(Bloomberg) -- Daily threats to fire the attorney general. Stopping the scheduled appointment of a chief justice because he’s a liberal. Replacing legal overseers in government ministries. Restricting who runs for office in a way more likely to affect Arabs.
Fresh off a series of military victories, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is returning to his pre-war agenda of weakening the judiciary and boosting executive power. It had been shelved after Hamas’ attack 14 months ago that triggered a multi-front war.
But with Hezbollah and Hamas crippled, Iran damaged and Syria collapsed, his government’s focus is shifting back to limiting power of traditional elites. It says the goal is to strengthen democracy. Opponents say if the policies are instituted Israel will slide into an autocracy whose most productive citizens will leave.
“I am deeply concerned about a dramatic wave of legislation that touches the very foundations of our democracy: courts, law enforcement, civil rights, and the independence of our media,” said President Isaac Herzog at a state ceremony this month. His job places him above partisan politics, making the criticism all the more stinging.
Until the Hamas attack, these plans were slowed by massive protests led by Israel’s hi tech and business leaders worried about democratic norms. This led to the shekel slipping, warnings from ratings agencies and reduced interest from foreign investors.
At the height of the last judicial overhaul attempt, the shekel fell by 8.5%, making it one of the worst performing currencies in a basket of expanded majors tracked by Bloomberg. Lately it has strengthened against the dollar by almost 10% and the stock market’s benchmark index TA-35 is up almost 15%.
Netanyahu’s government has also grown more stable with a larger majority in parliament. And President-elect Donald Trump will hardly give Netanyahu a hard time for battering the establishment as did Joe Biden.
But concern is rising that a new overhaul will come at a steep cost.
“Renewed attempts to reform the judiciary have the potential to negatively affect the economy, financing costs, the currency, inflation and interest rates,” said Ronen Menachem, chief markets economist at Mizrahi Tefahot Bank. “In 2023, reform attempts were stopped. Now there is once again concern that Israel’s top economic driver could be slowed.”
On Sunday, Netanyahu’s governing coalition chiefs met to discuss replacing Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara, whom they consider hostile, and remaking the committee that selects judges so that politicians dominate rather than jurists. At the moment, those changes are unlikely because they’d be blocked by the high court. That’s precisely why the changes are being sought.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin notes that in many democracies, especially the US, that is a core pillar of the system — those who win elections play a big role in selecting judges. Otherwise the people’s will gets stymied by unelected elders in robes.
Opponents say in the US the executive and legislative branches are distinct whereas in Israel the party with the most parliamentary seats forms the government, meaning the two are essentially one. That leaves only the judiciary as a check on their power.
For more than a year, Levin has avoided appointing a chief justice in hopes of selecting a conservative rather than the liberal slated for the post. That judge not only sets much of the high court’s agenda but will appoint the head of any commission to investigate the failings of Oct. 7, 2023.
“That’s the most troublesome issue for Netanyahu,” Karin Elharar, who holds an opposition seat in the current judge selection committee, said in an interview.
Last week the Supreme Court ordered Levin to make the appointment by mid-January, leading him over the weekend to threaten to revive his plans from last year. “They leave us no choice but to act at this time in order to restore our powers,” he wrote on social media. But ultra-Orthodox coalition partners say they will not back his initiatives until an agreement is reached on exempting their young men from military service. And that’s not in the cards for now.
The campaign against Attorney General Baharav Miara, who serves as the government’s legal adviser, gatekeeper and the head of the prosecution is intensifying. Roughly a third of the cabinet this month signed a petition calling for her firing, prompting a business-led campaign of billboards and newspaper ads with her portrait and the words, “Continue to defend the rule of law for us all.”
A former state prosecutor, Moshe Lador, on Saturday raised the possibility of reserve pilots expressing their anger at upcoming changes by threatening, “If you’re going to become dictators, I won’t get into the cockpit.”
Captain Guy Foran, who leads a group of reserve-force air crews, said on Sunday that “some reserve pilots are planning on placing their volunteering to serve on hold if Baharav Miara is fired.” Other former protest leaders say that they would not repeat their previous actions after the Hamas attacks that are attributed to Israel signaling weakness and divide to its enemies.
Surrounding these explosive verbal stand-offs are at least a dozen bills in parliament that would: impose government control over the appointment of a judicial ombudsman; privatize or slash budgets of public broadcaster Kan, considered too liberal; replace ministry legal advisers who’ve served seven years with sympathizers; and bar anyone from running for office who’s expressed sympathy for any act of anti-Israel violence — something that would affect Arab citizens especially.
“If you walk down this path, the next disaster will only be a matter of time,” warned Benny Gantz, former war cabinet member and a leader of the opposition in a video posted on social media. “Mr. Prime Minister and members of the coalition, you won’t be able to say you didn’t know. Stop before it’s too late.”
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