Are new Knesset proposals pushing Israel toward Hungary-style governance? - opinion

The Knesset returned to session this week, with some truly frightening legislation on the docket.

Three years ago, I interviewed a Hungarian constitutional law professor, Gabor Halmai. He had been in Israel to observe and admire our pro-democracy protests against the judicial “reform.” He told me then: “Israel is a model for Hungary. What is happening on the streets, the protests. The role of constitutional scholars, spreading the idea of constitutional democracy, the importance of protecting this democracy. Nothing similar has happened in Hungary in the past 13 years.

He told me he’d been brought to tears seeing ordinary Israelis demonstrating to protect what he feared Hungary had already lost.

The morning after Hungary’s recent election, I wrote to congratulate him. Viktor Orban’s “illiberal democracy” was over – despite Orban’s control of 90% of the media, and his effective political capture of both the constitutional court (in many respects, the model for Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s “reforms”) and the Election Commission (which Halmai had sat on until experts like him were replaced by political appointees).

Bennett is an excellent analogue for Magyar. In a country where, like Israel, truly left-wing parties are marginal, the most likely person to defeat Orban was a fellow right-winger, who agreed with Orban on the most widely supported issue – immigration – but who could make his campaign about the incumbent’s corruption, and assault on the rule of law and basic liberal freedoms.

Similarly, Bennett agrees with Netanyahu on Israel’s closest-to-consensus issue: security. In fact, his record is more consistently hawkish than Netanyahu’s. But he can go to the electorate and say: You can have that unapologetic willingness to take the fight to our enemies, without also granting the ultra-Orthodox exemption from army service and financing their economically ruinous lifestyle; without also appointing unqualified security officials because of their personal loyalty to the prime minister; without also having Prime Minister’s Office officials moonlighting for the Qatari government; without having every government decision assessed through the prism of whether it personally benefits the prime minister and his family; and with an independent commission of inquiry into October 7 at long, long last.

But in one important respect, when Israelis ask, “What can we learn from Hungary?” they are asking the wrong question. The question assumes Israel is in the same condition as Hungary. It isn’t. Yet.

Orban succeeded in transforming his country from a liberal democracy to a quasi-autocracy. Netanyahu has not succeeded in doing the same here, despite his best efforts. As written above, Hungarians marveled at our pro-democracy protest movement that effectively prevented the judicial overhaul from being implemented.

So the more pertinent question is: Do we want Israel to end up like Hungary? With a corrupt government ruining the economy, with the media almost entirely subservient to that government, with the courts also in the pocket of the prime minister and his allies, and with elections massively tilted in the favor of the incumbent?

And here's the really scary thing: it might happen before we have a chance to stop it at the ballot box. To return to how I began this piece, the new Knesset session opened this week with Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi planning an all-out assault on media freedom. A new bill would give the government significant control over broadcast media and news sites by establishing a new regulatory council, with a majority of members chosen by Karhi himself.

In a direct lift from Orban’s own media-control measures, this body would have the authority to levy fines against media companies. If this legislation passes quickly, the government will be able to exercise unprecedented control over how the broadcast and online media covers the election campaigns.

Karhi is a Likud minister. It’s worth recalling that Menachem Begin was a free speech absolutist. One more indication of just how far the Likud has shifted from its liberal roots.

And there’s one more “Orbanist” move that should gravely concern anyone who wants to keep Israel as a free society: the government’s proposal to split up the role of the attorney-general.

Now, there are good arguments for dividing up the attorney-general’s responsibilities, and ways of doing so that would preserve the attorney-general’s independence and his/her power to ensure that the rule of law applies to ministers no less than to ordinary citizens. But this is not what the government intends.

The bill would give the government the power to appoint and dismiss all three of the new positions that the AG role would be split into. For example, the new “prosecutor” position could decide to charge a minister (or prime minister) with a crime, and then simply be fired by the prime minister and replaced with someone who will cancel the decision. Likewise, the new “legal adviser” position could be fired and replaced with a yes-man if he/she gives advice the prime minister doesn’t like.