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Israeli democracy may not survive a ‘reform’ of its Supreme Court
(JTA) — On Dec. 29, Israel swore in Benjamin Netanyahu’s sixth government. The Likud leader became Israel’s prime minister once more, and one week later, Israel’s long-anticipated judicial counterrevolution began.
In the Knesset Wednesday, newly minted Justice Minister and Netanyahu confidant Yariv Levin unveiled a package of proposed legislation that would alter the balance of power between Israel’s legislature and its Supreme Court.
At the core of this plan is a bill to allow the Knesset to override the Supreme Court. Levin’s proposals — which almost certainly have the immediate support of a Knesset majority, regardless of Levin’s assurances that they would be subject to “thorough debate” — would pave the way for Israel’s new government to pass legislation that curtails rights and undermines the rule of law, dealing a blow to Israeli democracy.
The dire implications of this proposed judicial reform are rooted in key characteristics of the Israeli political system that set it apart from other liberal democracies. Israel has no constitution to determine the balance of power between its various branches of government. In fact, there is no separation between Israel’s executive and legislative branches, given that the government automatically controls a majority in the parliament.
Instead, it has a series of basic laws enacted piecemeal over the course of the state’s history that have a quasi-constitutional status, with the initial intention that they would eventually constitute a de jure constitution.
Through the 1980s, the Knesset passed basic laws that primarily served to define state institutions, such as the country’s legislature and electoral system, capital and military. In the 1990s, there was a paradigm shift with the passage of two basic laws that for the first time concerned individuals’ rights rather than institutions, one on Human Dignity and Liberty (1992) and the other on Freedom of Occupation (1994). These laws enshrined rights to freedom of movement, personal freedom, human dignity and others to all who reside in Israel.
Aharon Barak, the president of Israel’s Supreme Court from 1995 to 2006, argued that these laws constituted a de facto bill of rights, empowering the court to review Knesset legislation and to strike down laws that violate civil liberties, a responsibility not explicitly bestowed upon the court in the basic law pertaining to the judiciary. In 1995, the Supreme Court officially ruled that it could indeed repeal legislation that violates the country’s basic laws, heralding an era of increased judicial activism in Israel in what became known as the “judicial revolution.” The court has struck down 20 laws since, a fairly modest number compared to other democracies.
The judicial revolution of the 1990s shifted the balance of power in Israel’s political system from one of parliamentary sovereignty, in which the Knesset enjoyed ultimate power, to one in which the legislature is restricted from violating the country’s (incomplete) constitution. Israel’s Supreme Court became a check on the legislative branch in a country that lacks other checks and balances and separations of power.
As a result of these characteristics, the Supreme Court currently serves as one of the only checks on the extraordinary power of Israel’s 120-member Knesset — which is why shifting that balance of power would have such a dramatic impact on Israel’s democracy.
Levin’s proposed judicial overhaul includes several elements that would weaken the power and independence of Israel’s Supreme Court. The plan includes forbidding the Supreme Court from deliberating on and striking down basic laws themselves. It would require an unspecified “special majority” of the court to strike down legislation, raising the threshold from where it currently stands.
Levin has also called for altering the composition of the selection committee that appoints top judges to give the government, rather than legal professionals, a majority on the panel. It would allow cabinet ministers to appoint legal advisors to act on their behalf, rather than that of the justice ministry, canceling these advisors’ role as safeguards against government overreach. Should a minister enact a decision that contravenes a basic law, the ministry’s legal advisor would no longer report the violation to the attorney general, and would instead merely offer non-binding legal advice to the minister.
The pièce de résistance is, of course, the override clause that would allow the Knesset to reinstate laws struck down by the Supreme Court by 61 members of Knesset, a simple majority assuming all members are present. The sole restriction on this override would be a provision preventing the Knesset from re-legislating laws struck down unanimously, by all 15 judges, within the same Knesset term.
This plan’s obvious and most immediate result would be the effective annulment of the quasi-constitutional status of Israel’s basic laws. If the Knesset’s power to legislate is no longer bound by basic laws, these de facto constitutional amendments no longer have any teeth. There are no guardrails preventing any Knesset majority from doing as it wishes, including violating basic human rights. The Knesset could pass laws openly curtailing freedom of the press or gender equality, for example, should it choose to do so.
This counterrevolution, in effect, goes further than merely undoing what occurred in the 1990s.
Most crucially, the Knesset that would once again enjoy full parliamentary sovereignty in 2022 is not the Knesset of Israel’s first four decades. Shackling the Supreme Court is essential to the agendas of the new government’s various ultra-right and ultra-religious parties. For example, the haredi Orthodox parties are eager to re-legislate a blanket exemption to the military draft for their community, which the court struck down in 2017 on the grounds that it was discriminatory. They also have their sights on revoking recognition of non-Orthodox conversions for immigrants to Israel, undoing a court decision from 2021.
The far-right, Jewish supremacist parties of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, meanwhile, see an opportunity to deal a decisive blow to an institution that has long served as a check on the settlement movement. They hope to tie the court’s hands in the face of oncoming legislation to retroactively legalize settlements built on private Palestinian land, which are illegal under Israeli law. But this is only the beginning: Neutering the authority of the court could pave the way for legal discrimination against Israel’s Arab minority, such as Ben-Gvir’s proposal to deport minorities who show insufficient loyalty.
The timing of Levin’s announcement Wednesday could not be more germane. The Knesset recently amended the basic law to legalize the appointment of Aryeh Deri, the Shas party leader who is serving a suspended sentence for tax fraud, as a minister in the new government. The Supreme Court convened Thursday morning to hear petitions against his appointment from those arguing that it is “unreasonable” to rehabilitate Deri given his multiple criminal convictions, a view shared by Israel’s attorney general. Levin’s proposals would bar the court from using this “reasonability” standard.
The Israeli right has long chafed at the power of the Supreme Court, which it accuses of having a left-wing bias. But a judicial overhaul like this has never enjoyed the full support of the government, nor was Netanyahu previously in favor of it. Now, with a uniformly right-wing government and Netanyahu on trial for corruption, the prime minister’s foremost interest is appeasing his political partners and securing their support for future legislation to shield him from prosecution.
In a system where the majority rules, there need to be mechanisms in place to protect the rights of minorities — political, ethnic and religious. Liberal democracy requires respect for the rule of law and human rights. Yariv Levin’s proposals to fully subordinate the Supreme Court to the Knesset will concentrate virtually unchecked power in the hands of a few individuals — government ministers and party leaders within the coalition who effectively control what the Knesset does. That those individuals were elected in free and fair elections is no guarantee that the changes they make will be democratic.
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Capers Funnye wasn’t a ‘Black Jew’ — he was a good Jew
This morning, when I woke up, it was the first time in my entire life that my spiritual leader, my rabbi and my friend, was gone. People are born and die every day, and we live totally oblivious to that fact, but I feel the absence of this one human being almost on a cellular level. And the very person I would call to help me make sense of a time like this is the one who is gone.
Rabbi Capers Funnye wasn’t your typical rabbi. How could he be, though? After all, his congregation was full of Black folks and people of color. There were also some white congregants, but for the most part, his temple was a place created for people like me to have somewhere to go and practice Judaism freely without suspicion or judgment. Beth Shalom was established over one hundred years ago by Black Jews who knew at that time that they could actually be arrested here in America, in Chicago, for daring to say out loud that they were Jewish. I know that sounds unthinkable, but it’s a historical fact: It used to be illegal in Chicago for Blacks to claim that they were Jewish.
Rabbi Funnye dedicated his life to ensuring that Black Jews wouldn’t have their Jewishness questioned.
White Jews love to reminisce about the Civil Rights Movement and their close relationship to the Black community, and this coalition brought about monumental changes to American society. But those same white Jews who marched in Selma and rode buses to Mississippi had little to no interaction with Black Jews. We were nonexistent. A myth, if you will. Some people had heard that there were Black people who called themselves Jews, but no one had actually ever seen one or met one.
We were there, but just as other Jews had hidden before, we were hiding too. We worshipped in basements, living rooms, and the backs of storefronts. We were in the shadows until Rabbi Funnye came along. He was born to leave the world a better place than he found it, and that’s exactly what he did.
Rabbi Funnye was supposed to be an AME pastor, but the church didn’t need him. The synagogue, the Jewish people, did.
I used to joke with him that I’d known him so long I could remember when he had a full head of black hair. And I did. I can remember going to services and seeing him on the bimah on Shabbat. Even as a little kid, I recognized he was different. He had a voice that could command the attention even of a pew full of antsy five-year-olds. But he also had a smile so warm that we never felt scolded. When he spoke, people couldn’t help but listen, and eventually he started saying what people wanted and needed to hear.
I watched him rise from assistant rabbi to leader.He could teach Torah in a way that held the congregation’s interest, imparting important lessons while adding levity with razor-sharp wit and perfectly timed humor.
If I’d been born male, I probably would’ve wanted to be a rabbi my whole life. I wanted to be like him. But I was a girl, and that was unthinkable.
But he made me believe I could do things.
I can remember when he started to integrate the Chicago Jewish community. When we’d go to events like Shabbat dinners or Black and Jewish seders, he was unfazed by the whispers and stares when he’d ask where the tables were for those who were both Black and Jewish. While this made the rest of us uncomfortable and, for some, unwilling to ever go back into any room where we were treated as oddities, he was undeterred.
He went back, over and over again. He would not allow the existence of Black Jews to go unacknowledged any longer. And many of us went with him. I was one. I saw how he was treated at times by white rabbis and even just by people who were white and Jewish and still felt that somehow they were better than him. It would infuriate me, but not him. He’d smile, tell a joke or one of his signature stories that would completely disarm them.
And while the behavior of some of my white co-religionists would thoroughly anger me, Rabbi Funnye understood how to deal with bigotry and hate in other ways. He grew up in it. He knew how to rise above it. Another lesson learned. He never met hate with hate or derision with derision. He met it with love.
He knew that was the only way he could move us from the shadows and out of the margins, into the mainstream. And it was also the only way that he could show white Jews we were nothing to fear or exclude.
At times, his message wasn’t popular with Black Jews who wanted nothing to do with white Jews or with white Jews who weren’t ready to accept the fact that G-d made Black Jews too.
None of that changed the fact that it was the right one.
Chief Rabbi Funnye wasn’t a Black Jew. He was a good Jew. And that is the lesson that I, and hopefully all who knew him, will learn from his life.
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All Jewish eyes are on Michigan as heated El-Sayed-Rogers Senate campaign draws to a close
(JTA) — DETROIT – The U.S. Senate race in Michigan, a deeply contentious contest that has strained Jewish relationships with the Democratic Party, drew to a bitter close Tuesday as voters headed to the polls in a race that could shape which party controls the chamber.
At its center is Abdul El-Sayed, the former county health director and Democratic nominee whose anti-corporate, Medicare For All candidacy has become a rallying cry for the national progressive movement.
His uncompromising stances on Israel have also made him a target among pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, which has spent heavily against him in both the primary and general election. AIPAC’s rare entry into a general election race came to support El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican former congressman Mike Rogers.
One of El-Sayed’s positions on Israel — to end all U.S. military aid — was once thought a far-left pipe dream. But that has changed. On Election Day morning, Trump announced that, under his watch, nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel would wind down by the end of the year. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in agreement with the need to end aid and deny Democratic critics a point of attack.
In his announcement of the plan, Trump cited El-Sayed.
“Why should we suffer the slings like lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump said on Fox News, referring to Israel’s financial strength.
Representatives for the El-Sayed and Rogers campaigns, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, did not immediately return requests for comment on Trump’s new pledge. It is unclear whether it will be straightforward for the White House to halt the funding by the end of 2026, given that the existing memorandum of understanding that governs it extends to 2028.
El-Sayed’s campaign has galvanized young voters and a range of other constituencies, and he pulled ahead in the polls in the race’s final stretch. But his questioning of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and whether it or Iran posed a greater threat to the United States, as well as his prior associations with figures such as Hasan Piker, the streamer who has spread extreme rhetoric about American Jews, have sparked concern among Jewish Michiganders.
So, too, did comments the candidate made following the March terror attack on Temple Israel, a major synagogue in the state, in which El-Sayed appeared to link the attack to Israel’s war in Lebanon after reports that the attacker lost family in an Israeli strike. Hostile behavior from some of El-Sayed’s supporters toward pro-Israel Democrats, most prominently on display at the state party’s spring convention, have also alarmed Jews. El-Sayed has pledged to stand up to antisemitism.
Some Jews who had long considered themselves Democrats, including several local Jewish leaders, have cited such controversies in pledging to vote for Rogers. In some Michigan Jewish neighborhoods, yard signs proclaim that a vote for Rogers is a vote “against antisemitism.”
Accordingly, Rogers has made a play for the Jewish vote. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October that his opponent is “anti-Jew,” while running ads that played up El-Sayed’s tenuous family associations with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Top Republicans have seized on the narrative, with President Donald Trump calling Jews “crazy” if they back El-Sayed, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz calling him a national security threat. A Trump administration event to address antisemitism was held at a Michigan synagogue weeks before the election, though El-Sayed’s name was not mentioned there.
Jewish Democrats who had broken with El-Sayed found major validation in the race’s dramatic closing days. Democrat Haley Stevens, a strongly pro-Israel congresswoman who had narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the primary, flipped sides to endorse Rogers days after her Jewish fiancé, a Democratic megadonor, did the same.
The surprise move, which Jewish Democratic leaders joined many other prominent Democrats in criticizing, came after days of back-and-forth between Stevens and El-Sayed as she sought to publicly pressure him to condemn a PAC ad that had linked rising grocery prices to U.S. aid to Israel.
Meanwhile, some prominent Jewish Democrats in the state either avoided endorsing El-Sayed or did so with heavy reservations. Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus, whose leadership has been deeply divided on El-Sayed, issued a statement Monday declaring the caucus would never vote for a Republican.
“Our commitment to the Democratic ticket remains resolute as we work to build a more inclusive coalition,” the caucus stated.
Throughout the campaign, El-Sayed has sought to reassure Jewish voters. He apologized for his Temple Israel comments; distanced himself from Piker; hired a Jewish outreach director; said in a recent “60 Minutes” interview that Israel has a right to exist; and sent mailers to Jewish households stating, “I am committed to protecting all Michigan Jews against hatred and injustice.” He told JTA in August that “the prerequisite of Jewish safety is never in question to me.”
More than 1,000 Michigan Jews have signed an open letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed, compared to 560 who have done the same for Rogers. Progressive Jewish figures of note have held salons throughout the state in a bid to convince on-the-fence Jews to back him.
Yet El-Sayed also has continued to stake out positions many Jews find alienating. He asserted in the campaign’s closing weeks that Israel was “not actually our friend” and declined during a debate to say whether Israel or Iran was the bigger danger to the U.S. His campaign also released an ad, designed to appeal to conservatives, that featured a brief clip of Tucker Carlson, the right-wing pundit who has promoted conspiracy theories about Israel. In addition, El-Sayed’s careful sidestepping of objectionable material about Jews and Israel from his ostensible allies, such as Piker and his uncle, left-wing anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, has continued up to Election Day.
Ahead of Election Day, some liberal-leaning Zionist Jews tried to put pressure on El-Sayed to speak more directly to their concerns. A group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders launched Nonnegotiable Michigan in a bid to have him affirm what they called five core principles of Jewish participation in the Democratic Party, including “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” After silence from the campaign, some of Nonnegotiable’s figureheads urged their followers to write in the 19th-century Jewish poet “Emma Lazarus” instead of voting for either candidate.
Michigan’s already small Jewish population, which numbers around 105,000 adults, has further splintered over El-Sayed’s candidacy. But it could prove pivotal to the outcome of a race that may determine control of the chamber. In 2024, the state’s Senate race was decided by fewer than 20,000 votes.
Either way, the race has crystallized the Democratic Party’s shifting fault lines over Israel — and many Jews’ growing uneasiness with their place in the liberal coalition.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Trump says US aid to Israel will stop at end of year
(JTA) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning said that the United States would halt billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel by the end of 2026, potentially ending decades of military support for one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East.
“We were giving them $4 billion. We are. But it gets cut off at the end of the year,” Trump declared during a call-in appearance on the “Fox & Friends” morning program on Fox News. Israel’s 10-year memorandum of understanding with the United States, which currently gives Israel $3.8 billion annually, runs through 2028 so it’s unclear how easy it would be for the White House to stop the funding this year.
Referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in January that he wanted to taper off aid to zero at some point in the future, Trump questioned why Republicans should have to deal with criticism from hardline pro-Palestinian Democrats like Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed when “we give them more than anybody else and they no longer need it.”
“It’s a bad talking point,” he added. His comments came as Americans across the country are voting Tuesday in midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. House and Senate.
“We reached an agreement on that” and Netanyahu “brought it up,” Trump continued. “He said: ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid,’ because he understands that this is one of their points of contention.”
A growing number of Democratic congressional candidates across the United States have campaigned on a platform of reducing or halting military aid to Israel during the run-up to today’s midterm elections. This April, dozens of senators — almost all of them Democrats — voted in favor of a failed motion to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel.
Yair Golan, chairman of Israel’s liberal Democrats party, slammed Netanyahu in the wake of Trump’s statement, tweeting that “precisely at a time when Israel’s defense spending has reached enormous proportions, when Israel needs to replenish its offensive weapons stockpiles, and after air defense capabilities have been depleted following such a long war—Netanyahu logs another massive failure under his name.”
“The cessation of U.S. aid is heavy damage to Israel’s security” and “a responsible prime minister would have fought to increase American aid, not eliminate it,” added Golan, whose party opposes Netanyahu’s and is trying to form a coalition to oust Netanyahu from power following Israel’s own elections last Tuesday.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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