Right before Passover, it appeared as though Israel was at the precipice.
Protests over the government’s judicial reform were roiling the country every Saturday night. Rhetoric was escalating. Foreign investors were expressing unease.
Reliably gloomy Haaretz published a column titled, “Israel has entered the stage of destruction.” Foreign Affairs was only slightly more circumspect, titling its piece, “The end of Israeli democracy?” The London-based Jewish Chronicle warned, “Be prepared for the end of Israel as we know it.”
Then, on March 25, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – discomfited by what he called the “immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state” reflected in the debate’s impact on the military – called for the reform’s suspension in order to allow for dialogue.
Twenty-four hours later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired him – and the country erupted. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured spontaneously into the streets. The Israeli economy came to a standstill: the labor unions declared a nationwide strike, Ben-Gurion Airport shut down, Israeli embassies abroad closed their doors, and universities canceled all classes. Israel was in flames.
The next day, Netanyahu announced that he was, in fact, suspending the legislation to give “a real opportunity for real dialogue.” “There can be no civil war,” he declared. Talks between government and opposition representatives began under President Isaac Herzog’s auspices at his official residence.
With pressure mounting, Netanyahu held off sending Gallant official notification of his dismissal. The two appeared side-by-side at a painfully awkward pre-Passover photo op at an air force base on April 3. On April 10, in the middle of the holiday, Netanyahu reinstated Gallant.
A tense calm ensued as the country celebrated Passover and then the 'Yom's – Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, and the country’s 75th Independence Day. The negotiations continued.
Then, on June 14, another flareup: the coalition failed to name its representative for the Judicial Selection Committee, preventing the body’s formation. Opposition leader Yair Lapid and National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz jointly announced that they would be suspending the judicial reform negotiations. “No committee, no talks,” said Lapid.
In response, Netanyahu announced that the judicial reform legislation would recommence, but more slowly. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post published on June 22, he highlighted the reasonableness standard, which enables the High Court of Justice to strike down government decisions when it views two legal principles as being in conflict with one another to the point of being unreasonable. “That’s not reasonable,” Netanyahu said.
“We tried to have a consensus in the talks,” he told this paper. “We saw that we couldn’t get any minimal understanding. Rather than be stymied by that, I think we should just move in a more measured way.”
True to his word, Netanyahu and his coalition have been pushing a bill to constrain the court’s ability to apply the reasonableness standard. On Wednesday of this week, the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee approved the bill for final votes this coming Monday. If it passes, it will be the first part of the judicial reform to be made law.
Opponents of the reform have not stood idly by. A series of “days of resistance” – the most recent this past Monday – have snarled traffic and disrupted commerce throughout the country. Last week’s protests targeted Ben-Gurion Airport; this week saw protesters flood train platforms. Hundreds of IDF reservists have announced that they will stop reporting for reserve duty if the bill is passed.
We appear to be at the precipice once again
During his stirring and beautiful address to the United States Congress on Wednesday, President Isaac Herzog spoke about the “painful and deeply unnerving” debate rocking Israel.
“I will say to you, our friends, in English, what I have said to my people, to my sisters and brothers, in Hebrew,” he told the assembled legislators. “As a nation, we must find the way to talk to each other no matter how long it takes. As head of state, I will continue doing everything to reach a broad public consensus, and to preserve, protect, and defend the State of Israel’s democracy.”
Shortly after Herzog concluded his remarks, National Unity leader Gantz convened a press conference in which he promised to support the reasonableness bill if the current version is dropped and Netanyahu agrees to restart negotiations and commit to advancing the reform by consensus. “We can convene at the President’s Residence this evening,” he said (though they would have found an empty house, since Herzog was still in Washington).
“We hoped to hear a serious proposal; unfortunately we got another dictate,” Netanyahu’s Likud Party shot back in a statement. “If Gantz really wants dialogue and compromise, he’s welcome to the Prime Minister’s Office this very evening.”
Eyeroll. Groan.
Israelis are tired of these childish tit-for-tats. Successive public opinion polls over the past few months have found broad support for a negotiated compromise on judicial reform. It’s long past time for Israel’s leaders to seek one seriously.
On Thursday, this paper’s editorial lauded a compromise on the reasonableness standard drawn up by Jewish People Policy Institute President Prof. Yedidia Stern and former deputy attorney-general Raz Nizri. Today the pair lay out their proposal on these very pages.
“At this moment in time, compromise is vitally needed, and it is within reach,” they write. The two jurists lay out a proposal that preserves the reasonableness standard, while reforming it in a way that is, well, reasonable. Decisions made by the government largely would not be subject to judicial review, but decisions by individual ministers largely would be.
“Restrictions on the reasonableness standard would be enacted, but in a more limited way than currently contemplated,” write Stern and Nizri. “In exchange, the coalition would commit to shelving the other elements of its judicial reform plan for the rest of its term, unless it can achieve broader consensus – one that includes some of the opposition – through talks at the President’s Residence or elsewhere.”
Their plan is an important step in the right direction. Other compromises have been proposed, including by Herzog himself. None have stuck. That’s okay; no one has a monopoly on wisdom, and there are surely other ideas that have yet to be proposed. What is not okay is continuing this insanity, which is tearing this country apart.
In recent days, many commentators have linked this moment in our national life to the period on the Hebrew calendar: the Nine Days leading up to Tisha Be’av, which commemorates the destruction of the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem and the termination of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel for nearly two millennia.
The Talmud, in Tractate Yoma, states that although Jews engaged in Torah study, the fulfillment of mitzvot (religious commandments), and acts of lovingkindness during the times of the Second Temple, the Temple was nevertheless destroyed because there was also sin’at hinam – baseless hatred.
And boy, do we have sin’at hinam in spades these days.
The alarmist headlines of recent months are unhelpful; to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of either Israel or Israeli democracy are greatly exaggerated. The Third Jewish Commonwealth is not in danger of collapse.
But the tenor of the debate, the ferocity of the argumentation, and the bile suffusing our national conversation should give us all pause. This is not the country our founding fathers and mothers had in mind.
What Israel needs right now is for its most senior elected officials to exhibit the responsible leadership we expect of them, to put a halt to this march of folly, and to invest their collective energy in hammering out a compromise that will reform the judicial system without breaking it and will leave our social fabric intact.
The problem with brinkmanship is that you risk reaching the brink. We’re not there, and hopefully will never be, but this cannot continue. The time has come to step back, reflect, and chart a path forward – together.