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After many months of protests, Israel’s ultra right-wing government took a decisive and fateful step to consolidate power.
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Israeli lawmakers in the Knesset—the country’s parliament—voted on Monday to strip its Supreme Court of power, limiting the body’s ability to strike down government actions, effectively completing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial coup. Netanyahu sat through the votes just hours after leaving the hospital for an emergency implantation of a pacemaker, and took calls from other officials like Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who attempted to broker a last-minute compromise to no avail. As the parliamentary session proceeded, chants of “Shame!” echoed from demonstrators outside as well as opposition members inside the building. President Biden and other democratic leaders had called on Netanyahu not to move forward with the vote, but it was of no consequence.
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Israel has no constitution, and therefore no expressly-written democratic guardrails. The country has a Supreme Court, but its judges are not elected, they are appointed by a nine-member Judicial Selection Committee, and the number of justices is set by the Knesset. And now that Netanyahu has stripped the Supreme Court of its power to act as a check on the Knesset (and a check on him, in particular) his ultra right-wing government is unencumbered to pass sweeping, regressive legislation at will.
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As Crooked Media’s foreign affairs contributor Max Fisher put it, the mounting tensions all trace back to an unanswered question “from the country’s founding in 1948 which is: Are we a democracy, or are we a state of and for one group in particular? The country’s founders were very aware of this tension; they knew the democratic world was just then waking up to the idea that you can’t be a democracy for one group, because a democracy for one group will inevitably become a dictatorship of the majority, and probably just a dictatorship.”
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Netanyahu has increasingly carved out a dictator-like position for himself in the Israeli government.
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The 2023 Israeli Democracy Index showed that anti-democratic trends in Israel have only grown in popularity. Around half of Jewish Israelis agree that “Jewish citizens of Israel should have more rights than non-Jewish citizens” up from 27 percent just five years ago, and those who agree with that statement lean overwhelmingly to the right. For decades, when asked whether Israel should be a democracy first or a Jewish state first, the majority of Jewish Israelis answered that both elements should be held equally. Now, 43 percent of Jewish Israelis say that it should be first a Jewish state and a democracy second, a trend again driven by right-wing Israelis.
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But the majority of Israelis know that the Supreme Court is essential to the country’s democracy. Almost 56 percent of citizens support the Supreme Court’s authority to rescind Knesset-passed laws if those laws are “found to be contrary to the principles of democracy.” Among Arab Israelis, support for the Supreme Court is even higher, with 87 percent in favor of judicial review. Thousands of volunteer reservists for the Israeli military said they would not report for duty if the government continued with the judicial overhaul. Demonstrations against the coup have been ongoing for months, but hit a fever pitch today. Before the vote even began, protestors chained themselves to posts and blocked the road outside parliament. By Monday evening, thousands of Israelis had taken to the streets across the country, blocking highways and resisting police intervention. Police dragged protesters across the pavement and cleared others using water cannons. As of Monday night, Israeli police reported that at least 19 people had been arrested.
The fight for the future of Israeli democracy is far from over. Within minutes of the vote, a political watchdog group and the leader of the centrist opposition promised to appeal the law. Netanyahu delivered perfunctory televised remarks as the protests raged in his country, promising that “the courts will remain independent.” Sure, man!
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Exciting news! If you’re in the Los Angeles area, come join Mobility author, Lydia Kiesling and Tommy Vietor for a Mobility book launch event at Dynasty Typewriter on July 27 at 7:30 PM.
EVENT TICKETS HERE
Not in LA, but want to pre-order Mobility?! Pre-order today and be the first to read when it’s released on August 1.
PRE-ORDER MOBILITY HERE
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Over the past five years, the process of reviewing and approving school textbooks has become overtly political in Florida, one of the country’s major textbook-publishing markets. Last year, under the auspices of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and his “Stop WOKE Act,” the state revised its civics curriculum to include an utterly fictitious depiction of the Founding Fathers as abolitionists (even the ones who owned slaves and ensured slavery would be written into the Constitution), and the equally fictional idea that when they advocated for separation of church and state, they didn’t mean Christianity. Now, a new copy of the state’s academic standards shows that Florida’s 2023 Social Studies curriculum will include lessons on how slavery “allowed” slaves to develop “skills” that could be used for “personal benefit.” The curriculum changes were approved by Florida’s board of education on Wednesday. On Friday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she was traveling to Jacksonville to “fight back” against the “extremists in Florida,” who “want to erase our full history and censor our truths.” Earlier this year, Florida rejected a proposed African American Studies Advanced Placement course over its inclusion of Black queer resources, protests, and the prison abolition movement, which DeSantis called “indoctrination.” School curriculum has always been political, but increasingly, the right-wing culture warriors seem to want to use it to create entire generations of American students who do not understand the systems upon which this country was built, for their political advantage.
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Three of disgraced former president Donald Trump’s 2024 GOP rivals are pushing for cuts to Social Security for younger recipients.
DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith has reached out to Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) as he continues to investigate Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The police director of Miami-Dade County, FL, shot himself after he was asked to leave a Tampa hotel following a domestic dispute with his wife. He is stable and recovering in a nearby hospital.
A Swedish court fined climate activist Greta Thunberg on Monday for disobeying police during a climate protest at an oil facility. Thunberg admitted to the facts presented but denied guilt, saying the fight against the fossil fuel industry is “a form of self-defense.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk made the incomprehensible decision to change the name of the social media platform to just “X.” This guy’s commitment to making the website simultaneously unusable and monetarily worthless is really something.
Peter Stager, an Arkansas truck driver who assaulted a police officer with a flagpole during the January 6 insurrection, was sentenced to 52 months in federal prison on Monday.
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Kremlin authorities announced that Russian forces destroyed two attack drones targeting central Moscow on Monday morning, and accused Ukrainian forces of a coordinated strike. No injuries were reported, and Kyiv did not offer an immediate comment. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that at least two nonresidential buildings were targeted at around 4:00 a.m., after which authorities blocked off part of a large avenue running through one of the most upscale neighborhoods in central Moscow after finding one of the drones there. One of the buildings sits only a block away from the Russian National Defense Management Center. Also on Monday, the Russian occupation authorities in Crimea announced that 11 attack drones were shot down or neutralized by Russian air defenses. An ammunition depot in the Dzhankoy district of the peninsula was reportedly hit as well. Recent developments mark a geographic expansion in fighting, far from the front lines in eastern Ukraine where most of Russia’s attention has been concentrated since sit invaded last year. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated the White House position on Monday that it does not support attacks inside of Russia.
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Barbie grossed $155 million in its opening weekend, the largest for any movie with a solo female director, and one of the largest-ever opening weekends for a comedy. The movies are back, baby!
Oh yeah, and Oppenheimer raked in a cool $80 million opening weekend. Who says you can’t make a three-hour black-and-white movie about the guy who invented the atomic bomb anymore!
Gene therapy has restored the sight of a Florida boy who has been legally blind for most of his life. The treatment could be a breakthrough for millions of people with other eye diseases, too.
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