When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife made their way in their convoy from their vacation on the Golan Heights to their favorite restaurant in the north, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, new economic indicators were published, giving the prime minister a good reason to be happy. The consumer price index was down; the inflation was slowing; unemployment was lower; and above all – despite the doom and gloom and the deceptive predictions – Fitch Ratings kept Israel's credit rating unscathed. Netanyahu resolved to record a video message celebrating the encouraging economic news even before he would sit down at the table.
If it was up to him, Netanyahu would have been engaged day and night – over the next several months – on this issue. But unfortunately, this is not what is going to happen. The protest movement agenda has continued to dominate his affairs – he is forced to condemn his Coalition members for lashing out at IDF and to handle the pressure by Haredim over their efforts to immediately pass a blanket exemption from military service, as well as to handle Shlomo Karhi's efforts to pass new legislation that would reform Israel's media outlets.
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The phrase "after the holidays" has never been less popular among Netanyahu's inner circle. As far as they are concerned, the holidays can continue indefinitely. This is what the sentiment is when a new Knesset session feels like the most threatening ordeal, perhaps even destructive. Netanyahu is facing a brutal dilemma.
There are three main vectors currently heading Netanyahu's way, none of which are going to wait for the Knesset's Winter Session: The Haredim, who want a military exemption bill passed; Simcha Rothman and Yariv Levin, who have Itamar Ben Gvir and Dudi Amsalem, who want judicial reform; and Karhi, who has pushed for media reform but has not been able to do this because of the Haredim who have made it contingent on the military bill,
The Haredim believe they have waited enough; they are no longer going to agree to delay the military exemption bill. They believe they have waited long enough- not just since the government's wearing in, but since much earlier, when they joined Netanyahu in the political wilderness when he was unseated by Naftali Bennett in 2021 and during the successive inconclusive elections before that. They believe they sacrificed a lot by not joining Benny Gantz and the Opposition, where they would have gotten what they wanted on a silver platter.
The way they see it, the entire rationale for sticking with Netanyahu all this period has been to pass the exemption bill, with a special override clause or another mechanism to shield it from being struck down by the Supreme Court.
Video: PM Netanyahu speaks about judicial reform / Credit: Twitter/Prime Minister's Office
Many in the Coalition are convinced that statements coming out of the Haredi parties that suggested the judicial reform was dead, were made by Shas leader Aryeh Deri. That was followed by a statement issued by Netanyahu and the Haredi parties that the reform was actually alive and kicking.
Even the Haredi party leaders know that this is the worst possible timing for bringing a military exemption bill to the Knesset floor, against the backdrop of domestic turbulence and the protest movement in full throttle, with the IDF dragged into this debate, and with the news coverage dominated by every small report on "religious coercion". On the other hand, there is no such thing as a good time to bring such measures forward. If not now, when?
The senior rabbis and the spiritual leaders in the Haredi world have been applying pressure as well. The heads of the Haredi parties are trying to compensate for the fact that they didn't insist on having the bill passed even before the government took office, just like Ben Gvir had his set of bills on law and order passed then. At the least, they believe they should have had the bill passed before the state budget was approved, because everyone knows that without a state budget, the government automatically falls and elections are held. Back then they could have used this to show that they have nothing to lose. But now the threat of toppling the government is no longer that easy to execute.
No longer waiting
Netanyahu sees everyone pulling their way, but if it was up to him, he would have preferred to have them all go away and have the entire legislative session this coming winter deal with the economy and the ongoing collaboration with the US over security matters and normalization with Saudi Arabia. He would do away with the judicial reform efforts, with the military exemption bill and the media reform measures, which have already led to some outlets joining forces to fight back. But despite his wishes, he cannot have his way, because of his stubborn Coalition partners.
This situation, in which the justice minister is unwilling to show flexibility on judicial reform and tells everyone - including in closed sessions – that he is not going to buckle under the pressure from the Supreme Court, the Opposition, or the protest movement is new to Netanyahu. Levin's stubbornness has had him go to the Haredim and ask them to let go of the military exemption bill for now so that the Coalition can focus on the judicial reform's key restructuring of the Judicial Selection Committee once the Knesset reconvenes. Levin believes that this issue is less charged than the military bill, which has been under immense criticism, including by many within the Coalition. The Haredim rebuffed Levin, saying something along the lines of, "We have waited enough; we gave you and Rothman ample time to work on judicial reform and put aside everything dear to us. Now it's our turn.
Deri has been the most adamant. Some in the Coalition are convinced that the statement by the Haredim saying that the judicial reform was dead originated with Deri. This ultimately led to a clarification that it was alive and kicking. Deri was not a signatory to that.
Netanyahu knows that he was wrong to assume that once the Knesset goes on its summer recess, he could quietly deal with the issues he cared most about. Now he finds himself dragged by others' agendas rather than lead. Those who have been setting the agenda almost exclusively are the protest movements, with a great deal of help from the media. They can at will have the airways dominated by talk of a constitutional crisis, exclusion of women, IDF refusers, as well as all and everything in between. They set the tone; decide what the talk of the town is, while the prime minister and the ministers have to be on the defensive for a protracted period, and deal with damage control.
Selective exclusion
Netanyahu and Gallant had to issue a statement backing Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and the top brass. The Opposition had blasted the two for not speaking up in their defense following the attacks by Coalition members. The assault was so aggressive to the point that some of the statements attributed to politicians were never actually uttered. For example, when Likud MK Dudi Amsalem attacked the IDF reservists and said that "insurrectionists should be treated like insurrectionists," he was slammed for having attacked Halevi himself.
To what extent is this well-coordinated campaign by the Opposition, the protest movement, and even senior defense officials – both before and after retirement? One example is a case in point:
The most aggressive attack on the IDF top brass this past week was not from Amsalem or other senior Coalition members. "The IDF is a part of a development that smacks of Nazi Germany," former IDF general Amiram Levin said, but this elicited no reaction whatsoever. The protest groups remained silent, the IDF senior officials didn't even seek an apology, and all the former officials filled their mouths with water. Even the IDF spokesperson, who just a week earlier had gone from one studio to the next and demanded that Coalition members show respect for the troops, could not muster enough strength to say something against Levin. Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who is usually very sensitive to anything about the Holocaust and Nazi comparisons, who only recently called on Netanyahu to fire ministers who attacked the chief of staff, stood idly by.
This is not the only kind of hypocrisy that has reared its head in recent days. The Opposition held a conference on the exclusion of women, but the main organizer – a Yesh Atid MK – forgot to ask party leader Yesh Atid why his wife LIhi carried out a women-only event in Tel Aviv.
The conference, which was organized under the pretense that "there are an increasing amount of events c that exclude women in the public sphere," forgot to mention that such events hurt women in Israel. For example, female singers who want to sing just in front of women can't do so because the Tel Aviv municipality has not let them do it; women who want to have the opportunity to bathe in natural springs without being around me, but can't do that because the attorney general has struck this down.
The recent incident where a bus driver forced young girls to cover their bare hands and sit in the back of the vehicle shocked the organizer of the conference, perhaps justifiably, but this was an act carried out by one person who is not even religious; unlike the government agencies that systematically hurt women with their decisions.
Who draws the line?
Even before the Knesset returns from recess, the political world is going to be simmering with legal and political drama as the country prepares for the Supreme Court to hear arguments and rule on the first set of bills passed in the judicial reform legislation package and other related measures. The attorney general has recently informed Justice Minister Yariv Levin that she was not going to represent the government in court, implying that her views on his bills are different and that she was in fact probably in support of the petition to strike down the reasonableness bill, which limits the court's ability to strike down government decision even if they are deemed unreasonable.
Her letter is nothing short of dramatic, perhaps even more than her view on the basic law the Knesset passed that prevents the removal of a prime minister on the grounds that he is incapacitated unless there is a clear medical condition. Her position is that it should not apply to Netanyahu, but in the case of the reasonableness law, she is outright against it. Ilan Bombach is going to represent the government.
"The Supreme Court has no source of authority to strike down the law," he says, "and the rules it has set on when there is a need to interfere with basic law legislative processes do not apply in this case. This is a very contested issue even within the court; there are quite a few judges who believe that the court must not intervene in government decisions on reasonableness grounds, and quite a few believe that the Knesset is a constitutional assembly on top of being a branch of government and that its affairs should not be meddled with."
He notes that "nothing in the law undermines the tenets of our democratic system. The opposite, in fact. Even Supreme Court justices have said in the past that the court has no authority to rule on the reasonableness of decisions because judges do not have an advantage over elected officials when it comes to judging whether something is reasonable or not. That is why it is sad that the attorney general refused to represent the state; after all, she is the government's legal counsel, not the court's. Her role is to advise the government and to represent it. This is not a case that requires such unusual conduct of having the attorney general forgo representation."
As for the question of whether the judges have a conflict of interest in dealing with a law that pertains to their authority, Bombach says that "it is beyond the pale to have one branch of government stronger than the other two to that point that it can effectively impose a veto and determine what a basic law's content is. Even Aharon Barak [former chief justice], who is considered the founder of the activist stream of the High Court of Justice, could never imagine in his wildest dreams that a basic law could be struck down, especially an innocent law that many justices support in principle.
"This is a first-of-its-kind law that sets the limits to what is justifiable for the Supreme Court. Should we tolerate a situation in which one body dictates to the legislative body what it can debate? Can one person lift himself using his shoelaces? It is very much like the story of how Baron Munchausen pulls himself out of a mire with his own hair. In a democracy, you cannot outsource the parliament's duties just because someone is not fond of certain legislation; you can't outsource it even to a council of sages comprising 15 people."
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