Knesset try to impeach those judges? Would they cut the budget of the judiciary? Would they back down?
When you compare Israel’s judicial system to other countries’ over the years, how does it stack up? Is it up there among the very strong systems or is it known for flaws that might have maybe hobbled its effectiveness?
It’s always been seen around the world as a very strong judiciary. Under the leadership of Aharon Barak [president of Israel’s Supreme Court from 1995 to 2006] it became extremely activist. And this provoked backlash in Israeli politics. That led to a kind of recalibration of the court where it is still doing its traditional role of defending fundamental rights and ensuring the integrity of the political process, but it’s not making up norms left and right, in the way that it used to. This is my perception. But it’s certainly seen as one of the leading courts around the world, its decisions are cited by others, and because of the quality of the judges and the complex issues that Israel faces it’s seen as a strong court and an effective court and to me a balanced court.
But, you know, I’m not in Israel, and ultimately, they’re going to figure out the question how balanced it is or where it’s going to go. I do worry that an unchecked majoritarian system, especially with a pure proportional representation model like Israel, has the potential for the capture of government by some minorities to wield power against other minorities. And that’s a problem for democracies — to some degree, that’s a problem we face in the United States.
How correctable are these reforms? I am thinking of someone who says, “These are democratically elected representatives who now want to change a system. If you want to change the system, elect your own majority.” Is the ship of state like this really hard to turn around once you go in a certain direction?
This is an area in which I think Israel and the United States have a lot of similarities. For several decades now, the judiciary has been a major issue for those on the political right. They thought the Warren Court was too left-leaning and they started the Federalist Society to create a whole cadre of people to staff the courts. They’ve done that and now the federal courts are certainly much more conservative than the country probably. But the left didn’t really have a theory of judicial power in the United States. And I think that’s kind of true in Israel: It’s a big issue for the political right, but the political left, besides just being not very cohesive at the moment, isn’t able to articulate what’s good about having an independent judiciary. It is correctable in theory, but that would require the rule of law to become a politically salient issue, which it generally isn’t in that many countries.
How do you relate to what is happening in Israel as a Jew, and not just a legal scholar?
That’s a great question, because it really raises my complicated relationship with the country. You know, I find it to be a very interesting democracy. I like going to Israel because it’s a society in which there’s a lot of argument, a lot of good court cases and a lot of good legal scholars. On one level, I connect with my colleagues and friends there who seem very demoralized about this current moment. And I honestly worry about whether this society will remain a Jewish and democratic one with the current coalition.
The rule of law is a part of democracy. You need the rule of law in order to have democracy function. And I know others would respond and say, “Oh, you’re just being hysterical.” And, “This isn’t Sweden, it’s the Middle East.” But the ethno-nationalist direction of the country bothers me as a Jew, and I hope that the court remains there to prevent it from deepening further.
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The post A law professor worries Israel could become the next Hungary appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Iran Says School Massacre’ and the Media Repeats: How a Regime Claim Became a Viral Headline
An Iranian flag flutters, as Israel and the US launched strikes on Iran, in Tehran, Iran, February 28, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
On Saturday, February 28, Israel and the US launched a joint military operation against the Iranian regime, targeting senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei, and military commanders. The operation has also seen a significant targeting of military infrastructure, including air defense systems, missile launchers, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centers.
The Iranian regime, like its terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, has embedded its infrastructure within civilian locations. As protests broke out at the beginning of 2026, the movement of weapons and military equipment into protected civilian locations, such as schools and hospitals, was widely observed. This prompted Iranian civilians to take protective measures and warn one another of the dual use of protected spaces.
Geolocation/Correction/Additional Info:
1. Confirmed geolocation: The Imam Ali school in Arak, Iran (34.088253, 49.687137) @GeoConfirmed .
2. The photo is from as early as January 8th, 2026 – Per earliest reports it just depicts them as “Security forces”.
3. This school appears… https://t.co/6y7INfX8Fx pic.twitter.com/JWAZJ34bch— Tal Hagin (@talhagin) January 27, 2026
When the IDF targeted an IRGC compound in Minab, southern Iran, Iran’s state broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), immediately claimed that the US had purposefully targeted the Shajareh Tayyebeh school full of young girls.
Al Jazeera soon published the story, blaming Israel for the deaths of children.
The Western media, without questioning the credibility of the source, immediately reported on the strike and followed Al Jazeera’s lead by holding Israel responsible.
In doing so, the media further amplified and legitimized claims from the same regime that has spent the past two months executing its own civilians in the streets protesting for freedom.
The same outlets that included a caveat about their inability to independently verify the number of protesters killed by the regime were the same ones that published and continuously updated alleged casualty figures without any verification other than a regime source.
This is not to say that innocent civilians may not have died in the strike, but they were certainly not the target of Israel or the US. Moreover, a civilian building was purposefully exploited by the Iranian regime, putting civilians in immediate danger.
The school, reportedly intended to be for the children of military personnel, was built directly next to an IRGC naval base, according to anti-regime media.
Independent geolocation analysts further indicated that the Shajareh Tayyebeh school was located in the same premises as the Sayyid al-Shohada barracks of the IRGC Navy’s Asef Brigade. While it remains unclear whether many civilians were present in the area at the time of the strike, witnesses have reported that the school was not targeted but rather the adjacent IRGC buildings, where missiles were reportedly being stored.
This information was, of course, omitted from IRIB’s reporting of the strike. As a result, when Western outlets covered the story, the school’s proximity to — and apparent integration with — an IRGC military complex was missing from the coverage.
The Iranian Embassy in Austria continued with the disinformation campaign on behalf of the regime, sharing a now-viral image on X of a backpack that reportedly belongs to one of the schoolgirls killed in the strike.
However, research analysts have found the photo to be AI-generated, as a Google Gemini watermark was detected hidden in the image.
Adding to the uncertainty surrounding the already disputed casualty figures, basic questions remain unanswered, most notably who exactly was killed in the strike.
As of the time of writing, The Telegraph reported 165 casualties, including 81 pupils, citing Iranian sources. That leaves 84 individuals not identified in the public breakdown. And given that the school was located within an IRGC compound, it is legitimate to ask whether any of the remaining casualties were affiliated with the regime, a distinction that has not been clarified.
The disinformation does not stop at pro-regime sources. A widely-circulated photograph online purported to show a misfired IRGC missile that had fallen inside Iranian territory and struck the school, shifting the blame onto the Iranian regime.
However, independent analysts found that the school was located more than 1,000 kilometers from where the photo was taken. They also show that the structure in the photograph faced a direction inconsistent with the alleged missile trajectory, making it unlikely that the image depicted the Shajareh Tayyebeh school.
The Iranian regime has taken a page out of Hamas’ notebook. For the past two and a half years, Hamas has made exaggerated and false claims, which the media repeatedly amplified before doing their own due diligence. Corrections, when they came, rarely traveled as far as the original headlines. That same cycle of rapid accusation, viral spread, and delayed scrutiny is now playing out in Iran.
The nature of war between Israel and the Iranian regime means that vast amounts of information are released in real time, often before facts can be fully verified. When reporting omits key context or relies heavily on regime-affiliated sources, narratives can solidify before the truth has a chance to catch up, leaving the public with a distorted understanding of events.
In a time of instantaneous reporting and with clear evidence that narratives are being deliberately shaped for strategic purposes, rigorous scrutiny by the media is essential to ensure the truth prevails.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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History Is Not Over: From Cyrus to Today’s Iran
Protesters gathered on Jan. 24, 2026, at Joachimsthaler Platz in western Berlin, Germany, to rally in support of anti-regime demonstrations in Iran, calling for US military intervention. Photo: Michael Kuenne/PRESSCOV via ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
In 539 BCE, a Persian king made a decision that changed Jewish history.
Cyrus conquered Babylon and founded a nation in exile. The Jews had lost their Temple, their sovereignty, and their center. He could have absorbed them into his empire and tightened control. Instead, he allowed them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild. That decision altered the course of Jewish continuity. Our presence in the Land of Israel today traces back to that moment.
Jewish memory holds Cyrus in a rare place of honor. He was not Jewish. He did not belong to our covenant. Yet his choice shaped our destiny. History records his decree. Our tradition preserves it. That act still echoes through our prayers and our national life.
History does not disappear. It accumulates. One decision becomes a foundation for generations.
Today, the Iranian people live under a regime that governs through coercion. Protesters have filled the streets demanding dignity and paid for it with imprisonment and violence. Women have risked everything to challenge laws that strip them of agency. Families live under surveillance and fear. The regime’s ideology has isolated Iran from much of the world and directed hostility outward, including toward Israel.
The Iranian people are not synonymous with the regime that rules them. They carry a civilization older than the Islamic Republic. They carry the legacy of Persia, which once intersected with Jewish survival in a decisive way.
As Jews, we understand exile. We understand what it means when rulers decide the limits of your freedom. We also understand what it means when a ruler makes a different choice.
Jewish values are anchored in memory and responsibility. We are commanded to pursue justice. We are taught that every human being is created in the image of God. We are told to remember our own experience of oppression so that we do not become indifferent.
When I teach self-defense, I speak about responsibility in the present moment. If danger is forming, clarity matters. Early action changes outcomes. Waiting for harm to fully unfold reduces options and increases damage. Self-defense is rooted in awareness and accountability.
History functions in a similar way. Cyrus acted at a critical moment. His choice redirected a people’s future. That decision still shapes Jewish life more than 2,000 years later. A single act of leadership can move through centuries.
The regime in Tehran has chosen a path of repression and confrontation. That choice is shaping the lives of millions of Iranians today and influencing the security of the broader region. Regimes are temporary. The consequences of their choices are not.
Wishing for change in Iran is not an expression of hostility toward its people. It is a recognition that societies thrive when citizens are free to speak, build, and lead without fear of their own government. A different Iran would serve its citizens first. It would reduce instability across the region. It would allow the country’s ancient culture to reemerge from beneath layers of coercion.
Nothing in history stands alone. The decree of a Persian king continues to reverberate in Jewish life. The decisions made in Iran now will shape futures we cannot yet see. Jewish memory teaches that liberation can begin with one moment of moral clarity.
A Persian ruler once enabled Jewish restoration. The Iranian people today seek their own restoration. History is long. Memory is longer. The question for us is how we carry that memory forward and how we allow it to inform our understanding of freedom, responsibility, and the power of timely choices.
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Tsahi Shemesh is an Israeli-American IDF veteran and the founder of Krav Maga Experts in NYC. A father and educator, he writes about Jewish identity, resilience, moral courage, and the ethics of strength in a time of rising antisemitism.
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Big Tents Need Moral Boundaries: The High Cost of Institutional Cowardice
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech during his inauguration ceremony in New York City, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
In the vocabulary of modern leadership, the “big tent” is a sacred cow — the hallmark of pluralism and the supposed proof of a movement’s vitality. But as we navigate the geopolitical shockwaves of early 2026, we are witnessing a fundamental law of institutional physics: a tent without a frame will eventually collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
The recent joint military operations against Iran have provided fertile ground for a virulent strain of demagoguery. We are seeing a shift from legitimate foreign policy criticism to “vice-signaling” — the intentional, ostentatious breaking of moral taboos to prove one’s “authenticity” to a radicalized base. Equally dangerous is the growing unwillingness to shun those who egregiously violate these taboos.
When an institution stops enforcing its boundaries, it becomes a host for pathogens that eventually kill the original mission.
The Case of the Hollowed Right
Consider the recent trajectory of Tucker Carlson. What began as a debate over “America First” isolationism has curdled into something far more dangerous.
In recent weeks, Carlson has platformed “Khazar theory” genetic tropes — suggesting Jews should undergo DNA tests to prove their provenance — and hosted uncritical interviews with Holocaust revisionists under the guise of “just asking questions.”
This is not a policy debate; it is the systematic dismantling of the moral taboos that once kept overt bigotry out of the mainstream. When a leader uses a massive platform to single out the world’s only Jewish state as the sole source of domestic suffering, they aren’t making a fiscal argument; they are constructing a “permission structure” for hate.
By framing this as “skepticism,” Carlson avoids the social consequences that such rhetoric once commanded, even while he uncritically associates with avowed bigots like Nick Fuentes.
It is hard to imagine a pundit cozying up to David Duke without facing immediate social ostracization — a “moral guilt by association.” Yet today, the outrage often lasts only for a news cycle, leaving few lasting consequences for those who sanitize hate.
The Danger of Permission Structures
The real threat, however, isn’t just the demagogue; it’s the silence of the moderate. Since October 7, 2023, the boundaries have been trampled because those inside the tent refuse to act as the “immune system.”
When we fail to hold our own side accountable — whether it is the Left’s refusal to condemn the dehumanization of Israelis in the name of “resistance,” or the Right’s willingness to ignore antisemitic dog-whistles to preserve a voting bloc — we are complicit. This is true not only in political associations but also within religious institutions.
As I have written regarding the responsibility of the Christian faithful to denounce those who espouse bigotry in Christ’s name, all institutions must draw a clear moral boundary and shun those who cross it, while attempting to maintain the benefits of the affiliation. If the local pastor or the Vicar of Christ stays silent as the Cross is used as a bludgeon against the neighbor, the silence becomes permission.
The Democratic Vacuum and the “Mamdani Reversal”
This rot is cross-partisan. On the Left, the refusal to enforce boundaries against an illiberal fringe has led to the “Mamdani reversal.” In New York City and on elite campuses, we see a movement so focused on “intersectional solidarity” that it can no longer condemn the targeting of civilians if the perpetrators fit a certain ideological profile.
When a “human rights” organization cannot unequivocally condemn terror because it might offend a “coalition partner,” it has ceased to be a moral arbiter; it has become a hostage to its own “big tent” philosophy. While groups like the DSA may not fully control the Democratic Party, their hand is firmly on the wheel, steering it toward illiberalism and anti-Americanism, with only a brave few willing to call out these fundamental taboo violations.
A Principled Path Forward
To save our institutions, we must return to a disciplined moral order. This is not a call for the reactionary excesses of “cancel culture,” which often lacks objective standards. Instead, we must solve this in a principled way by restoring universal moral taboos.
As I’ve outlined in my work on the “Lawful but Awful” zone of social behavior, there are four essential principles for this restoration:
- The Red Line: Limit actionable taboos to overt bigotry, dehumanization, and the endorsement of violence.
- The Consensus Test: Distinguish between subjective offense (partisan) and a “Shared Moral Violation” (universal).
- The Private Mechanism: Enforce standards through civil society, never government coercion.
- The Open Door: Ensure the goal of consequence is correction and redemption, not permanent destruction.
Reclaiming the Obligation to Say “No”
True pluralism requires “definitional clarity” — the courage to say that while many are welcome, those who actively undermine the core tenets of the mission cannot be given the keys to the kingdom.
Leaders must stop treating moral boundaries as “divisive” and start seeing them as “protective.” The Left long ago ceded this ground by allowing reverse discrimination to be normalized within social justice “power dynamic” frameworks. Now we see a similar rise of illiberalism on the Right, rooted in distortions of theology or in foreign policy critiques that only hold up if their double standards against the Jewish state are ignored. If this parasitic fringe is not immediately exorcised, it will corrupt and destroy its host.
A positive vision for an organization can be broad, but we must reclaim the right to draw a clear moral boundary. We must say “no” to those who cross it. Only then will our “yes” mean anything at all.
Erez Levin is an advertising technologist trying to effect big pro-social changes in that industry and the world at large, currently focused on restoring society’s essential moral taboos against overt hatred. He writes on this topic at elevin11.substack.com.