When I started writing this post (which is not finished yet) I intended to try and explain the political upheaval that we in Israel have been experiencing since January this year. By Israeli political standards the upheaval is quite dramatic. All this fades into insignificance this morning when hundred of Palestinian terrorists burst into Israel, and have killed over 100 Israelis and kidnapped many. I'll be reporting about this in separate posts.
Draft of the original post
Israel had 5 elections in the last 5 years. In the first three, Netanyahu just about held on to power, but with a very fragile coalition. In the fourth election the result was a draw, or deadlock and the only (just viable) government was one led by a high-tech liberal right-winger called Natalie Bennett. For the first time in Israel's 75 year old history he took an Arab (even Islamist) party into the coalition and left the Jewish religious parties out. For the liberal secular half of Israel's population it was a dream government. But it too was fragile with a tiny parliamentary majority (61 to 59) and suffered great strains with nationalist Jewish parties (including settlers) at one end and an Arab party at the other. It only needed one or two ideological members of the Knesset at each end to topple the government. The Bennett/Lapid government had lasted 18 months. Then came the 5th election in which the right-wing/religious bloc got a small but workable majority (64 to 56) at the price of having to include an extreme right wing nationalist Jewish party "Jewish Power". Being the key to forming a Netanyahu government (even more critical for him because of the court cases against him, Bibi was prepared to pay the price. The price was (and is) heavy . He agreed to appoint the 2 leaders of the "Jewish Power" party to key ministerial posts (Ministers of Finance and National Security) even though neither of them had any government experience and both had previously been convicted of extremist offences. The religious parties..........
Coalition negotiations were difficult and the latest Netanyahu government (he has been Prime Minister for most of the last 15 years) was finally formed in late November 2022. Less than 2 months later his new Minister of Justice publicly proposed a very radical program of legislation which, if passed, would dramatically reduce the power of the courts to review legislation. Yariv Levin......Supreme Court is Israel's only backstop
Protests
In the beginning.....
150,000 Kaplan
All around the country
Ministers homes, Neve Ativan, Teska factory, New York
As of the start of October the protests and demonstrations are nominally about retaining democracy ( see Poland and Hungary) and stopping Israel becoming a dictatorship
What they are really about is:
- For the secular half of Israel's population to keep Israel as a modern, liberal, West-leaning rich economy based on the rule of law
- To stop the increasing religiousation of Israel......חלוקת הנטל
- to get Bibi's incompetent extreme government out of power
- to get Netanyahu finally out of power and Israeli politics
In the opinion of this writer these are valid and worthy objectives but I have some reservations
- The leaders of the protest demand total victory regarding the judicial reforms i.e a public climb down (humiliation) announcement of the abandonment of the judicial reforms....compromise.....in polls 70% (a huge majority) want compromises on the judicial reform. I reject the argument that "One cannot compromise democracy ". Democracy is not monolithic or binary.....look at Freedom House....Hungary 70-60% over 10 years (with no opposition ) Israel is still less is not so dramatic. It's a long way from Iran or North Korea
Losing some democracy is not the end of the world. There are bigger dangers....
- The protesters have
