|
(MARCH 8, 2023 / NY TIMES) — An Israeli government effort to weaken the country’s judiciary, which critics call a threat to the nation’s democratic foundations, is drawing unusually pointed protest from American Jewish leaders and organizations, including ones that generally avoid commenting on internal Israeli politics.
The alarm within the United States reflects growing concern among prominent Jewish political and religious figures — not just about the substance of the proposal, but also about its potential impact on U.S.-Israel relations at a time when polls have shown that Israel is losing support among younger Americans as its politics lurch to the Right.
The response, from Washington offices to neighborhood synagogues and protests in some American cities, also increases public pressure on President Biden, who has called the defense of democracy abroad one of his top priorities. The Biden administration has not been openly critical of the plan, instead broadly encouraging democratic values and consensus.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal would, among other things, allow Israel’s Parliament to overrule Supreme Court decisions by a one-vote majority, and also effectively give the government the power to appoint judges. To the government’s supporters, the changes it is pushing through Parliament are a way to curb the influence of unelected judges.
But critics say the overhaul would remove one of the few checks on government overreach and insulate Mr. Netanyahu from multiple corruption charges. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets, accusing Mr. Netanyahu of an unprecedented power play in a country praised as a thriving democracy in the Middle East.
In the United States, the criticism is largely split along political lines, with Democrats and progressives far more willing to speak out than conservatives. But the concerns are increasingly coming from political moderates and nonpartisan groups that have generally shied away from divisive debates about Israel.
More than 80 House Democrats have signed a letter they plan to send to Mr. Biden on Thursday urging him “to use all diplomatic tools available to prevent Israel’s current government from further damaging the nation’s democratic institutions.” Activists in Washington are also planning to protest a speech next week by Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a key supporter of the judicial change who recently drew international condemnation for saying that a Palestinian village should be “wiped out.”
In Los Angeles last month, Rabbi Sharon Brous delivered a sermon titled “The Tears of Zion,” in which she urged her congregation not to “sleep through a revolution” and to challenge Mr. Netanyahu’s “illiberal, ultranationalist regime.” In New York City, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a longtime defender of Israeli policies, wrote a March 5 guest essay in The New York Times saying that Mr. Netanyahu was “courting disaster” with a push that could threaten Israel’s security, economy and “the very democracy upon which the country was built.”
Last month, the Jewish Federations of North America, a philanthropic giant that raises and spends $3 billion annually, and that typically takes no position on Israeli politics, sent an open letter to Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s parliamentary opposition leader, Yair Lapid, objecting to the idea of judicial override and endorsing a call by Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, for compromise and consensus.
“We recognize that any system of checks and balances will be different than those in our own countries, but such a dramatic change to the Israeli system of governance will have far-reaching consequences in North America, both within the Jewish community and in the broader society,” the letter warned.
Mr. Netanyahu and his defenders — including some within the United States — say that the proposed changes are warranted by what they call an overreaching judiciary chosen by an unelected bureaucratic elite, and that Americans should not try to influence Israeli politics.
“The Supreme Court is the one power that the people on the left-of-center have to overturn center or right-of-center rulings,” said Morton Klein, the president of the nonprofit advocacy group Zionist Organization of America. Mr. Klein said that “liberal” and less religious American Jews “are screaming: ‘This is a disaster! This is the end of democracy!’ It’s ludicrous.”
| 
