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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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The post ‘The gun is on the table’: Both sides of Israel’s debate say that a constitutional crisis is coming appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds
(JTA) — The financial services company Credit Suisse had hundreds more bank accounts with Nazi ties than it had previously revealed, a new investigation reported this week.
The findings were discovered when independent investigators audited UBS, the Swiss bank that acquired Credit Suisse in 2023.
“What the investigation has found to date shows that Credit Suisse’s involvement was more extensive than was previously known, and it underscores the importance of continuing to engage in research efforts about this horrific era of modern history,” Neil Barofsky, a lawyer overseeing the inquiry, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Barofsky’s report found 890 accounts potentially linked to Nazis: 628 individuals and 262 legal entities.
The investigation also found that Credit Suisse provided support to the “ratlines” that enabled Nazis to escape Europe and enter Argentina, opening and maintaining accounts for the Argentine Immigration Office.
Specifically, Barofsky said in his testimony, Credit Suisse provided funds “to finance bribes, obtain fraudulent travel documents, and pay for living expenses and transportation for fugitives, including perpetrators of the Holocaust.”
Barofsky’s investigation into UBS also found multiple previously unreported instances of the forced sale of property owned by Jews during the Holocaust. It also found that Credit Suisse held accounts for the German foreign office during the Holocaust, which dealt with the deportations of Jews.
Last May, Argentina declassified more than 1,800 documents related to the ratlines at the behest of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named for the late Nazi hunter. Barofsky’s research into Credit Suisse’s involvement in the ratlines is ongoing, he said.
The findings represent a potentially explosive capstone to years of investigation into Credit Suisse’s Nazi ties.
Jewish organizations have long claimed that in addition to playing a key role in financially supporting Nazi Germany, Credit Suisse has held onto money looted from Jews long after the war. In 1999, the Swiss bank paid Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors a settlement of $1.25 billion in restitution for withholding money from Jews who had tried to withdraw their funds.
In 2020, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish advocacy group, alleged that the bank had also hidden information about its ties to Nazis who fled to Argentina.
The bank hired Barofsky the following year to investigate its record but fired him in 2022, angering U.S. lawmakers including Sen. Chuck Grassley, now chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2023, as the top Republican on the Budget Committee, Grassley charged that Credit Suisse was obfuscating its Nazi ties, saying, “When it comes to investigating Nazi matters, righteous justice demands that we must leave no stone unturned. Credit Suisse has thus far failed to meet that standard.” Barofsky was soon rehired.
Tuesday’s hearing grew heated when Barofsky said the bank was still interfering with his investigation. He argued that his investigation could not be completed without access to 150 documents related to a 1998 restitution settlement between UBS and Holocaust survivors, which Barofsky says may contain the names of specific account holders he is investigating.
Robert Karofsky, president of UBS Americas, alleged Tuesday that giving Barofsky access to those documents could violate attorney-client privilege.
“Materials from the 1990’s are not within the scope of the Ombudsperson’s oversight, which is meant to be focused on Credit Suisse’s history and World War II-era conduct,” Karofsky said.
Still, Barofsky said, his report will be incomplete without those documents.
“I will be unable to provide assurance in my final report that the investigation has truly left no stone unturned,” he said.
The post Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Former Moscow rabbi says he rebuffed proposal to convert a million Russians discussed in Epstein files recording
(JTA) — When newly released audio recordings revealed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussing mass conversion and selective immigration with Jeffrey Epstein, disgraced financier and the convicted sex trafficker, the reaction in Israel was swift and deeply political.
Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused Barak of seeking to “select” Jews for immigration and charged that Israel’s political left was trying to “replace the people” after failing at the ballot box — an echo of contemporary conspiracy theories about immigration that appear to have been treated as a serious idea at the time.
The recordings, released this week as part of the U.S. Justice Department’s latest disclosure under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, capture Barak in a wide-ranging conversation with Epstein, who died in federal custody in 2019. The audio appears to date to around 2013, when Barak — a longtime leader in the liberal Labor Party — was 71 years old and transitioning into the private sector.
In the recording, Barak argues that Israel should weaken the Orthodox rabbinate’s control over conversion and open the door to large-scale conversion as a demographic strategy.
“We have to break the monopoly of the Orthodox rabbinate — on marriage and funerals, the definition of a Jew,” Barak says. “Open the gates for massive conversion into Judaism. It’s a successful country. Many will apply.”
Over more than three hours, Barak speaks candidly about population trends in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, warning that without a two-state solution, Jews could lose their demographic majority.
“It will be an Arab majority,” Barak says of the territories. “It’s a collective blindness of our society.”
Barak also expresses concern about the growing proportion of Arab citizens within Israel, noting that Arabs made up about 16% of the population four decades ago and roughly 20% today. He contrasts that growth with the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population, which he says is expanding more rapidly.
As a counterweight, Barak proposes immigration, conversion and minority inclusion. He praises the Druze and Christian minorities as highly integrated and points to immigrants from the former Soviet Union as prime candidates for conversion.
“We can control the quality much more effectively, much more than the founding fathers of Israel did,” Barak says. Referring explicitly to immigration from North Africa, he adds: “They took whatever came just to save people. Now, we can be more selective.”
Barak lauds the post-Soviet aliyah of the 1990s, which brought more than 1 million Russian-speaking immigrants to Israel, and says the country could “easily absorb another million.” He recounts telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel about this idea and joking about mixed Russian-Israeli names in the military as evidence of rapid integration.
The remarks drew sharp criticism from Pinchas Goldschmidt, who spent more than three decades leading Moscow’s Jewish community before leaving the country after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In an interview, Goldschmidt said the recording echoed conversations he encountered repeatedly during his years in Russia.
“I spent 33 years in Moscow, and there was talk like this,” Goldschmidt said. “Not necessarily among the heads of the agencies dealing with aliyah, but among employees and officials who felt this was their opportunity to stop Israel from becoming a Levantine country.”
Goldschmidt said those attitudes occasionally surfaced in direct encounters with Israeli political figures. He recalled a meeting with former Israeli minister Haim Ramon, who asked whether Orthodox rabbinical courts could convert large numbers of non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
“He came to me with a number,” Goldschmidt said. “He mentioned 100,000.”
Goldschmidt said his response was categorical. “Halacha doesn’t speak in numbers,” he said, referring to Jewish law. “There is no number on the top and no number on the bottom. Halacha speaks about standards and conditions. If 1 million people are ready to convert according to Jewish law, then we will convert 1 million people. And if they are not ready, we will not convert even one.”
Goldschmidt said the meeting took place after Ramon had left government following a sexual misconduct scandal but emphasized that it was not a casual exchange.
“It was more than a conversation,” he said. “It was not a conversation over tea. If he came to see me officially, with a question like that on the table, then it meant something.”
For Goldschmidt, Barak’s claim in the recording that he discussed such matters with Putin was particularly striking. “Why do you have to speak to Putin about converting a million Russians?” he asked. “People can leave Russia without permission. The person he needed to speak to was me.”
Goldschmidt said Barak’s framing of conversion and immigration would be widely perceived in Israel as offensive. “Anyone from Middle Eastern backgrounds would hear this whole conversation as extremely racist,” he said. “And anyone who is traditional or religious would also find it very offensive.”
In his comments, Netanyahu also said Barak’s close relationship with Epstein proved that Epstein did not work for Israel or its intelligence services, saying it would make no sense for an Israeli asset to be closely associated with one of the government’s most vocal opponents.
Barak’s ties to Epstein — including repeated meetings years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction — have been reported previously, and there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Barak.
The post Former Moscow rabbi says he rebuffed proposal to convert a million Russians discussed in Epstein files recording appeared first on The Forward.
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Ex-Head of NYC Office to Combat Antisemitism Discusses Being Abruptly Fired by Mamdani, Replaced With Israel Critic
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, led by Moshe Davis, held its first meeting on July 17, 2025, at City Hall in New York City. Photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Moshe Davis was replaced this week as the executive director of the New York City Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and spoke with The Free Press about his firing, which came without notice, while also sharing a message for his replacement, liberal Zionist Phylisa Wisdom.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office announced on Wednesday that Davis was being replaced by Wisdom, 39, who recently served as the executive director of the New York Jewish Agenda. NYJA is made up of “liberal and progressive Zionists,” according to its website. The group has criticized Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip and opposes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. “NYC deserves a mayor who will stand up for Palestinians in the face of state-sanctioned violence,” Wisdom previously posted on X.
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism was established in May of last year by Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams.
Davis, 28, told The Free Press he was not told in advance that he was being replaced, and found out only after it was publicized online and in the news.
“I was reporting to work like I do every day … at some point, I get a text and then a tweet and then see an article that they have named a replacement for my position. Not something that was told to me in advance,” he explained. “At some point they came to my desk and said, ‘Let’s talk,’ and they were sorry for the way it was done. But they said they were looking to go in a new direction.”
“I’m a loud, proud Jewish person who walks with a kippah on my head,” he added. “A proud Zionist. Someone who takes their Judaism to heart and it means a lot to me and my family … And I think this administration maybe felt that was too much for them.”
Anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City increased by 182 percent in January during Mamdani’s first month in office compared to the same month last year, according to newly released statistics from the New York City Police Department (NYPD). There were 31 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the first month of 2026, which was more than half of all the hate crime incidents reported in January.
Davis told The Free Press this week that in the last month, he has been trying to push forward efforts to combat antisemitism in New York and protect Jewish New Yorkers but hasn’t “found much traction” from Mamdani’s office.
“You’re gonna put a new director in? Get to work. Jewish New Yorkers are on edge, are fearful of the rise of antisemitic incidents,” Davis said. “That’s what Jewish New Yorkers want to see: they want to see someone who cares about their concerns. If you can’t correctly understand where this hatred is coming, where this propaganda and [activism] is coming from, and how it effects Jewish New Yorkers, it’s gonna be a hard job.”
“I’m afraid if you’re giving too much leeway to propaganda and activism, Jewish New Yorkers are going to be targeted,” he added. “They’re going to be unsafe … that’s something that scares me.”
Wisdom said in a released statement that she was “honored and humbled” to be the new executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.
“New York City has long been a beacon of hope for the Jewish community,” said the Jewish Brooklyn resident. “We will continue to ensure that Jewish safety and belonging remains at the core of this administration’s vision for a more livable city. In a time of rising hatred and fear, I look forward to embracing this solemn responsibility — both to represent the diverse array of Jewish voices to City Hall in this critical moment, and to demonstrate the power of pluralistic democracy in the greatest city in the world.”
Mamdani’s office said that as head of the New York Jewish Agenda, Wisdom “successfully advocated for legislation in Albany to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate and testified before the New York City Council in support of increased funding for hate crime prevention.” Wisdom also previously worked in advocacy through the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center. She supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state but, like Mamdani, opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism, a reference tool for identifying antisemitic hate crimes that has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and governing institutions around the world.
Some Jewish leaders have expressed concern about Wisdom’s past work for Yaffed, an organization that pushes for more oversight of secular education in New York’s ultra-Orthodox yeshivas. Wisdom was Yaffed’s director of development and government affairs before joining NYJA in 2023.
“The leader of the Office of Antisemitism cannot have a contentious relationship with the Hassidic yeshiva community,” Yaacov Behrman, who heads public relations for the Chabad Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn, wrote on X in early January.
“When the office was created, I was part of the early conversations about its purpose: ensuring that Jewish New Yorkers feel protected and free to live openly and proudly,” he added. “And in New York, a large share of antisemitic hate crimes target Hassidic and Yeshivish Jews. It is difficult to understand how someone who has spent years publicly antagonizing yeshivas could build the relationships or provide the reassurance needed for the community most often targeted by antisemitic attacks. This is not politics. It is common sense.”
Those who support Wisdom’s appointment as the new executive director of the Office to Combat Antisemitism include US Rep. Jerry Nadler; New York City Comptroller Mark Levine; State Sen. Liz Krueger; former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; and Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.