The Far Right War Against the Rule of Law Reaches Israel

I've only recently noticed in the past month that Bibi "Bribe Guy" Netanyahu had returned to political power as Prime Minister of Israel, during the end of 2022 when I was distracted by the holidays.

And my first thought finding out he was back was "What the hell? I thought they kicked you out of the damn house!" 

My second thought was "What the hell? Isn't he STILL on trial over bribery charges???"

Anyway, the reason why I even noticed Netanyahu was back in power was because Israel is currently racked by massive protests over Netanyahu's plans to gut Israel's legal system to ensure his authoritarian rule never ends. Via Jonathan Guyer at Vox:

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli protesters have been demonstrating against the extreme-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since January. The protests have become some of the biggest in Israeli history and are drawing out the country’s most famous faces.

On Thursday, protesters plan to disrupt Netanyahu’s travel to Rome in a sign of defiance of his ultranationalist, illiberal government. They’re calling it a “day of resistance to the dictatorship.” This builds on two months of mass mobilization across Israel that have been squarely focused on the Netanyahu government’s set of judiciary overhauls, which would weaken the independence of the country’s high court and create the conditions for unchecked majoritarian rule.

The backlash to these proposals has reached even staunchly establishment groups in Israel: A group of fighter pilots are on strike, tech workers staged a work stoppage, and former prime ministers have joined the protests...

Netanyahu was elected to a sixth premiership this November, but this time with the most extreme, nationalistic, and exclusionary government in Israeli history.

From the get-go, the Israeli government has sought to make significant changes to the high court that would hollow out its independence and its power to serve as a check on the Israeli parliament, or the Knesset. The several bills put forward would restrict the court’s ability to overturn laws it sees as unconstitutional and allow a simple majority in the Knesset to reject its decisions. It would also give government lawmakers and appointees effective power over the committee of nine individuals that appoints judges, and rescind key authorities from the attorney general. These and other changes would weaken the independent judiciary’s power in a parliamentary system that otherwise lacks checks.

This is all complicated by the fact that Israel doesn’t have a constitution, but a set of regulations passed as the Basic Law. The proposal’s backers, like a group of Israeli academics who recently published an open letter in support, say the court has grown too powerful. But, according to a recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, “66 percent of Israelis think the Supreme Court should have the power to strike down a law if it is incompatible with the Basic Laws...”

I'd also question Netanyahu's motivations for backing these efforts against a legal system that's poised to hit him with felony convictions that could dash his efforts to stay in power for life. But then, this is what dictators do: Break the Law so that the Law only benefits themselves.

This is all part of a disturbing trend the past 10-20 years where even the most stable and respectable democratic nations - some of them having gone through decades of Cold War tensions to establish genuine rule of law - suffering the indignity of organized, deep-funded Far Right conservative movements taking control of their governments - through legal elections no less - and then for their own benefit gutting the legal systems they abused to gain power in the first place.

It's only when these Far Right politicians take a sledgehammer to the courts - where every nation's system of justice plays out - do the voters realize they've given power to dangerous demagogues. The protests will be massive, the majority of the citizens will be outraged... but the bastards now in power will hear none of it and happily wreck their nation's foundations all so they can hold onto that power a little while longer (before their own corruption collapses on them like a ruined house).

We're suffering it here in the United States as well, where extreme gerrymandering and a power structure that skews towards small-populated states has us in the grip of a Minority Party (hint: Republican) rule, even with Democrats (currently) in control of the Presidency and half of Congress. Israel may lean Conservative/Right in terms of politics, but even they have extremist factions - all of them now in power as Netanyahu can't form coalitions with anyone else - that do not honestly speak for the interests of the Israeli people.

The effects of the Far Right Israeli efforts to weaken their legal system is coming with a wave of violence and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian population that makes up a significant portion of Israel's voting base, and yet are getting driven out of their communities in Gaza and the West Bank with annexation efforts that threaten global efforts to resolve centuries of Jewish/Palestinian conflicts over the land they both claim as home. We're looking at the reality that yet other uprising by disenfranchised Palestinians re-sparking the horrors of Middle East violence will flow across the entire region and drag the United States (and other allies) into that mess all over again.

All because a goddamned crook kept getting elected back into the Prime Minister's office.

What the hell, Israeli voters. You let Bibi back into that house. What the actual hell.