Israel’s law books

Lately it seems as if some of our elected representatives are competing to see who can put forward the bill that does the most to challenge and undermine Israel’s democratic foundations.

By ALONA VINOGRAD
Updated: OCTOBER 25, 2018 09:25
Israel’s Chief Justice Esther Hayut (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Israel’s Chief Justice Esther Hayut
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
For a variety of reasons, many legislative initiatives never make it to Israel’s law books. In the 20th Knesset for example, between April 2015 and March 2018, more than 5,000 private bills were proposed, of which only some 350 passed a preliminary reading in the plenum. Some bills are put forward by MKs and then set aside so that a more suitable time can be found to resubmit them. Others undergo a series of changes and modifications, to the extent that there is almost no similarity between the original bill and the law that is eventually passed. This is the game of politics, and it is entirely legitimate. But it would be a mistake to think that bills that are subsequently shelved or significantly changed have no impact. In fact, they can be extremely destructive. Lately it seems as if some of our elected representatives are competing to see who can put forward the bill that does the most to challenge and undermine Israel’s democratic foundations.
Among these have been legislative proposals that would extend the list of criteria for disqualifying applications for candidacy for Knesset membership; require nonprofit organizations receiving most of their funding from foreign states to declare this on court papers; restrict the public’s ability to petition the Supreme Court; and would change the seniority principle for the appointment of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (a proposal made just before decisions on judicial appointments were about to be made in order to put pressure on representatives of the Supreme Court). These bills and others were either not put to a vote, or were put forward with the knowledge that they wouldn’t get past the Ministerial Committee for Legislation. That is, the original list of bills which would impose restrictions on civil society, the Supreme Court, and on academic freedom were no more than an empty threat; yet even this threat comes with a price that cannot be ignored.
The introduction of a bill of this kind – seeking to harm the Arab minority in Israel, the independence of the courts, freedom of speech, or civil society organizations’ freedom of action – sparks a wrestling match between those seeking to advance the bill and those who oppose it. Sometimes this struggle brings with it endless Knesset committee hearings (as in the case of the Nation-State Law), and almost always involves aggressive and violent campaigns in the press and on social media, which often seem to serve the interests of Facebook itself and of media consultants more than those of anyone else in Israeli society, and which are designed solely to stimulate discord among various social groups. A prominent example of this phenomenon is the bill that became known as the “Muezzin Law,” which ostensibly addresses an issue of noise pollution even though this issue is already covered by existing legislation. Such legislative attempts, aiming to influence public discourse rather than change the law books, mark the point at which the political game begins to lose legitimacy and becomes merely a tool of control in the hands of the government.
Groups that find themselves under attack are forced to invest huge resources in fighting the offensive against them. The effort required to fight a bill harms the ability of these groups – whether human rights organizations or the courts – to engage in their regular work, and their portrayal as enemies from within who must be combatted strikes a blow at their legitimacy and the public trust they enjoy. Even if the bill put forward is subsequently shelved due to public opposition, the damage has already been done, and many democratic institutions fail to recover from the very fact that bills were targeted against them.
We would all like to live in a country in which our elected officials think carefully before placing legislative proposals on the public agenda; a country in which there are quotas for the submission of legislative proposals, and rules requiring due diligence beforehand. We would expect our elected representatives not to propose laws whose only goal is to delegitimize others. We would hope that they do not abuse the power granted them by the majority, and do not strike a blow at the legitimacy of the legislative process itself.
Till then, we can anticipate that many more bills will be proposed and then cast aside. The sense of an impending threat to democracy shared by many of us in recent years is rooted, at least in part, in these legislative proposals, which are damaging democratic discourse and Israel’s democracy.
Adv. Alona Vinograd is the director of the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions at the Israel Democracy Institute.