After serving in the Israeli Army, Benjamin Netanyahu assumed various roles under Israel’s foreign ministry until he won his first general election in 1996 [File: Miriam Alster/Reuters]
Howard Epstein – WILL BIBI INCAPACITATE HIMSELF?
There are lawyers and there are great lawyers. Many of us occupy the first category; few the latter. One name that springs to mind amongst the few is Alan Dershowitz, yet, as we know, many idols (and he was for years one of mine) are found to have feet of clay.
Professor Dershowitz, having written several articles over the past six months castigating the Israeli government for its judicial reforms, performed a volte-face on 16 March last and broadcast that what is now being proposed in the Knesset is “not anything to get worked up about”. In a Zoom debate with Professor Eugene Kontorovich (an international law expert), he pronounced that Netanyahu’s judicial reform programme “does not endanger Israel’s democracy and might even enhance it”, continuing, “If all of these reforms were enacted—and I oppose most, but not all of them—it would turn Israel into, God forbid, Canada or New Zealand or Australia, or many European countries. It would not turn it into Poland. It would not turn it into an autocratic country.” (That Professor Dershowitz might be losing his way is suggested by the fact that the Zoom debate was broadcast by J-AIR Radio in Australia!)
The professor was thus heard to have travelled some distance from his position on 15 February last when he wrote in the Jerusalem Post: “When it comes to decisions regarding basic issues of civil liberties, human rights, minority rights, civil rights, due process, free speech, religious liberty, equal protection and other enduring aspects of individual liberty, the Supreme Court should have the last word”; yet that is exactly what the Israeli government is trying to take away. It wants absolute power over all aspects of the judicial processes in Israel, not omitting the appointment of judges.
We might at this point usefully consider how judges are appointed in the UK. Since 2006, High Court judges have been appointed by the independent Judicial Appointments Commission (“JAC”), consisting of twelve commissioners, themselves appointed through open competition. The other three are selected by the Judges’ Council (three senior members of the court’s judiciary) or the Tribunal Judges’ Council (one senior member of the tribunals judiciary). The JAC was set up as a conscious move away from the political arena. (There is another equally complex and politics-free procedure for the appointment of UK Supreme Court judges.)
Now, in the light of that, would you not feel a little queasy if you read tomorrow morning that the Sunak government (working majority: 64) intended to abolish the JAC and directly appoint High and Supreme Court judges? You would? Well, now you have a clue as to why the shekel has dropped dramatically this year, why Moody’s has (in a shot across the bows) downgraded Israel’s outlook from “positive” to “stable” and why Israel TV’s Channel 12 estimated 110,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv alone last motzei Shabbat, with other demonstrations all over the country. That Tel Aviv turnout is not to be sneezed at, being the equivalent of three quarters of a million demonstrators on the streets of the UK.
Yet, the Netanyahu government is not to be deterred from lining its nest. The “Incapacitation Law”, which prevents the attorney-general from pronouncing a sitting prime minister as unfit for office, was passed last Thursday with 61 MKs in favour and 47 against.
Suddenly, a sitting Israeli prime minister may only be removed from his office if pronounced by at least 75% of the government ministers physically or mentally incapable of serving in the position. Fat chance!
National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz immediately condemned the act as “a personal law … all about strengthening Netanyahu’s rule…There is no softening, no stopping, … no restraints.” The approval ratings of General Gantz (ret.) stand at 39% – those of the PM at 34%. Perhaps more significantly, recent Israeli polling suggests 63% of adults in Israel disapprove of Netanyahu’s job performance, with 28% approving.
Wait until the Israeli public digest what opposition leader Yair Lapid said of the Incapacitation Law: “Like thieves in the night, the coalition has now passed an obscene and corrupt personal law. The citizens of Israel [should know], just before the holidays, while the cost of living is skyrocketing, [that] Netanyahu once again only cares about himself.”
Next time: the threats to the way of the lives of Israeli women, the continued construction of Bibi’s get-out-of-jail-free card and more.
© Howard Epstein May 2023
