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‘A time of emergency’: What you need to know about the fight over Israel’s court system

TEL AVIV (JTA) — In the coming days, Israel’s parliament is due to vote on a measure that, advocates on both sides say, will determine the country’s fate — or whether it can even survive.

It isn’t a peace deal or an attempt to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What it will do, if passed, is bar the Supreme Court from striking down government decisions it deems “unreasonable.” 

Behind that somewhat technical language is a struggle over Israel’s soul. It’s an escalating fight that has seen the largest, most sustained protest movement in Israel’s history. It has seen demonstrators block highways, march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and pledge to boycott army service. It has seen both Netanyahu and his opponents warn that the end of democracy is nigh. And it has seen Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a figure meant to rise above the political fray, warn that the government’s push for major legislative change, and its critics, could lead to “real civil war.”

The reason for the dire pronouncements is that the “reasonableness law” is one piece of a broad plan, put forward by Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition in January, to significantly weaken Israel’s judiciary. If passed in its totality, the overhaul would sap the Israeli Supreme Court of much of its power and independence, removing a major check on what the Israeli government can do. 

But even though Netanyahu enjoys a solid majority in parliament, the plan, so far, has yet to be enacted. That’s largely due to a massive protest movement that says Netanyahu is endangering Israel’s democratic system. The demonstrations have brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets and led to widespread civil disobedience.

Both sides of the debate say the internal conflict is a test of Israel’s system of government. Now, a growing number of voices are using increasingly anxious language that would have been unthinkable just a year ago, from threats of street violence to warnings that the Israel Defense Forces could implode.

“This is a time of emergency,” Herzog said Sunday. “An agreement must be reached.”

The civil strife is occurring against the backdrop of heightened Israeli-Palestinian violence and while Netanyahu, 73, is on trial for corruption and has recently been hospitalized twice. Here’s a primer on the judicial overhaul, what supporters and opponents say is at stake, and what may happen next. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen during a vote in Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, March 22, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Netanyahu and his allies want to fundamentally change Israel’s court system.

At the end of last year, Israeli voters returned Netanyahu to office — and he assembled a coalition with far-right partners that holds 64 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Days later, his justice minister unveiled a plan that, in its original form, would have rendered the Supreme Court largely powerless. 

The initial plan would have given the coalition complete control over the selection of judges, and would have allowed the Knesset to overrule Supreme Court decisions with a bare majority. Another measure took aim at the “reasonableness” clause. 

Netanyahu and his allies portrayed the legislative package as a curb on an increasingly activist Supreme Court that was out of step with the country’s right-wing majority. Its composition, they charged, was a vestige of Israel’s secular, Ashkenazi elite and did not reflect the country’s ethnic and Jewish religious diversity, including the country’s large number of Mizrahi Jews. 

But a growing number of critics — from centrist and left-wing Israelis to foreign leaders to American Jewish organizations — cautioned that the overhaul would endanger Israel’s status as a democratic state. 

Because the governing coalition by definition commands a majority in parliament, they say, the court reform would effectively give Netanyahu and his partners complete control over all three branches of government. The court has historically been a protector of the rights of minorities — from Arabs to LBGTQ Israelis to liberal Jewish movements — and critics of the plan worry that it would put those safeguards at risk. Those worries are exacerbated, they say, because the prime minister leading the effort to weaken the judiciary is currently on trial.

A Tel Aviv protest at the start of Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, featured a sea of flags, April 25, 2023. (Ben Sales)

The overhaul effort has sparked a historic and growing protest movement. 

Those critiques have coalesced into the largest protest movement in Israeli history, which has seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets every week, many waving Israeli flags, to oppose the plan. Pro-government demonstrations, much less frequent, have also occurred. 

Anti-government protest organizers have also escalated their tactics — blocking major highways, calling for strikes, crowding the main airport terminal and, this week, leading a days-long march of thousands of people from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And it has spread to cities across the United States and the globe, disrupting American Jewish gatherings in Israel and confronting Israeli officials on their visits abroad.   

The most striking protest tactic has come from a growing group of IDF reservists — as of this week more than 10,000 — who have pledged to stop showing up for duty if the overhaul, or any piece of it, is enacted. Within Israel, the IDF is the country’s most widely trusted institution, and is seen as an indispensable guarantor of Israel’s security. 

Because of its mandatory draft, it has also historically been viewed as a reflection of Israel’s diverse Jewish citizenry. But those who have pledged to boycott their duty say they are unwilling to continue risking their lives for a government that is no longer democratic. 

The overhaul’s proponents, including Netanyahu, say that threats to refuse military service cross a bright red line in a society that faces external threats and prizes national service. In a recent address, Netanyahu said threats to avoid reserve duty as a pressure tactic violated the principle that the civilian government must wield control over the military.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog addresses the nation in a speech exhorting a delay on proposed judicial reforms, Feb. 12, 2023. (Courtesy Herzog’s office)

Efforts at compromise have failed and rhetoric is becoming only more severe.

Months ago, the government took steps to advance the major pieces of the judicial overhaul. A rapid spike in protests and criticism in March, however, convinced Netanyahu to pause the legislative effort and enter dialogue with his political opponents. 

But those talks — brokered by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial — have collapsed. A few weeks ago, Netanyahu announced that he was restarting the legislative process with the “reasonableness law.”

Now, both sides are making arguments that, at their core, sound almost identical. 

Critics of the plan say that a country without an independent and empowered court system cannot be a democracy. They have accused Netanyahu of ramming through a major change to Israel’s governing system without broad consensus, and point to surveys showing that most Israelis oppose the overhaul plan

The plan’s supporters say that, in fact, they are the majority — pointing to the fall elections that their side won. The true failure of democracy, they say, is the elected coalition being rendered unable to govern due to a protest movement that is blocking roads and calling on soldiers to shirk their duty. 

This week, the military reserve protests have led to more urgent warnings. The Institute for National Security Studies, a respected think tank, warned on Sunday that the IDF “is at risk of disbanding.” 

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has a similar message. 

“If we will not be a strong and unified army, if the best do not serve in the IDF — we will no longer be able to exist as a state in the region,” he wrote in an open letter.

View of the Jewish settlement of Eli, in the West Bank, Jan. 17, 2021.(Sraya Diamant/Flash90)

The internal Israeli turmoil is happening alongside increased Israeli-Palestinian violence.

In tandem with the conflict over the court reform, clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank have escalated this year. More than 100 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed in IDF military raids on terrorist cells, while more than two dozen Israelis have been killed by Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Israel. There has also been conflict with Hamas in Gaza, and concern over Iran backing attacks on Israel.

Recent months have also seen a series of riots by Israeli settlers, who have entered Palestinian villages, torched cars, homes and shops and injured Palestinians in response to terror attacks. Palestinians have been killed amid the riots, and senior Israeli figures have described the riots as a “pogrom” or “terrorism.” 

Hardline figures in Israel’s government have called for harsh tactics in response to the violence.  Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for a Palestinian village to be wiped out before walking the remark back and apologizing. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, has expressed sympathy for the rioters while also speaking out against vigilante justice.

While the riots are not directly connected to the overhaul effort, there are links. One of the right’s criticisms of the Supreme Court is that it has restrained Israel from expanding West Bank settlements, while critics worry that weakening the courts will mean removing an occasional protector of Palestinian rights. Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir and other right-wingers have charged that the government is responding more harshly to the settler rioters than to disruptive anti-government protesters in Israel — something he has called “selective enforcement.”

President Joe Biden answers a question during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House during an official state visit, Dec. 01, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The situation is leading observers to question the U.S. relationship with Israel.

Heated discourse about Israel’s conflicts has spread to the United States. President Joe Biden has repeatedly criticized the judicial overhaul effort and has recently issued a series of warnings suggesting that if passed, the legislation could damage the U.S.-Israel alliance. 

Speaking to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman last week, Biden said the protests display “the vibrancy of Israel’s democracy, which must remain the core of our bilateral relationship,” and said that Netanyahu needs to “continue to seek the broadest possible consensus here.”

Elsewhere in the Times opinion pages, Nicholas Kristof wrote that the recent news out of Israel has led him to question if “it really make[s] sense for the United States to provide the enormous sum of $3.8 billion annually to another wealthy country?” That annual foreign aid allocation is at the core of U.S.-Israel relations and has been portrayed as sacrosanct by presidents from both parties. 

And last week, an address by Herzog to a joint session of Congress, meant to be a celebration of Israel’s 75th birthday earlier this year, took place shortly after a prominent progressive Democrat, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, called Israel a “racist state” — a remark she later walked back. Six other Democratic members of Congress boycotted Herzog’s speech. 

What happens next?

The vote on the “reasonableness” bill will almost certainly take place in the coming days and, if Netanyahu’s promises are any indication, could pass along party lines. But that almost definitely won’t be the end of the struggle over the judicial overhaul, even as a large number of Israelis say they fear civil war

Netanyahu’s right-wing allies, including Ben-Gvir, have vowed to pass the overhaul’s more sweeping components next, while opponents of the legislation have pledged to maintain and escalate their opposition. 

It remains to be seen who will prevail in the conflict, or what winning might even look like after more than half a year of civil unrest. Supporters, opponents and observers of the overhaul have all made clear that at this point, what is at stake is no longer just a piece of legislation but rather the military, the governmental system and, perhaps, the future of the country itself. 


The post ‘A time of emergency’: What you need to know about the fight over Israel’s court system appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Trump Nominates Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as US Ambassador to Israel

Mike Huckabee looks on as Donald Trump reacts during a campaign event at the Drexelbrook Catering and Event Center, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, US, Oct. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve as the next US ambassador to Israel, adding another staunch ally of the Jewish state to a senior role in his incoming administration.  

“I am pleased to announce that the highly respected former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, has been nominated to be the United States Ambassador to Israel,” Trump wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

“Mike has been a great public servant, governor, and leader in faith for many years. He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East!” Trump continued. 

Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, has long been a stalwart ally of the Jewish state. He has repudiated the anti-Israel protests that erupted in the wake of Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7 and criticized incumbent US President Joe Biden for sympathizing with anti-Israel protesters during his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC). The incoming ambassador also lambasted the anti-Israel encampments at elite universities, stating that there should be “outrage” over the targeting and mistreatment of Jewish college students. 

Huckabee has defended Israel’s right to build settlements in the West Bank, acknowledging the Jewish people’s ties to the land dating back to the ancient world.

There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee has said, referring to the biblical names for the area. “There is no such thing as settlements — they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There is no such thing as an occupation.”

During Huckabee’s 2008 US presidential campaign, he stated that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” and that land for a potential Palestinian state should be taken from other Arab states and not Israel.

Huckabee will replace the current ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew.

Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel during his first term, David Friedman, praised the president-elect’s selection of Huckabee.

“I am thrilled by President Trump’s nomination of Governor Mike Huckabee as the next Ambassador to Israel. He is a dear friend and he will have my full support. Congrats Mike on getting the best job in the world!” Friedman wrote on X/Twitter.

During Trump’s first term in office, his administration helped foster the Abraham Accords, a series of landmark normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.

Over the course of his campaign, Trump promised to resume efforts to strengthen the Abraham Accords upon his return to the White House. He has also urged Israel to move faster with its military campaign to eradicate the Hamas terrorist group from the Gaza Strip.

The post Trump Nominates Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as US Ambassador to Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Suspect Remanded Without Bail for Attempted Kidnapping of Jewish Boy in New York City

Masked male attempts to abduct Orthodox Jewish child in broad daylight in New York City on Nov. 9, 2024. Photo: Shomrim Crown Heights Rescue Patrol/Screenshot from social media

The man who was charged for attempting to abduct an Orthodox Jewish child in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York City this past weekend will remain in jail until he faces a judge again next month.

Stephan Stowe, 28, reportedly a gang member with 33 prior arrests, was arrested early Sunday and subsequently charged with attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child. Citing court documents released on Monday, CrownHeights.info reported that a judge refused bail for Stowe and ordered him to be remanded to Rikers Island prison until his next court date on Dec. 9.

The legal action came after a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children on Saturday afternoon, in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. The assailant put the child down.

The video was widely circulated online and fueled concern about a wave of violent crimes targeting Jews in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Following news of the arrest, a local Jewish leader praised what, for now, appears to be a victory for law and order advocates and a Jewish Brooklyn community reeling from a spate of hate crimes in recent weeks.

“The perpetrator has been arrested,” Yaacov Behrman, a liaison for Chabad Headquarters — the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — posted on X/Twitter. “Known to police, the perpetrator has allegedly been arrested over 30 times. He is under 30 years old and has also been arrested in [the] past for criminal possession of a weapon. What is wrong with our legal system? What is wrong with our society? How is this possible?”

Behrman also noted on Sunday that he spoke to the father, who expressed his appreciation for local police and Crown Heights Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group. According to Behrman, the father also said that his kids were doing well.

Saturday’s attack was the fourth time in less than two weeks that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. In each case, the assailant was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.

Last Wednesday, a middle-aged Hasidic man was chased and beaten by two assailants after he refused to surrender his cell phone.

Earlier that week, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish.

Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn.

Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner at the time. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”

The problem has become acute in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.

According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.

Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Suspect Remanded Without Bail for Attempted Kidnapping of Jewish Boy in New York City first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Renowned Figurative Painter Frank Auerbach, Jewish Refugee Who Fled Nazi Germany, Dies at Age 93

A painting by Frank Auerbach, J.Y.M. Seated II, 1992, estimate £600,000 – 800,000 during a photocall at Christie’s auction house showcasing the highlights of 20th/21st Century Evening Sale in London, United Kingdom on October 06, 2023. Photo: WIktor Szymanowicz via Reuters Connect

German-born British artist Frank Auerbach, who was sent to England as a child fleeing Nazi-occupied Germany and became a leading figurative painter, died on Monday at the age of 93.

The gallery Frankie Rossi Art Projects, which focuses on post-war artists like Auerbach, said the Jewish painter “died peacefully” early Monday at his home in London. “We have lost a dear friend and remarkable artist but take comfort knowing his voice will resonate for generations to come,” said Geoffrey Parton, the gallery’s director.

Auerbach was born in Berlin in April 1931 and came to England in 1939. He was an only child and arrived in London as a refugee from Nazi Germany as one of six children sponsored by the writer Iris Origo. Auerbach’s father, a patent lawyer, and mother, an artist, were both killed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942.

“[I was] at no point shocked or overwhelmed [when] it was gradually leaked to me [that] they’d been killed, taken to a camp and killed,” Auerbach said years later about the murder of his parents, according to The Art Newspaper. “I don’t know which one, Auschwitz probably.”

Auerbach attended Bunce Court in Kent, a boarding school for Jewish refugee children, and then studied at London’s St Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art from 1948-1955. He lived and worked in the same studio in North London from 1954 until his death. His career spanned seven decades, his work has been shown around the world, and he was awarded the prestigous Golden Lion prize at the 1986 Venice Biennale.

Auerbach’s signature style was having an excessive amount of paint on his works, which was created by him repeatedly scraping off paint from previous versions he was unhappy with, and then starting again until the finished work was loaded with layers of paint. He was known for his portraits and city scenes in North London. He once told The Guardian that he estimated that 95 percent of his paint ended up in the garbage. “I’m trying to find a new way to express something… So I rehearse all the other ways until I surprise myself with something I haven’t previously considered,” he explained.

Auerbach is survived by his son, filmmaker Jacob Auerbach.

The post Renowned Figurative Painter Frank Auerbach, Jewish Refugee Who Fled Nazi Germany, Dies at Age 93 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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