Israel General Discussion: Annus Horribilis

[America Needs R'hllor]

Avi Maoz will return to the government and head his "Jewish identity" authority after his budget demands were accepted. happy pride month

[America Needs R'hllor]

Yesterday's drama:
conflict between coalition and opposition over the judicial committee: traditionally, the Knesset picks 1 MK from the coalition and 1 MK from the opposition fo serve there. Many in the coalition wanted 2 coalition MKs there as "compensation" for the judicial coup not passing
Bibi was leaning towards going with the traditional choice, but he's a coward so in the last minute he tried to get the Knesset to reject all candidates to the judicial committee to postpone the choice
one of likud's biggest sickos, Tali Gotliv, tried to run anyway and refused to withdraw her name. The opposition also ran a unified candidate
Knesset elected the opposition candidate, Yesh Atid's Karin Elharar,  with at least 4 coalition MKs defecting and voting for her
Tali Gotliv not elected, so judicial committee won't start working until the Knesset can elect its second representative. But at least one opposition MK guaranteed

[America Needs R'hllor]

Settlers rampaged through another village in the Occupied West Bank.

And the Druze are violently rioting (shooting at police, burning things) over wind farms too close to their lands - NIMBY meet the Middle East.

This is not a healthy country where every population other than the secular bloc will riot and destroy and commit pogroms whenever they're displeased.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Communication Minister Kar'i is advancing legislation to abolish the independent media regulation authorities, replace them with a toothless politician-appointed body, harm the mainstream channels 11, 12 and 13 and give direct financial benefits to the far right freaks in channel 14, who advance deranged conspiracy theories against LGBT people and anti government activists every day

[America Needs R'hllor]

Settlers rampaged through another village in the Occupied West Bank.

And the Druze are violently rioting (shooting at police, burning things) over wind farms too close to their lands - NIMBY meet the Middle East.

This is not a healthy country where every population other than the secular bloc will riot and destroy and commit pogroms whenever they're displeased.

This is the root of the problem, secular Jews are not hand-in-hand with their Palestinian and Armenian brethren in resisting the Bibi regime.

what are you even talking about

[America Needs R'hllor]

Settlers rampaged through another village in the Occupied West Bank.

And the Druze are violently rioting (shooting at police, burning things) over wind farms too close to their lands - NIMBY meet the Middle East.

This is not a healthy country where every population other than the secular bloc will riot and destroy and commit pogroms whenever they're displeased.

This is the root of the problem, secular Jews are not hand-in-hand with their Palestinian and Armenian brethren in resisting the Bibi regime.

what are you even talking about

The Armenians in their own quarter are also facing immense harassment and displacement, it isn’t just limited to Palestinians. No matter what, Jews aren’t being needed backup and allies in the major anti-Bibi protests of the past three years even with them having skin in the game to remove Netanyahu.

There are almost no Armenians in Israel. People facing harassment in the "Armenian quarter" are just Palestinians. I'm not sure where you got the emphasis on Armenians

[America Needs R'hllor]

Good news, this makes Israel a more robust democracy. Democracy isn't a mob of panicking elites in the streets in Tel Aviv, and it is also not an unelected court striking down laws based on a vague criterion - no, democracy means the highest elected body gets to call the shots in the country. Really don't understand all the fuss about a proposal that makes Israel more democratic, not less.

This isn't about the reasonability clause, because Ben Gvir and the other fascists are already saying they're moving on to the rest of the judicial overhaul (judicial picking, override cause etc). And anyhow Israel as a country with little to no authority to local government and nearly unlimited power to 60+1 Knesset members needs the reasonability clause to offer a semblance of balance. But this is about something bigger than this, and your mocking of "panicking elites" about hundreds of thousands of Israelis from all backgrounds (which you learned from the speeches and tweets of members of this government) touches on exactly the point.

The liberal public in Israel has had to swallow A LOT: a bunch of Rabbies holding monopoly over important and personal aspects of our life (and death); funding and sacrificing our life for the settlement project, which is a purely religious fanatical project that has nothing to do with our security or zionism; a big and very growing public refusing to share in the burden of holding up a first world economy and the burden of sacrificing our life and best years to protect this country; and a bunch of mockery and derision from the leaders of our country. Now, we drew a red line - this judicial overhaul, which we view as the end of liberal democracy. Members of this government have been adopting very authoritarian rhetoric and actions, and you can't slap away our fears as panic. We drew a line and we say that we refuse to sacrifice for a non-democracy. We've signed on for a liberal democracy, not a corrupt sh**thole like Hungary, Poland and Turkey. This resulted in an unprededented protest movement on a global scale - business leaders calling for strikes, 10,000 reservists saying they will stop serving, huge and consistent protests for months, roads blocked and pressure applied so that even international leaders and national figures such as the Histadrut chairman and the President will call for the legislation to stop.

If this goes through, don't be surprised if our threats will come to pass. Make no mistake- if we, the liberal public, stop serving, Israel's army CAN'T properly function in this region. If we leave, Israel's economy CAN'T remain a first world hightech nation. It simply can't. And it's not because we're your imaginary elite - we're mizrahi, ashkenazi and russian Jews from many backgrounds who achieved education and got what we have with our own two hands, and we're the ones powering this economy while a big chunk of this government's constituencies refuse to participate and allow us to fund their lifestyle.

For you, it means you won't have any safe refuge for if the Europeans suddenly decide they hate Jews again. Just another failing third world country like Lebanon. Hope you're happy.

[America Needs R'hllor]

By the way, a little explainer on the reasonability clause. This isn't meant to allow the judges to tell the government it's unreasonable to bomb Gazan children for questionable security gains - it's meant purely for government decisions on the more bureaucratic level. If, for example, a Minister wants to appoint her cousin whose experience is to be a party hack and a small claims lawyer as CEO of the Transportation Ministry - well, in that case you would expect the Knesset to stop her as part of parliamentary oversight. But when the government consists of the most corrupt people you know + neo nazis, or even just a pretty comfortable majority with leadership that doesn't mind some corruption, the Knesset simply won't do anything, because the government has a majority there by default. Since that's the case, the reasonability clause allows the courts to tell the government - nah, you went too far, this is highly unreasonable. If you research what this was employed for, it was always overwhelmingly positive results. Does anyone who's not a total sycophant think that it's ok that Deri return to the same Ministry where he did corruption and was convicted for it TWICE?

[America Needs R'hllor]

Why is it that the Israeli legislature is legally sovereign? I know very little about the creation of the governmental structures of Israel, but it seems that it was an odd decision to allow a simple legislative majority to make all laws.

It's a heavily modified Westminster system. Including the uncodified constitution!

Israel should just have a system where it has the President appoint justices to the Supreme Court and given the President is not part of parliament, it still preserves checks and balances.

The judicial branch also needs checks and one way to put a check on it is by having one of the other branches appoint justices and the other confirm appointments.

Well, the president just appointing judges would entrust a single individual with more power than a legislative body as a whole. Today I'd certainly have a lot more faith in Herzog than Bibi's far-right cabinet and their enablers in parliament, though that may change with new elections.

Well you could have the Knesset be required to approve all appointments

Are you aware that almost literally no other country on the planet envies the American judicial appointments system?

Sure but that doenst refute the fact that our system of appointing justices is way better than Israel where there are no checks whatsoever on the judicial system . They don’t even have a written constitution so their judicial system is literally just legislating from the bench

No "fact" in this likud propaganda. Our judiciary is a world class example of integrity and objectivity. Your judiciary is just a bunch of partisan hacks.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Why is it that the Israeli legislature is legally sovereign? I know very little about the creation of the governmental structures of Israel, but it seems that it was an odd decision to allow a simple legislative majority to make all laws.

It's a heavily modified Westminster system. Including the uncodified constitution!

Israel should just have a system where it has the President appoint justices to the Supreme Court and given the President is not part of parliament, it still preserves checks and balances.

The judicial branch also needs checks and one way to put a check on it is by having one of the other branches appoint justices and the other confirm appointments.

Well, the president just appointing judges would entrust a single individual with more power than a legislative body as a whole. Today I'd certainly have a lot more faith in Herzog than Bibi's far-right cabinet and their enablers in parliament, though that may change with new elections.

Well you could have the Knesset be required to approve all appointments

Are you aware that almost literally no other country on the planet envies the American judicial appointments system?

Sure but that doenst refute the fact that our system of appointing justices is way better than Israel where there are no checks whatsoever on the judicial system . They don’t even have a written constitution so their judicial system is literally just legislating from the bench

No "fact" in this likud propaganda. Our judiciary is a world class example of integrity and objectivity. Your judiciary is just a bunch of partisan hacks.

Your judiciary is literally a bunch of judges legislating from the bench given you have no written constitution and since the other branches dont have much say on who gets on the bench, you literally have an unelected super legislature and that is completely unacceptable.

Also lol at our Supreme Court being partisan when they have ruled against partisan Republican ideas a good amount of times this year. The cases most liberals are mad about , are actually cases that made perfect as :

- The President does not have the power to authorize new expenses without the authorization of congress(Which student loan forgivness was)

- EPA doesnt have the power to regulate emissions from existing plants based on generation shifting mechanisms because Congress never gave them the authority to do so. Regulatory agencies do not have the power to do stuff congress did not authorize them to do , even if liberals may support that policy because they are not lawmaking agencies.

- The constitution mentions nothing about abortion which means abortion law is yes fully up to the elected legislators and since Congress has not passed any law, they go to the states.


This is how a proper Supreme Court is supposed to work , and just cause liberals dont like the decisions made by SCOTUS does not make it partisan. The Supreme Court yes should not be allowed to make up law as they seem fit even if you think those types of policies are "necessary" in a liberal democracy.

I'm not going to debate this. It's not the time or place and I don't care about the conservative view of the American Supreme Court right now. Before you throw the word "fact" in this thread, listen to virtually every Israeli judicial expert, understand the context, understand the wounds this is opening. Hell, just Wikipedia the judiciary appointment committee and who has veto power there (hint: the other branches have a lot of say, even if the likud propaganda you've been listening to in discord tries to claim otherwise).

Ending this inane discussion here

[America Needs R'hllor]

Who here is willing to state the pros and cons of this bill? I understand it eliminates the "reasonableness" standard for policy decisions as a vehicle of the Israel high court to invalidare laws and regulations, which I might add would never be accepted in the US as a jurisprudential benchmark for judgement. But terms, and terms of art, might be different in Isreal.

This site should be about providing information, and empowering based on that, and not invective.

I have a dream. I am an idealist. Sue me.

I will add some context to the dry arguments that have already been presented, which I think is more important. You have the White House, and you have congress, and you have midterms. You don't need the courts to say that some action or other is highly unreasonable, there's enough oversight.

We don't have that. Local government is extremely weak, there is no constitution. When it comes to "dry" government actions that don't deal with overarching themes of human rights, there is literally nothing a 60+1 majority in the Knesset can't do. And as it turns out, Israeli liberals aren't really interested in living in a country where corruption and nepotism slowly destroys our public services. We also don't want to live in a country where the government can fire the attorney general and appoint a sycophant who will cancel bibi's trial. We want someone to have oversight over the coalition, and outside of the courts there is no one who can do it.