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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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Synagogue attacks were part of massive ISIS-inspired plot last week, FBI says
(JTA) — A 21-year-old man from Valencia, Pennsylvania, suggested poisoning food in synagogues as part of a mass attack in support of the Islamic State group last week, according to the FBI.
The suspect, Jonathan Kramer, said in an online forum using the pseudonym “Hamza Al Rashid” that “i wish to inject ricin or cyanide into places such as grocery stores inside water/food with a syringe, or going to food events, preferably synagogues and putting the chemicals in their food and drink…,” according to a sworn FBI affidavit.
The prospective poisoning was part of a broader plot of mass violence that included “repeated attempts to encourage and coordinate violence through encrypted platforms, such as advising others on attack methods, discussing chemical poisons, arson, vehicle attacks, drone delivery explosives and firearm based assaults,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Evanchec said at a press conference last week.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh said in a security update on Friday that no synagogue had been specified by the FBI. , “We are in close contact with our law enforcement partners and federal prosecutors, and if we learn of anything concerning, we will share that immediately,” the organization noted.
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg announced last Tuesday that Kramer was “preparing for a mass shooting that could have taken many lives, having already secured a rifle and approximately 190 rounds of ammunition for what he called his ‘mission.”
Efforts to reach Kramer’s public defender Jake Morrison were unsuccessful.
FBI agents arrested Kramer in a hotel parking lot in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said. They seized a semiautomatic rifle, five rifle magazines, a rifle bipod and scope, a total of 190 rounds of rifle ammunition and about 30 knives following a search of him, his house and his hotel room.
Kramer was charged with receiving a firearm and ammunition believing they would be used to commit terrorism. He appeared in court last Wednesday to waive a preliminary hearing, according to CBS News. A court date has not been set for Kramer’s next proceedings, the network reported.
Kramer had been on the FBI’s radar since 2023, when he was charged by Pennsylvania state authorities “for his role in a plot to commit a mass casualty incident” and sent to a juvenile detention facility, FBI special agent Gregory Battaglia said in a sworn affidavit.
Nearly eight years ago, 11 worshippers were killed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Proposed U.S. $24.3 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia advances
(JTA) — The State Department has approved a possible $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia — a move that would make the kingdom the second Middle Eastern country after Israel to have the world’s most powerful combat aircraft.
“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally,” the department said in a statement.
Israel wants the sale attached to a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, but that doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. However, there is a small chance that Congress could keep the sale from happening.
When President Donald Trump first confirmed that he was considering the sale last November, Israeli officials told Axios that while they don’t oppose the sale itself, they wanted it “to be subject to Saudi normalization with Israel.”
Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly brushed off the deal’s significance last fall, a security source at the time warned on CNN that the possibility of Saudi Arabia acquiring “the same capabilities” as Israel was “very concerning.”
The prime minister was more vocal in his opposition to a July announcement from Trump that he was weighing selling the advanced jets to Turkey as well, telling CNN that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is “not exactly a model ally of the United States.”
Israel has already purchased 50 F-35 jets, in two procurement rounds that occurred in 2016 and in 2017, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry. However, local media reports indicate that two of the 50 have yet to arrive, meaning that just 48 are on the ground – the same number of planes that the State Department has approved for Saudi Arabia’s potential purchase.
Israel would have many more F-35s than Saudi Arabia for the time being, because its Defense Ministry announced in 2024 that it would be procuring 25 more of the planes, slated to begin arriving in 2028. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry revealed that it would be procuring yet another squadron of the jets, although the quantity remained unclear.
Congressional approval is not assured; wariness of the Saudi regime, stemming in part from the state-sanctioned 2018 murder of a U.S.-based journalist in Turkey, crosses party lines.
The U.S. Arms Export Control Act requires the executive branch of the government to notify Congress regarding major defense equipment sales to most countries. Congress can then deem a country ineligible to participate in a sale through a joint resolution. The president can then veto the resolution, which Congress would need a two-thirds supermajority to override.
Additionally, U.S. law requires the president to ensure that Israel maintains “a qualitative military edge over military threats” when considering arms sales to other Middle Eastern countries. Israel, per the law, must be able “to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat” from both other nations and “non-state actors.”
“The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the military balance in the region,” the State Department said on Thursday. It called Saudi Arabia “a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” adding that the sale would help “deter current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense.”
The department maintained that not only would the sale improve Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities, but it would also boost “interoperability” with both U.S. forces and other players from NATO and the region.
As for the potential deal’s logistics, Saudi Arabia has requested 48 of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter Jets, as well as 49 Pratt & Whitney engines, according to the State Department.
The kingdom is also seeking to acquire other non-major defense equipment, such as cryptographic devices, precision navigation, secure communications, simple key loaders and support for electronic warfare databases, maintenance and personnel training.
Producing and delivering these planes can take many years.
Meanwhile, just a day before Trump’s announcement, The New York Times surfaced intelligence concerns that China could acquire F-35 technology by spying on Saudi Arabia or through its partnerships with the kingdom.
U.S. House Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois, warned in a statement on X that “Beijing has spent decades stealing American intellectual property” and that this deal could “help them do it.”
“Our own intelligence community is warning that it could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party,” Krishnamoorthi added.
The Biden administration reportedly ended a past F-35 deal with the United Arab Emirates — secured by the first Trump administration — due to similar concerns about the country’s connections to China, as well as to Russia.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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After outcry, Texas lieutenant governor says schools should teach Holocaust books ‘Night,’ ‘Anne Frank’
(JTA) — The lieutenant governor of Texas says his recent call for the state’s public schools to remove “over 2,000 titles” of “dirty, filthy and vulgar books” was not meant to include books about the Holocaust.
Dan Patrick’s statement, provided exclusively to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday, comes after a month of confusion following a press conference in which he and a conservative Christian activist threatened schools with potential loss of state funding if they did not comply with his directive to purge their libraries.
“I believe Texas students must learn about the Holocaust, and that includes reading books such as ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ and other books about the Holocaust,” Patrick told JTA, singling out two books on the removal list he had promoted – one of which, “Night,” that he previously explicitly called for removal from middle schools.
Patrick added that his initiative was “focused on age-inappropriate, sexually explicit books in public school libraries across Texas.” At his earlier press conference, he had directed viewers to an online list compiled by an activist group that features several books about the Holocaust and Jewish identity.
Patrick’s threats have teeth. In Texas, lieutenant governors are more powerful than in many other states, playing central roles in shaping the budget and determining the legislative agenda.
Patrick also appeared to walk back some of the harsher proclamations from his Aug. 19 press conference, at which the Republican had stated, “We’re coming for the books.”
“As the law states, local communities have the right to make their own decisions about their public school libraries,” he told JTA Friday.
The lieutenant governor, who is up for reelection this fall, appeared at the conference with Bonnie Wallace, the head of the activist group Recover America, and told viewers to “go to RecoverAmerica.com.” That group has circulated a list of more than 2,100 “Harmful Books in Libraries.” Its list, which it describes as “books with harmful, sexually explicit, and vulgar content,” includes more than a dozen titles of particular import to Jewish readers.
Recover America’s flagged books include both volumes of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a comic-book adaptation of Frank’s diary and Bernard Malamud’s novel of a blood libel “The Fixer” — all books that have been removed from school districts in Texas and other states in the past amid broader conservative-led library culture wars. In some cases those books were restored to the districts following public outcry, but spurred deeper dialogue about the state of Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness in public schools.
Patrick’s latest push would go much further than a handful of districts, affecting the more than 5.5 million students in public schools across the state.
One book of particular contention on Recover America’s list was “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s bestselling memoir of surviving Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which has been taught in schools for decades. After a Houston Chronicle story noted the book’s inclusion on the Recover America “harmful” list, Patrick initially doubled down on “Night,” saying that it was not appropriate for middle schools owing to its “violence.”
“If ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, were made into a movie, it would likely be rated R,” Patrick wrote on the social network X on Aug. 26. “‘Night,’ which includes depictions of graphic violence and the machine-gunning of babies, should not be available to sixth graders in middle-school libraries. High school is more age-appropriate.”
His tweet appeared to contradict the state’s own K-12 required reading list, passed this summer, which mandates that “Night” be taught in the eighth grade beginning in 2030.
Now, in response to questions from JTA, the lieutenant governor said he would defer to the Texas State Board of Education on the appropriate grade to teach “Night.”
“The State Board of Education decides the appropriate grade level for books and will determine whether ‘Night,’ by Elie Wiesel, is at the appropriate grade level,” Patrick told JTA in his statement.
He continued to insist that books in schools should be held to “FCC standards,” referring to the Federal Communications Commission, an agency that governs broadcasting content and does not regulate publishing.
The head of the Texas Holocaust, Genocide and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, a governor-appointed panel which advised the state on the inclusion of “Night” and other Holocaust texts on its required reading list, did not return a JTA request for comment.
In a statement, the Texas Educational Authority, which drafted the required-reading list, told JTA, “When Texas students learn about the Holocaust, they will be exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust. That is why the SBOE placed the book in 8th Grade to ensure age appropriateness for students.”
At the Emmys this week, when “The Librarians,” a documentary about librarians facing book removal threats, won an award, retired Texas librarian Carolyn Foote joined the producers on the stage and held up a copy of “Night” in protest.
“I felt like it was very symbolic to bring ‘Night,’” Foote, a subject of the film and a co-founder of the librarian activist group FReadom Fighters, told JTA. “Having read it, I just know the importance of not forgetting our past. And that’s part of Elie Wiesel’s whole legacy, is remembrance, and so it just felt very important for me to carry that book, coming from Texas.” Another librarian onstage for the win held up “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation.”
Elisha Wiesel, Elie’s son and chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, told JTA that “Texas deserves credit for recognizing that Holocaust education belongs in the eighth-grade curriculum.” Yet, the younger Wiesel suggested, Patrick’s concerns about the book’s violence were misplaced.
“‘Night’ contains violence because the Holocaust was violent; its purpose is not to shock young people, but to help them understand where hatred and indifference can lead,” he wrote in an email. “With context and guidance, students should not be shielded from this history. They should be equipped to confront it.”
Despite having directed viewers to Recover America’s book list during his press conference, Patrick’s new statement to JTA said, “I do not have a book list.” He pointed instead to a law passed in the state legislature in 2025 regulating school books that he said districts were required to follow.
Yet some districts in the state have removed every book on Recover America’s list from their own libraries out of fear of losing funding, Foote told JTA. While the list nominally contains a ratings system, many of the books do not have a rating.
Besides “Night,” “Maus,” “Anne Frank’s Diary” and “The Fixer,” other books about Judaism and the Holocaust on Recover America’s list of “Harmful Books” include:
- “Annexed,” a young-adult novel about Peter van Pels, who hid in the Amsterdam annex with Anne Frank
- “The Berlin Boxing Club,” a young-adult historical novel based on German boxer Max Schmeling, who helped young Jews during Hitler’s rise to power
- “Black, White and Jewish,” a memoir by Rebecca Walker, the mixed-race Jewish daughter of author Alice Walker
- “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” a nonfiction book analyzing the “caste systems” of Nazi Germany. “Caste” had been included on an earlier, Wallace-spearheaded list of books for removal from a Texas public library in a case that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear in 2025, allowing the removals to proceed.
- “Kasher in the Rye,” a memoir by Jewish comedian Moshe Kasher
- “Pride: the story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag,” a children’s picture-book biography of the pioneering Jewish LGBTQ legislator
- “Sophie’s Choice,” the bestselling Holocaust novel for adults
- “The Violin Maker’s Daughter,” a historical novel about a Jewish family of musicians during the Holocaust
- “White Bird,” a young-reader graphic novel about a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France
In response to JTA sharing a list of the above books, Patrick’s statement mentioned only “Night” and Anne Frank by name. The Recover America list is largely made up of romance and fantasy novels, many with an LGBTQ element, while also including classics such as “The Glass Menagerie” and “Cat’s Cradle” and some picture books for children.
Recover America did not immediately return a JTA request for comment Friday on Patrick’s new statement. Wallace, the group’s leader who has also appeared on Patrick’s podcast, previously told the Houston Chronicle that she had “thought long and hard” about including “Night” on her list.
She ultimately did so, she said, because “an eighth-grade student is 13 years old. Do they need to read about soldiers massacring, throwing up babies, and killing them with machine guns?”
She added, “It’s not to say this doesn’t happen in life. And the Holocaust was maybe the worst tragedy in the history of the world.”
For Cameron Samuels, a Jewish alum of Texas public schools and founder of the activist group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, such efforts do not help Jewish students.
“Non-Jewish people are deciding for us what’s best, and making this public policy,” Samuels said. “We can’t readily access these books and stories. And that makes students feel alone. It also means that our classroom peers are not learning authentic Jewish narratives.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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