It would be interesting to see some polling. I have friends in Israel who are super involved in protest, and that’s all I hear when I talk to them. But I have also spent a lot of time hitchhiking or cycling in Israel, and that outrage just isn’t shared by most of the ordinary people I meet, whether they be non-religious, Orthodox, Haredim, or Druze, or whether they be a resident of Israel proper or a West Bank settler. I start to wonder if the outraged Israelis are a bit like the hipsters in my own country: loud on social media, nearly insignificant in the real world.
actually polling shows that like 67% of population against reforms.
even within likud voters, like 60% are against (likud used to be liberal-right party)
Ordinary people being complacent is more of a sign (and a root cause) of an autocratic country than not if you ask me. I live in Hungary and it's the same here.
Strongmen can get voted in and tilt the scales to stay in power. In the face of that, it is rational for the minority in disagreement to acquiesce, so I am not sure the causality runs in the direction you suggest.
It's a process. People put up with one overreach or blatant corruption here or there and ten years later they're stuck with a permanent mafia state. It's what you get when you have apathetic people who don't pay attention or take any part in politics. The crooks take over, which itself breeds more apathy ("it sucks but what can I do").
The "ordinary people" vote for this every four years.
Isn't the outrage very visible in the streets of Israel (recurrent mass-protests)? I consider that different than outrage limited to social media.
I'm not very familiar with the issue, but in any case, a majority rule that ignores strong oppositions from minority voters can be dangerous for democracies. It is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner (old saying, not mine).
If the actions of business aren’t material collectively, why would government care? We’re not talking hundreds of thousands of jobs, but more likely a few thousand. I’m sure it’s disappointing to discover you don’t have pull you thought you did as a small business community. Such is life. The counterparty with the least to lose usually wins.
If you think about now, you're right. If you look forwards and can say that some percentage of these companies might be giants in the future, then it's worth paying attention to.
If Israel loses its tech entrepeneurs that will be a very big deal for Israel. This is something like 18% of the economy and it's doubled over the last decade.
To be clear — the judicial reforms do not seem like a good idea, if for no reason other than the mass discontent about it. But there are plenty of functioning democracies where the judiciary is subservient to the elected legislature. Perhaps even most of them.
The problem these startups have is that the government has been democratically elected, but the demographics are swinging religious populists into increasingly permanent control.
That's democratic! But it's the consequence of ultraconservatives having 12 children when liberals have 2. Let's use a more precise term for what they don't like.
> The UK is traditionally thought to have one such system, as under the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty the UK Parliament is the supreme source of authority: whatever the democratically elected representatives decide upon is law, and if expressed in an Act of Parliament cannot be overturned by the courts.
When a Bill has been approved by a majority in the House of Commons and the House of Lords it is formally agreed to by the Crown. This is known as the Royal Assent. This turns a Bill into an Act of Parliament, allowing it to become law in the UK.
"The last time Royal Assent was refused was in 1707, when Queen Anne refused to assent to a bill to settle the militia in Scotland, and the last time the monarch made an in-person appearance to provide assent was in 1854."[1]
> Religion is older than democracy and will likely outlive it
Hard to say. I think religious indoctrination is harder to maintain over time in the face of technology. Eventually it will run out of shadow and won’t have enough compelling answers for life’s questions.
What modern equivalent is trying to answer life's real questions? Advertising? Big tech? Consumerism? Capitalism? I'm not religious but I have to admit at least they focus on what's important rather than buying stuff.
> But there are plenty of functioning democracies where the judiciary is subservient to the elected legislature.
true but there aren't a lot of functioning democracies where those reforms are being pursued by a leader who had to already abdicate his position as PM after being indicted for bribery and fraud, while also still being subject to more trials.
If someone like that starts to question the autonomy of the judiciary democracy isn't the word I'd pick for it. Context does matter
Your analysis is wrong.
From a democratic majority point of view, the current government had a very narrow majority(49.9% of cast votes) but since then it lost in all polls almost 15% of its support. The majority of Israelis clearly oppose the legistlation, and they are very very angry about it.
So why would a democratic government insist on passing laws that cost it its chance to win the election and are going to be overturned by the next government, and risk a heavily antagonistic policy against the current coalition's interests, by the next likely govermnent?
In a democratic framework it makes no sense. The only way it could make sense is if the current coalition is planning to break the democratic system, and engineer unfair elections, and unfair political system, like in Turkey and Hungary.
And all the coalition's rethoric and other actions hint in this way like a giant flashing neon sign the size of a skyscrapper.
So as pretty as your theory may sound this is a completely different scenario.
you actually give too much credit to coalition with regards to long term planning. It comes to serve their immediate goals, which are interfered with by supreme court :
- supreme court been standing in the way of multiple laws that tried to free from army yeshiva students because it violates principle of equality
- supreme court tends to stand in a way of mid/low level corruption in form of appointing to different professional positions in ministries and state owned companies people without any qualification (the only qualifications been relatives or "mandate harvesters")
- judicial advisors to government/ministries who can prevent doing illegal/stupid things
religious parties want to free their students from conscription. for coalition to stay in place they need votes of religious parties. right in general been unhappy with a supreme court for many years and for past 15 years or so they claimed that it doesn't represent population.
right now stars got aligned and they decided to legalize laws in order to take some power from supreme court / select their own judges in order to advance their agenda.
it's as simple as that.
yes, it may lead to unfair elections/etc, but it's just immediate interests of involved parties
Our democracy has one house and no oversight other than judiciary. Once you handicap judiciary the current government can do literally anything.
E.g. in the US the president appoints the judges but the senate has to confirm. The congress holds the money and war declaration. We don't have any of that separation so one crazy party (which we have right now) can literally do anything with no oversight.
Pro-business only when it's run by them and their friends. There are plenty of examples from Nazi-Germany and modern day Russia where businesses had their existing owners/management replaced by party members/political insiders.
I remember reading about one case where a small busines owner's establishment was vandalized because people wrongly thought he was a jew. His reaction was to clear up the perceived misunderstanding by joining the party. It actually turned out to be profitable for him at first because of the connections he made, but, he was also obliged to continue working with them as well. Even when he didn't want to, because he owed his success to party. The whole thing read like a mafia story.
The country is neither fascist nor a dictatorship.
However, the legal overhaul does curtail the court's ability to assert a more libertarian, liberal agenda. The government is pushing a religious agenda that will change the nature of the country, and that causes significant consternation to the largely secular population that makes up the hi-tech nation.
No but its moving there, you don't need to be political expert to see it. Its also not a matter of past few months. Its a country in quite an unique situation which I don't fully comprehend so can't comment much, but West bank situation is beyond sad and I don't see any hope for improvement.
How is it moving there? By making supreme court justices be appointed by elected officials (like most other democracies) as apposed to being a self selecting group.
Its missing two salient points to be fascist: the myth of national rebirth and the accusations against 'internal enemies' (although it seems this point is missing a bit less).
Still, Israel is about as authoritarian as France/Hungary and a bit less than Turkiye. Hardly the worst but still.
If you listen to political rhetoric from the ruling party and the far right coalition parties, anyone who doesn't agree with them, their crazy ideology or sing high praises to the supreme leader, is a traitor. This has been the case for a decade now, getting worse and worse. How long before they pass "anti-traitor" laws, making political dissent illegal? With the supreme court unable to protect citizen rights, there is literally nothing to stop such laws.
But judging from some comments here, that's a "liberal agenda".
Yes, I sort of know (that what I heard from an Israeli traveller in Lisbon). That's why I said 'although it seems this point is missing a bit less', but it was poorly formulated (english is hard sometimes).
It should go without saying that the 5 million Palestinians living in (Israel+Palestine), who make up 30% of the combined population, did not live in a democracy even before these changes.
That isn't accurate. 2.6M are Israeli citizens, they vote etc. Discriminated, yes. But there are laws against that and they are enforced.
3M are in the occupied territories which are technically not a part of Israel so they "technically" don't live in Israel. This is terrible I agree. But this goes both ways. Thanks to the fact that they're not a part of Israel they can become an independent state at some point.
In fact, a lot of what's going on right now is because of the rift within Israeli society which is torn apart about this whole mess.
I'm not diminishing the plight of the Palestinians, but their situation is not a sign that Israel isn't/wasn't a democracy. It is pretty easy for democracies to end up abusing a minority of their citizens. That is one of the central flaws of democracy, tyranny of the majority.
There are some countries (I guess in EU) that make some plans to try to create offerings to move Israeli startups to their countries. Presentations circulated a couple of months ago, those are a couple of snaps that I made https://imgur.com/a/nfxedGB
> There are some countries (I guess in EU) that make some plans to try to create offerings to move Israeli startups to their countries.
Be very careful about the EU. There's a reason there's only one big software company, SAP, and that their product both sucks fat balls and their market cap is still tinier than tiny compared to the SV usual suspects.
The EU is typically not a welcoming environment for entrepreneurs. Taxes and paperwork are through the roof and god forbid you succeed for the rich are nearly universally hated.
The latest development is that although the EU has no fiscal competence the EU Commission will draft a rule so that a yearly tax on wealth shall be imposed in every single EU country. At first it was supposed to be a yearly tax on those worth more than $50m but now it's already changed to "tax the 1%" (which is a lot of people). The goal of the tax is to bring in more revenues annually than the entire yearly budget of the UE (which represent a sizeable portion of each EU country's GDP): I did the math and it's pure insanity.
Where the next stage is a petition of one million signatures from ordinary people, after which the commission must "react", which can include telling them they're not interested.
No, its more like "If they remove the Supreme court and install political puppets, I'm moving from the US". My example doesn't really work though cause the US supreme court has always been filled by political puppets but for argument's sake assume that wasn't always the case.
The Israeli government isn't proposing to remove the supreme court but rather to limit it's power of judicial review over legislation. That would make it similar to how other parliamentary systems such as the UK operate. I'm not Israeli and don't have an opinion on this issue but let's at least be clear about what's actually happening.
The difference being that other parliamentary systems have many more checks and balances, whereas Israel only has just one: the supreme court. Removing or "limiting" it is akin to making Israel a de facto dictatorship.
A constitution, a supermajority requirement for passing/changing “base laws” and/or constitutional amendments, multiple chambers of legislature, etc. none of that exists in Israel. The parliament and the elected government is one and the same, there is no constitution and “base laws” can pass with a simple majority. The only judicial check on these laws is the supreme court.
The impression I've gotten talking to tech folks in Israel is that this is very serious, possibly an issue of survival for major tech firms. It's like having your entire manufacturing business based on China when there's serious talk of war.
Extrapolating a bit (and this is just me speculating), my guess is that the moves are happening early due to fear of a last-mover disadvantage. If you sit tight while everyone else heads for the exit, the door might be closed when you get there.
Goes unmentioned (of course) in the article, but I wonder how much of the massive drop in investment could be due to the BDS movement and the general worsening situation of the Palestinians, even before Bibi tried to rig the Supreme Court.
You said it was just a bunch of “broke college students protesting”. You are completely wrong, but you truly “show your a$$” by making a remark like that about NOLA. Many other cities support BDS, especially internationally where there is more freedom of speech on this issue, including Dublin.
To my understanding BDS is effectively neutered in the US.
Israel lobby (AIPAC, DMfI) has spent hundreds of millions defanging any left-based dissent to Israeli policies and pushing for candidates that s don’t dare to say anything about Palestinians much less all the money sent to Israel.
Isn't it like 38 states? That's a lot more than 'a few'.
> and the Constitutionality is dubious.
And yet so many states have it. What's troubling is that so many of our politicians ( national and state ) openly support such an unconstitutional and anti-american law. Not to mention the media. China and russia's like "I'll have what Israel is having'.
For folks uninformed about Israel's judicial reforms, the short of it is Israel doesn't have a constitution, resulting[0] in decades-long ambiguity about the powers granted to the judicial and legislative branches of government.
When Israel was created anew in 1948, its Declaration of Independence implied there would be a constitution, but this was delayed as Israel was immediately invaded by several nations.
Eventually when a ceasefire was reached, politicians couldn't agree on what should go into the constitution. And without a constitution, the balance of power between legislature and judicial branches was never clearly defined.
It's in this backdrop the judicial reform proposal takes the stage. It reduces the power of Israel's Supreme Court by dictating what type of laws the court can and cannot strike down. It grants more power to the elected members of the Knesset, rather than unelected judges.
To describe it as "not a democracy anymore" is wildly sensational and inaccurate. (And I say that despite personally opposing the reforms for other reasons.)
while i in general agree with you, this part is problematic
>It's in this backdrop the judicial reform proposal takes the stage. It reduces the power of Israel's Supreme Court by dictating which laws the court can and cannot strike down. It grants more power to the elected members of the Knesset, rather than unelected judges.
In Israel there is no proper separation of power. Legislative and executive are essentially same . Judical branch is the only check and balance available in Israel. Also in reality Supreme Court stroke down in last 30 years only 22 laws (or some parts of them), and mostly because they were conflicting with pre-existing laws. This doesn't show "extreme power" of Supreme Court, but stupidity of combined legislative and executive branches that write bad laws.
To be clear, the people claiming Israel won't be a democracy anymore if these reforms pass aren't the CNN writers or outsiders - it's the Israeli people who are against these reforms.
So it might be sensational and inaccurate, but that's the existing rhetoric in Israel.
I do think the rhetoric is correct, btw, for sure directionally (and probably just fully correct). The prime minister is literally copying playbooks from other countries that have turned into dictatorships.
Also, the only reason to make such a huge mess in order to pass these reforms is if these reforms are really important for you - and the religious right that is pushing these reforms are making it very clear why they want them.
There's much more nuance to it. The supreme court in Israel did not intervene in laws at all until 1995 (with a single exception of a law contradicting a requirement of 61 majority).
Then in 1995, in Bank hamizrachi verdict [0], the supreme court declared it has the authority to overturn regular laws according to basic laws, including basic laws which were legislated with 32-20 majority (out of 120 seats). The supreme court declared that the only thing required for a law to be constitutional is the string "basic law" in its name. (That this terrible idea took 30 years to blow up is an achievement).
Over the years, the supreme court had decided to intervene in things which are the open wounds of Israeli society. These include the issue of Haredim recruitment to the army (where the supreme court had cancelled many laws that seeked a resolution, from both sides of the political aisles), issues of religion and state (the last leftist coalition had fallen as a direct result of an intervention of the supreme court with Hametz laws, leading to the resignation of Idit Silman).
A bit like how the U.S. supreme court intervention into abortions has led to politization of the court, and into heavy pressure from Christians to pick "pro life" judges that eventually resulted in overturning the abortion verdict, we're seeing a similar dynamic playing out where supreme court preventing resolution of a political - religious conflict leads to politization of the court and to religious people seeking to pick judges.
My personal opinion is that the supreme court should've stayed out of this mess so that we wouldn't reach this point. I don't support politicization of the court but the court also bears a responsibility.
Politicians should resist the temptation intervene with the court, and the court should resist the temptation to intervene in politics.
And this is especially true in a country where the supreme court wasn't granted its authority from any constitution, but from its own verdicts.
>To describe it as "not a democracy anymore" is wildly sensational and inaccurate. (And I say that despite personally opposing the reforms for other reasons.)
On a technical level it's wildly sensational and inaccurate. On a political level it's what a lot of the supporters of the judicial reform bills have been saying.
> But it’s his own government – not the Israeli Palestinian conflict – that worries Amit most. The judicial overhaul and the uncertainty, disruption and risks that come with it, are forcing him to shift Tipalti’s money and talent overseas, he says.
I find travel advice sites to be a good indicator of how well a country is doing. Check out the gov.uk [1] Israel travel advice, for example.
> Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including places visited by foreigners including the Old City in Jerusalem, on public transport, and in busy public spaces. See Terrorism
> In Israel and the West Bank, there is a risk of violent incidents, including stabbings, shootings, arson, vehicle rammings and stone throwing attacks on people and vehicles.
Nobody likes to live in a state (no pun) of constant fear. A legit government should be able to de-escalate violence.
Well, trading off democracy for stability is pretty common in the area. Israel is currently falling out with their last few Western allies. Check out their neighboring countries Wikipedia pages to guess what happens next.
I had in Israel visitor to office from Tampa during similar wave of violence. After his visit he said that it's safest that he ever felt and that he could worry free roam streets at night and teens were walking outside at midnight blew his mind
this is along the lines of mistaking climate for weather. yes there are areas in israel where you do not necessarily want to be a tourist or visit, but the vast majority of the country is perfectly safe and I'd argue (being from there, and going back nearly every year) it's far safer on average than anywhere I've lived in LA / the US
and this is all WITH the place being currently in a state of chaos and PRO democracy protests.
> I'd argue (being from there, and going back nearly every year) it's far safer on average than anywhere I've lived in LA / the US
Israel is much safer overall than the US.
Neither Israel nor its American proxies and supportive lobbying groups particularly are big on highlighting that fact, since the misperception is politically useful.
IMHO in The Gatekeepers [0] six former heads of Israeli internal security service Shin Bet in 2012 more or less predicted the current turmoil in Israel.
I saw from their eyes how our Israeli leaders really don’t want to solve the Israel-Palestian problem. … I think the Palestinian leaders suffer from the same horrible disease.
The few places with growing economies and low(-ish) taxation that flavor wealthy and ambitious people: US, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore, etc
>Private investment — mostly from venture capital firms — in Israeli startups in the first six months of 2023 stood at $3.9 billion, the lowest since 2018, according to SNC.
$3.9 billion in venture capital investments during the first six months of 2023 is completely obscene for a country the size of Israel.
I can only dream about Danish startups pulling that kind of money.
100 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadI wonder if politicians will ever learn that turning countries into fascist dictatorships is bad for business.
The "ordinary people" vote for this every four years.
I'm not very familiar with the issue, but in any case, a majority rule that ignores strong oppositions from minority voters can be dangerous for democracies. It is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner (old saying, not mine).
The problem these startups have is that the government has been democratically elected, but the demographics are swinging religious populists into increasingly permanent control.
That's democratic! But it's the consequence of ultraconservatives having 12 children when liberals have 2. Let's use a more precise term for what they don't like.
I'd be interested in learning about any examples. I don't know enough about global politics to even hazard a guess
https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-judicia...
> The UK is traditionally thought to have one such system, as under the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty the UK Parliament is the supreme source of authority: whatever the democratically elected representatives decide upon is law, and if expressed in an Act of Parliament cannot be overturned by the courts.
And maybe more broadly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty. But it seems like it's sort of on the way out everywhere.
https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/role/relations-with-othe...
Royal Assent
When a Bill has been approved by a majority in the House of Commons and the House of Lords it is formally agreed to by the Crown. This is known as the Royal Assent. This turns a Bill into an Act of Parliament, allowing it to become law in the UK.
[1] https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2013-09-17/uni...).)
Religion is older than democracy and will likely outlive it
Hard to say. I think religious indoctrination is harder to maintain over time in the face of technology. Eventually it will run out of shadow and won’t have enough compelling answers for life’s questions.
true but there aren't a lot of functioning democracies where those reforms are being pursued by a leader who had to already abdicate his position as PM after being indicted for bribery and fraud, while also still being subject to more trials.
If someone like that starts to question the autonomy of the judiciary democracy isn't the word I'd pick for it. Context does matter
So why would a democratic government insist on passing laws that cost it its chance to win the election and are going to be overturned by the next government, and risk a heavily antagonistic policy against the current coalition's interests, by the next likely govermnent?
In a democratic framework it makes no sense. The only way it could make sense is if the current coalition is planning to break the democratic system, and engineer unfair elections, and unfair political system, like in Turkey and Hungary. And all the coalition's rethoric and other actions hint in this way like a giant flashing neon sign the size of a skyscrapper.
So as pretty as your theory may sound this is a completely different scenario.
- supreme court been standing in the way of multiple laws that tried to free from army yeshiva students because it violates principle of equality
- supreme court tends to stand in a way of mid/low level corruption in form of appointing to different professional positions in ministries and state owned companies people without any qualification (the only qualifications been relatives or "mandate harvesters")
- judicial advisors to government/ministries who can prevent doing illegal/stupid things
religious parties want to free their students from conscription. for coalition to stay in place they need votes of religious parties. right in general been unhappy with a supreme court for many years and for past 15 years or so they claimed that it doesn't represent population.
right now stars got aligned and they decided to legalize laws in order to take some power from supreme court / select their own judges in order to advance their agenda.
it's as simple as that.
yes, it may lead to unfair elections/etc, but it's just immediate interests of involved parties
Our democracy has one house and no oversight other than judiciary. Once you handicap judiciary the current government can do literally anything.
E.g. in the US the president appoints the judges but the senate has to confirm. The congress holds the money and war declaration. We don't have any of that separation so one crazy party (which we have right now) can literally do anything with no oversight.
Small business though, it was better to be friend with small local powers.
However, the legal overhaul does curtail the court's ability to assert a more libertarian, liberal agenda. The government is pushing a religious agenda that will change the nature of the country, and that causes significant consternation to the largely secular population that makes up the hi-tech nation.
Still, Israel is about as authoritarian as France/Hungary and a bit less than Turkiye. Hardly the worst but still.
But judging from some comments here, that's a "liberal agenda".
3M are in the occupied territories which are technically not a part of Israel so they "technically" don't live in Israel. This is terrible I agree. But this goes both ways. Thanks to the fact that they're not a part of Israel they can become an independent state at some point.
In fact, a lot of what's going on right now is because of the rift within Israeli society which is torn apart about this whole mess.
Be very careful about the EU. There's a reason there's only one big software company, SAP, and that their product both sucks fat balls and their market cap is still tinier than tiny compared to the SV usual suspects.
The EU is typically not a welcoming environment for entrepreneurs. Taxes and paperwork are through the roof and god forbid you succeed for the rich are nearly universally hated.
The latest development is that although the EU has no fiscal competence the EU Commission will draft a rule so that a yearly tax on wealth shall be imposed in every single EU country. At first it was supposed to be a yearly tax on those worth more than $50m but now it's already changed to "tax the 1%" (which is a lot of people). The goal of the tax is to bring in more revenues annually than the entire yearly budget of the UE (which represent a sizeable portion of each EU country's GDP): I did the math and it's pure insanity.
The EU is overall a place that'll bleed you dry.
Where the next stage is a petition of one million signatures from ordinary people, after which the commission must "react", which can include telling them they're not interested.
A petition. That can then be shot down.
Extrapolating a bit (and this is just me speculating), my guess is that the moves are happening early due to fear of a last-mover disadvantage. If you sit tight while everyone else heads for the exit, the door might be closed when you get there.
Broke college student boycotting you doesn’t do much
This is an internal conflict related to the 3 factions of Israeli Jews colliding.
Israel lobby (AIPAC, DMfI) has spent hundreds of millions defanging any left-based dissent to Israeli policies and pushing for candidates that s don’t dare to say anything about Palestinians much less all the money sent to Israel.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/21/top-us-court-refuse...
Isn't it like 38 states? That's a lot more than 'a few'.
> and the Constitutionality is dubious.
And yet so many states have it. What's troubling is that so many of our politicians ( national and state ) openly support such an unconstitutional and anti-american law. Not to mention the media. China and russia's like "I'll have what Israel is having'.
When Israel was created anew in 1948, its Declaration of Independence implied there would be a constitution, but this was delayed as Israel was immediately invaded by several nations.
Eventually when a ceasefire was reached, politicians couldn't agree on what should go into the constitution. And without a constitution, the balance of power between legislature and judicial branches was never clearly defined.
It's in this backdrop the judicial reform proposal takes the stage. It reduces the power of Israel's Supreme Court by dictating what type of laws the court can and cannot strike down. It grants more power to the elected members of the Knesset, rather than unelected judges.
To describe it as "not a democracy anymore" is wildly sensational and inaccurate. (And I say that despite personally opposing the reforms for other reasons.)
[0]: https://allisrael.com/historical-backdrop-for-the-controvers...
>It's in this backdrop the judicial reform proposal takes the stage. It reduces the power of Israel's Supreme Court by dictating which laws the court can and cannot strike down. It grants more power to the elected members of the Knesset, rather than unelected judges.
In Israel there is no proper separation of power. Legislative and executive are essentially same . Judical branch is the only check and balance available in Israel. Also in reality Supreme Court stroke down in last 30 years only 22 laws (or some parts of them), and mostly because they were conflicting with pre-existing laws. This doesn't show "extreme power" of Supreme Court, but stupidity of combined legislative and executive branches that write bad laws.
So it might be sensational and inaccurate, but that's the existing rhetoric in Israel.
I do think the rhetoric is correct, btw, for sure directionally (and probably just fully correct). The prime minister is literally copying playbooks from other countries that have turned into dictatorships.
Also, the only reason to make such a huge mess in order to pass these reforms is if these reforms are really important for you - and the religious right that is pushing these reforms are making it very clear why they want them.
Then in 1995, in Bank hamizrachi verdict [0], the supreme court declared it has the authority to overturn regular laws according to basic laws, including basic laws which were legislated with 32-20 majority (out of 120 seats). The supreme court declared that the only thing required for a law to be constitutional is the string "basic law" in its name. (That this terrible idea took 30 years to blow up is an achievement).
Over the years, the supreme court had decided to intervene in things which are the open wounds of Israeli society. These include the issue of Haredim recruitment to the army (where the supreme court had cancelled many laws that seeked a resolution, from both sides of the political aisles), issues of religion and state (the last leftist coalition had fallen as a direct result of an intervention of the supreme court with Hametz laws, leading to the resignation of Idit Silman).
A bit like how the U.S. supreme court intervention into abortions has led to politization of the court, and into heavy pressure from Christians to pick "pro life" judges that eventually resulted in overturning the abortion verdict, we're seeing a similar dynamic playing out where supreme court preventing resolution of a political - religious conflict leads to politization of the court and to religious people seeking to pick judges.
My personal opinion is that the supreme court should've stayed out of this mess so that we wouldn't reach this point. I don't support politicization of the court but the court also bears a responsibility.
Politicians should resist the temptation intervene with the court, and the court should resist the temptation to intervene in politics.
And this is especially true in a country where the supreme court wasn't granted its authority from any constitution, but from its own verdicts.
[0] https://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A4%D7%A1%D7%A7_%D7%93%D7... (you'll need Google translate)
Is that a reference back to the US since the US Constitution doesn't actually allow for the Supreme Court to review laws for consitutionability?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_review_in_the_United_...
On a technical level it's wildly sensational and inaccurate. On a political level it's what a lot of the supporters of the judicial reform bills have been saying.
I find travel advice sites to be a good indicator of how well a country is doing. Check out the gov.uk [1] Israel travel advice, for example.
> Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including places visited by foreigners including the Old City in Jerusalem, on public transport, and in busy public spaces. See Terrorism
> In Israel and the West Bank, there is a risk of violent incidents, including stabbings, shootings, arson, vehicle rammings and stone throwing attacks on people and vehicles.
Nobody likes to live in a state (no pun) of constant fear. A legit government should be able to de-escalate violence.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
What does this even mean? I would argue Israel is safer now than at almost any other point in the last few decades.
and this is all WITH the place being currently in a state of chaos and PRO democracy protests.
Israel is much safer overall than the US.
Neither Israel nor its American proxies and supportive lobbying groups particularly are big on highlighting that fact, since the misperception is politically useful.
I saw from their eyes how our Israeli leaders really don’t want to solve the Israel-Palestian problem. … I think the Palestinian leaders suffer from the same horrible disease.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gatekeepers_(film)
Where are all these people going?
It's just making me start to think the idea of brain drain is mostly leaping on any minor data point to make your point.
The few places with growing economies and low(-ish) taxation that flavor wealthy and ambitious people: US, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore, etc
$3.9 billion in venture capital investments during the first six months of 2023 is completely obscene for a country the size of Israel.
I can only dream about Danish startups pulling that kind of money.