Israel’s foreign minister chided US Vice President Kamala Harris for speaking out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of the country’s judiciary.
The exchange underscored tensions between the Biden administration and Netanyahu’s new government — the most right-wing and religious in Israel’s history — over the planned judicial overhaul.
Speaking at an Israeli embassy event in Washington on Tuesday, Harris had said that shared values are “the bedrock of the US-Israel relationship” and that democracies are “built on strong institutions, checks and balances, and, I’ll add, an independent judiciary.”
Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, told Kan public radio “I can tell you that if you ask her what bothers her about the reform, she won’t be able to tell you”. He said he believes Harris has not read the bills in question.
Biden has publicly expressed concern over the Netanyahu government’s plan to reshape the legal system, which sparked mass protests that continue weekly even after the proposal was put on hold. Amid the tensions, Biden has not granted Netanyahu a typically customary invitation to the White House since his election in 2022.
US Ambassador Tom Nides responded to Cohen saying that Harris only restated the government’s long-held position, according to Kan.
Read the article in The Canberra Times (AAP).