Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, pushed through a law to weaken the judiciary this week in a divisive move that caused mass protests, prompted calls for a general strike and raised fears about the future of the country’s democracy.
Netanyahu, who leads the most right-wing government in the country’s history, had initially proposed a sweeping judicial overhaul. But he delayed the proposals in March in the face of protests, strikes, a slump in the polls, plunging foreign investment and unusually blunt criticism from the White House. Instead, he plans to introduce piecemeal changes, presumably hoping this might quieten the opposition.
But the first bill – which prevents the Supreme Court from overturning government decisions and appointments deemed “unreasonable in the extreme” – was met with unflinching public outrage. Thousands of military reservists said they would not report for duty, businesses said they would shut and unions and doctors said they would strike.
Following the vote, Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, promised to keep rallying the nation against the changes.
“This is the destruction of Israeli democracy,” he said. “We will not let them turn Israel into a broken, undemocratic country, which is run by hatred and extremism.”
Supporters of the judicial overhaul believe non-elected judges have too much scope to overturn government decisions.
Read the article by Jonathan Pearlman , The Saturday Paper’s world editor and the editor of Australian Foreign Affairs. in The Saturday Paper.