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‘The gun is on the table’: Both sides of Israel’s debate say that a constitutional crisis is coming
(JTA) — In a country that is deeply divided, where attending anti-government protests has become a weekly ritual for many, at least one idea still unites the right and left: Israel appears to be hurtling toward a constitutional crisis.
The crisis — which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed a “governmental breakdown” during a recent visit to Germany — would flow from legislation Netanyahu is pushing that would overhaul Israel’s judiciary. The proposal — which critics say threatens Israel’s democratic character — would increase the coalition’s control over the appointment of Supreme Court judges, and would enable Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to override court decisions with a simple majority.
A constitutional crisis occurs when a country faces an unsolvable dispute between competing branches of government. Countries have recovered from constitutional crises in the past — the United States has had several over the centuries, including multiple ones related to the leadup to the Civil War and its aftermath — but the process can be difficult, and mistrust long-lasting.
In Israel’s case, what happens if the Knesset passes the judicial legislation, the Supreme Court strikes it down, and the Knesset doesn’t abide by that decision? Does the court or Knesset hold final authority?
However that question is answered, just getting to that point would represent a dramatic breakdown in a 75-year-old democracy. “The very idea that the government might not comply, might ignore the Supreme Court’s decision, would be an unprecedented crisis,” said Michal Saliternik, a law professor at Netanya Academic College.
In that dangerous moment, some Israelis see opportunity. In a perhaps ironic twist, Israel is on the precipice of a constitutional crisis but doesn’t actually have a constitution. It’s a risky bet, but a battle between the court and the coalition, said international law scholar Tamar Megiddo, might just force Israel into the long and arduous process of writing a governing document and figuring out how to balance the country’s competing authorities.
“The entire constitutional system here is held together by duct tape,” said Megiddo, who teaches at the College of Law and Business outside Tel Aviv. “It’s ridiculous. We have no protection of our constitutional regime, no protection of our separation of powers, no protection of checks and balances and no protection of human rights. The only reason this functioned for the past 75 years is because there was good faith.”
She added, “I think a lot of people view the current constitutional moment, or the realistically likely constitutional crisis, as also an opportunity for fixing everything that’s broken in the system.”
When asked how a clash between the government and courts could come to a head, those scholars and others all individually sketched out versions of the same scenario: The government passes a law giving itself control over judicial appointments, the court strikes down the law — and the government appoints new judges anyway. When those judges arrive for their first day of work, should the security guards let them in? Who should the guards obey — the government that appointed the judges, or the courts that declared their appointment illegal?
While that question is being debated, the courts may not be able to hear cases at all.
“At the end of the day, the state needs to function,” Saliternik said. “The courts have work to do. If the judges can’t enter their chambers, it will definitely impact everyone. It’ll be like a third world country in which institutions don’t function.”
The law on judicial appointments may be passed next week, and for rank-and-file Israelis, both Saliternik and Megiddo said, this question would hardly be theoretical. If Israel’s system of government descends into crisis, it could lead to a downgrade in the country’s credit rating and an economic downturn that ordinary citizens feel in their pockets. And given how invested Israelis have become in the face of the judicial reform — protesting in the streets by the hundreds of thousands — it’s unlikely they’ll ignore what ensues if and when it passes. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has a reputation for congeniality, gave a pained speech last week warning of the potential for civil war.
“If the court issues a ruling and the government does not comply, then the Israeli public will say, ‘This is the ultimate proof that this is not a democracy anymore,’” Saliternik said. “I say this with trepidation, but if there’s an open battle between the Supreme Court and the Knesset, it could result in street violence.”
Megiddo said that even the possibility of such a crisis has normalized tactics that were once on the fringe, such as refusal to perform military service, a duty seen as sacrosanct across much of Jewish Israeli society. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly warned that the possibility of mass refusal to serve could cause him to leave his post. On Tuesday, a group of military reservists said they plan to recruit tens of thousands more who will pledge to shirk reserve duty if the legislation goes through.
“People who refuse service were considered, in the Israeli public, to be a very extreme minority, and now it’s mainstream to say that people won’t serve the military for a dictatorship,” Megiddo said. “It’s unbelievable how mainstream saying that at the moment is, and that has long-term impact.”
Both supporters and opponents of the legislation in the Knesset are treating a constitutional crisis as a real possibility. The only thing they disagree about is who will be to blame — and both sides appear to be raising the stakes, vowing either to disobey government decisions, or disregard the court.
“The security situation is troubling,” said former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, an opponent of Netanyahu, in a speech last week referencing escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and urging Netanyahu to pause the court legislation. “Don’t drag us into an irresponsible constitutional crisis during a security crisis.”
Netanyahu’s allies, unsurprisingly, say it is the opponents of the reform — and the justices of the court themselves — who would be responsible for a constitutional crisis, should the court strike down the law.
Striking down the reform legislation would be a “doomsday weapon,” wrote Dror Eydar, a columnist for the pro-Netanyahu tabloid Israel Hayom, in a piece titled “Inviting a constitutional crisis.” “This striking down would constitute a coup d’etat.”
(Another column four days later in the same publication, however, urged a compromise on the judicial reform in order to avert a constitutional crisis. That piece was written by Miriam Adelson, whose husband Sheldon — the late billionaire philanthropist — founded and funded the paper.)
Netanyahu’s coalition members are still worried enough about the prospect of a constitutional crisis that they’ve agreed to what they refer to as a “softening” of one piece of the legislation. Instead of giving the coalition total control over Supreme Court appointments, the new text of the bill would let the coalition control its first two judicial appointments.
“There’s no doubt that the change we made prevents any real claim that can create a constitutional crisis,” said Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who is spearheading the legislation, on an Israeli news show on Monday.
A view of the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. (Eddie Gerald via Getty Images)
But then he threw down the gauntlet: If the court still overturns the law, Levin said, “That would cross every red line. We definitely wouldn’t accept it.”
Responding to that claim, Yair Lapid, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, said that if the government disobeys the court, citizens should disobey the government.
“That’s it, the masks are off. The gun is on the table,” Lapid tweeted. “The real prime minister, Yariv Levin, is drawing us into total chaos and a constitutional crisis we won’t be able to come back from. If the justice minister is calling on the government not to obey the law, why should the citizens of Israel obey the government?”
Another Likud lawmaker, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, said he would respect the court’s ruling if it struck the law down. But in any case, the Likud bill doesn’t appear to be a promising avenue toward compromise. “This isn’t softening and compromise, this is Hungary and Poland on steroids,” Labor Party Chair Merav Michaeli said on a radio program on Monday, referring to countries where the government has increased its control over the court system. “From the start, I said we can’t negotiate with them.”
A predecessor of Michaeli’s in the Labor Party has also taken a hard line and — unlike the many voices who worry about a clash of government authorities — has suggested that he would prefer a constitutional crisis to compromise. Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, said that a constitutional crisis would force senior Israeli military commanders to take sides — and expressed confidence that they would choose to obey the courts.
“It would be a severe constitutional crisis,” Barak said in a speech last month. “That’s when the test of the gatekeepers and defenders of sovereignty would arrive: The head of the Shin Bet, the police commissioner, the chief of staff and the head of the Mossad. I’m convinced that they understand that in a democracy, the only choice is to recognize the supremacy of law and the Supreme Court.”
The mounting threats by military reservists, and comments by former military commanders opposing the court reform, may indicate that the military will opt to follow the court. But Saliternik hopes that’s a choice Israeli forces won’t have to confront.
“This is something that has never happened in Israel,” she said. “It’s so very hard to think about. I very much hope that that government will get a hold of itself and act responsibly.”
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In Israel’s missile war, some families run to shelters. Others have nowhere to go.
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Walking with her children in Pisgat Zeev, a leafy neighborhood in Jerusalem, on Monday afternoon, Rivka recalled the missile that flew nearby the day before.
An impact could be felt as the family hunkered in their private “mamad” or safe room, required in all new homes in the Jewish neighborhood. Those who live in older homes or were far from their residence found their nearest public shelter.
When her children started to cry, Rivka said, she reassured them that the walls of the shelter are strong enough to withstand anything Iran could send toward Israel. “We feel safe in our shelters,” she said.
Just a few miles south, in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, father of three Abed Abu Sharif recalled how he was driving his taxi on Sunday when he heard the unmistakable sound of an air raid alert.
Israeli authorities advise anyone driving when a warning siren sounds to exit their vehicle and look for the nearest public shelter. Abu Sharif knew he would not find one.
“Where am I to go? What am I to do? There is no shelter for me near here,” he said. “I continue driving because I have to provide for my family.”
The disparate experiences point to longstanding gaps in shelter access that are being thrown into stark relief once again by war.
The access gaps exist both geographically — with residents of the country’s dense center more protected — and between Jewish and Arab Israelis.
A Knesset hearing on Monday took aim at the significant number of Israelis who do not have ready access to shelters near their home, with lawmakers expressing frustration over the lack of support for shelter construction despite the constant threat of war since Oct. 7, 2023.
“In my view, this situation is abandonment of human life. Nothing less,” Oded Forer of the Yisrael Beiteinu party said during the hearing. “And it is happening right now, as people try to run to safe rooms, but they don’t have them.”
The hearing only briefly discussed disparities between Jewish and Arab Israeli communities in shelter access, citing statistics from the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command. The statistics — revealed publicly last week — show that only 37 of 11,775 public shelters in Israel, or roughly 0.3%, are located in Arab municipalities, even though Arabs make up about 15% of Israel’s population.
That information dates to January 2025, before last year’s war with Iran. While both the Home Front Command and Israel’s comptroller told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that a newer accounting was not available, Ori Narov, who leads the legal department of the Israel Religious Action Center, said he had received government data showing that roughly a third of the 1,500 shelters installed last year in Israel’s north went to Arab municipalities — a development that he cited as a rare sign of progress in Jewish-Arab equity.
Still, there is only one public bomb shelter in east Jerusalem, according to Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights, a group advocating for equitable built environments in Israel.
“This is an issue of equity,” said Bimkom’s Dafna Saporta. “We’re talking about the Arab population. They don’t have equality, and they don’t have justice in Israel. The state is taking care of the Jewish population but neglecting the Arabs. It’s not new. It’s a political decision.”
National civil defense standards are set by the Home Front Command, while planning approval rests with local planning authorities, and cities are typically responsible for maintaining public shelters.
“As per the Civil Defense Law, public shelter construction is the responsibility of local authorities, whereas personal protection is an individual responsibility,” Home Front Command said in a statement responding to a request for comment on disparities in shelter access between Arab and Jewish communities in Israel.
It added, “The Home Front Command also takes measures to provide individual protection and to renovate public shelters, based on guidance from the political echelon and government decisions.”
Oct. 7, the subsequent conflict with Hezbollah and last year’s 12-day war with Iran drew stark attention to disparities that had deepened over time. A missile landed in Rahat, an Arab city in the south, killing multiple residents, and another strike in Tamra, in the north, killed several members of the same family.
Some efforts are underway to close the gap. A government initiative called Northern Shield worked to install shelters last year in homes and schools within a buffer zone of the Lebanese border, where rockets from Hezbollah are again flying now.
Nonprofit groups have also stepped into the gap. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, meanwhile, says it has worked with the government to install 700 shelters since Oct. 7, including several this week and some in a Druze village and in Haifa, a mixed city with large populations of both Jews and Arabs.
And the Israeli organization Standing Together, which advocates coexistence between Arabs and Jewish Israelis, has launched a campaign to crowdfund shelters for vulnerable Arab communities in the Negev.
But advocates say the efforts are far outmatched by the need. “While these initiatives are well-intentioned and deeply appreciated, the scale of the need in the unrecognized villages far exceeds the capacity of civil society,” Huda Abu Obaid, CEO of the Negev Coexistence Forum, said about the crowdfunding campaigns.
The Negev Coexistence Forum joined a lawsuit filed by the Reform movement-affiliated IRAC at the Supreme Court of Israel in 2024, alleging that Israel’s failure to build public shelters in Arab communities was a violation of their civil rights.
The government’s defense rested on high rates of illegal construction in Arab municipalities, which, in their view, absolved them of responsibility to ensure that mamads are installed in new homes. (Retrofitting mamads into older buildings is difficult and costly and not within the budget of any municipality, Arab or Jewish.)
The court sided with the government, ruling that the responsibility for building protective spaces rests with private homeowners and that the state is not obligated to build public shelters.
For Narov, the situation in the Negev is particularly galling because the extant planning process does not account for many Bedouin Arabs living there.
“They are not municipalities recognized by the government, so they can’t even build the shelters if they wanted to,” Narov said. He added, “This is the first responsibility of any state to its citizens: security to keep them safe from attacks, from the inside and definitely from the outside, as we’re experiencing right now.”
“If the law requires a protected room in every new building, but thousands of citizens are prevented from building legally or live in areas excluded from state planning frameworks, then the legal standard itself produces inequality,” Abu Obaid said. “Protection should not depend on municipal status, planning recognition or economic ability. It should be universal.”
The mandate that all new construction include a safe room in each unit or a basement shelter, first enacted in the 1990s, shifted Israel’s safeguards away from public shelters. That includes in east Jerusalem, which is administered by the the city of Jerusalem Municipality and hence the Israeli government, where no additional public shelters have been built in the last decade.
On March 2, an Iranian missile landed at the entrance to Ramat Shlomo, just a few kilometers from the neighborhood, injuring six Israelis.
Fatme, a doctor at a hospital in Jerusalem who was riding bus 218 toward the Qalandia checkpoint at the end of her workday on Monday, passed the crater on her way home. Still, she said, the debate was of little practical significance to her.
“There isn’t a single shelter in my neighborhood,” she said. “So when I hear the bombs, I just go on with my day.”
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Trump says Iran war is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as US and Israel continue to pound Tehran
(JTA) — President Donald Trump gave mixed signals about the status of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran on Monday, telling reporters that the war was “very complete, pretty much” even as he said that he would make a “mutual” decision with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about its end.
At the same time, he threatened Iran in a post on Truth Social, saying, “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Tuesday would be “the most intense day” of strikes yet – while also noting that the pace of Iran’s missiles had slowed.
Three people have died from missile strikes in the last two days in Israel, as well as two Israeli soldiers killed when their tank was attacked while they fought Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. One of the soldiers killed was from Majdal Shams, a Druze town in Israel’s north where 12 children were killed by a Hezbollah rocket in 2024.
Trump’s comments come as oil prices surge amid disruption in the Middle East that has turned several U.S. allies in the region into Iranian targets. A leading pro-Israel senator has urged Israel to refrain from targeting Iranian oil depots, reflecting anxiety over sharply rising gas prices.
Trump told the Times of Israel that while Netanyahu would have input in the timing to end the war, he would make the final decision. He also declined to entertain the idea of Israel continuing to fight Iran after the United States exits, saying, “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”
Iranian officials, meanwhile, have vowed to continue fighting “as long as it takes” and are prepared for a long war.
And Netanyahu said on Tuesday morning that “more is to come” in the war.
The comments come as U.S. and Israeli forces continue to bomb targets in Iran in an attempt to end the country’s military ambitions, destroy its missile arsenal and potentially topple its Islamic Republic regime.
This week, the regime appointed Mojtaba Khamenei, the hard-line son of the assassinated supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as its new supreme leader in a show of defiance. Trump has said he is “not happy” with the choice and would like to see someone else installed.
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When observant Jews gathered to challenge pro-Israel orthodoxy, verbal sparring and walkouts ensued
Hundreds of observant Jews convened at a Manhattan synagogue on Sunday to foster an alternative to the prevailing right-wing discourse about Israeli and American politics in the Orthodox world. But the conference also surfaced uncomfortable arguments within the dissent, with some attendees walking out of one session in protest.
The gathering at B’nai Jeshurun marked the second annual conference for the U.S. chapter of Smol Emuni, which translates as “the faithful left” — a counterpart to a group of the same name working in Israel and the West Bank. A diverse group of speakers that included both Zionists and anti-Zionists grappled with settler violence, humanitarian and spiritual crises sparked by the war in Gaza, and religious rhetoric surrounding the war in Iran.
The big-tent approach gave voice to Americans, Israelis and Palestinians frustrated with Israel’s political direction — and led to some pointed exchanges, including a conference organizer’s public rebuke of the event’s headliner, Rabbi Saul Berman.
Berman, an activist in the American civil rights movement and the former senior rabbi of the Orthodox Lincoln Square Synagogue, went off-topic from his keynote speech to deliver a broad critique of Islam in response to comments about Zionism made by a peace group leader in an earlier session.
For attendees who spoke with the Forward, the conference provided much-needed solidarity in a Jewish milieu that tends to sideline even mild criticism of Israel. It also showed the fledgling movement’s identity being worked out in real time.
“It’s very hard to thread the needle and say, “OK, I am progressive, and I am a Zionist, and I disagree with some things that the Israeli government is doing,” attendee Riva Atlas, a New Yorker who works as a financial researcher, told the Forward.
‘We respectfully disagree’
A morning panel about Gaza brought a few charged moments.
Among the panelists was Gregory Khalil, who co-founded the Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding nonprofit Telos Group and advised the Palestine Liberation Organization on peace negotiations with Israel from 2004 to 2008.
In his remarks, he asked the overwhelmingly Jewish audience to understand the situation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank from their perspective — and to recognize that hardline Zionism can be an obstacle to reducing conflict.
Khalil said that Palestinians have been treated as an exception when it comes to the principle of universal human rights, and that “resistance” was inevitable as a result.
“The world often operates in two plus two equals four,” Khalil said. “For years, starve them, bomb them, tell them that they’re the criminals. People are going to resist.”
Asked whether he saw the conflict as theological in nature, Khalil said it was a “semantic question,” but that “Zionism very much functions like a religion” because it is often framed as “an article of faith beyond critique.”
Moderator David Myers, a Jewish history professor at UCLA, urged Khalil not to discount that Zionism has theological underpinnings for many Jews — “to think very seriously about considering the theological something other than a sort of new semantics.”
Rabbi Mikhael Manekin, a founder of Israel’s Smol Emuni movement who was joining by Zoom, added that “no matter what word you use to identify yourself — Zionist, non-Zionist, anti-Zionist — at the end of the day, so much of our tradition centers the holiness of the land of Israel. So one still needs to have a conversation about that. A third of our Mishnah is about keeping commandments in Israel.”
Toward the end of the panel, Khalil said he “almost got up and left” because he felt that there was not enough time devoted to talking directly about the devastation in Gaza.
The exchange rankled Berman, who hours later brought them back up in his address to the general session.
The rabbi, who famously led a megillah reading in jail after he was arrested in 1965 marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, expressed disappointment in the morning panelists, diverging from his assigned topic of the struggle over ICE immigration raids in Minneapolis.
“I did not appreciate the assertion that somehow the Jewish passion for Israel need not be heard,” Berman said. “I didn’t appreciate the sense that the theological root of Zionism is the source of horror and enmity and evil.”
Berman added his view that the “theological position within Islam is fundamentally at the root of the incapacity of the Islamic world to recognize the rights of Israel to exist as a Jewish state,” and that idea is “taught actively by imams all over the world, including here in the United States.”
During Berman’s comments, several attendees walked out of the sanctuary. One audience member held up a “BOOO” sign, scrawled on a piece of paper.
One of the conference organizers took to the mic to publicly push back on the esteemed speaker.
“We invited you to speak about immigration and you expressed other views. We appreciate hearing them. As organizers of Smol Emuni, we want to say that we respectfully disagree, but we’re very glad to have you here with us,” Rachel Landsberg, Smol Emuni’s program director, said to applause.
Berman, a graduate of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, had represented the Orthodox mainstream in a lineup that also featured Conservative rabbis and ex-Hasidic Jews, and had top billing on conference promotional materials.
Yet he had been an imperfect fit from the outset. In an interview after the conference, Smol Emuni executive director Esther Sperber said Berman had expressed prior to accepting an invitation to speak that he disagreed with the organization’s approach to Israel.
Sperber said she was honored that the rabbi — whom she described as “one of the luminaries of the Modern Orthodox world” — attended the whole day. But she took offense at his comments, which she felt painted all of Islam with a broad brush.
“Our intention was for the conference to focus on what we as Orthodox and observant Jews can do better,” Sperber said. “And I think our sense was that Rabbi Berman’s comments were more focused on what Palestinians can do better.”
Sperber added that the Smol Emuni movement is “not looking to include everyone in the Jewish world” but welcomes anyone who identifies with the religious left and supports universal human rights for Palestinians.
‘Whispered invitations’
While the clashes punctuated the gathering, other sessions more quietly worked through challenging topics, including ICE and immigration policy, grounded in the Torah’s call to protect the stranger; a screening of Children No More, a documentary about activists holding silent vigils in Tel Aviv for children killed by the Israeli military in Gaza; a conversation about “Zionism and Nationalism in the Haredi Community”; and a session about creating more nuanced Israel curriculum in Jewish schools.
Several speakers described the difficulty of challenging what can seem like a strong uncritically pro-Israel consensus in religious Zionist communities.
“Close friends in Israel — decent, religious, fair minded and highly educated people — sent me the following reading on Purim. I shudder as I read the words: ‘A bomb has been dropped in Tehran in your honor. Purim Sameach,’” Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller told the crowd. “What an obscene perversion. A sickness has overtaken the religious Zionist community.”
Some spoke despite potential repercussions in their communities, while others remained silent observers. One conference attendee declined to speak with the Forward, citing potential backlash from his Israel-aligned congregation if they learned he had attended.
Gershon Rosenberg, a junior at the modern Orthodox Jewish day school SAR Academy in the Bronx, said during the Israel education panel that he faced intense backlash from his community after writing an op-ed in his school newspaper arguing for a broader understanding of the conflict in Gaza. But he also found peers expressing support.
“A lot of people would reach out to me and say, ‘It was so meaningful for me to see someone else, a young person, show that I’m not alone, that there are a lot of other people out there in the Orthodox community who have these persuasions,’” Rosenberg said.
Rabbi Sharon Brous, who leads the unaffiliated Los Angeles synagogue Ikar, said a local Smol Emuni gathering, organized through “whispered invitations,” had helped attendees realize their views on Israel were more widely held than they had assumed.
Sperber, who grew up in Israel and now lives in New York City, said she felt like she was “living in a different reality” than her family due to their political differences.
Most troubling to her, she said, was leaders citing Jewish tradition to enact vengeance.
“The situation in Israel and the region is dangerous and combustible, but my other very deep, deep concern is not just the danger of war, but its corruption of our faith and our Judaism,” Sperber said. “Our tradition has been hijacked.”
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