Israel General Discussion: Annus Horribilis

[Hnv1]

I think the problem of hyper-religious subgroups out-reproducing the rest of society is a problem that will eventually come for all First World societies, and Israel is simply ahead of the curve of the rest of us.

I don't see it. What groups in Christendom are really like the Haredim? The obvious examples are the Mennonites and Jehovah's Witnesses. Maybe you can make a case for Calvinists in the Netherlands, but I don't know to what extent they segregate themselves from broader society. There are pietistic Lutherans in Finland but they are a very small group.

Besides Laestadians in Finland (and actually also the US), other groups I was thinking of would include fundamentalist Mormons, certain Old Believers, subgroups within the Amish world (Swartzentrubers), and Old Order Mennonites (who actually have lots of colonies in Latin America) as examples of groups like this. (I don't know that Jehovah's Witnesses actually have remarkable fertility in the way that other groups like this do). Haredim are a much larger fraction of Israeli society than these other groups are of their societies, but as long as high fertility rates are sustainable they will become a large fraction of society eventually, and given the continuously falling fertility rates of mainstream society probably faster than we think.

I'm not familiar with groups like this within Islam, but then I'd imagine you would have much more knowledge than I would there.  

Presumably there are other groups in other countries that I can't name, but I am comfortable in saying that none of them are significant. Evangelicals in Brazil and elsewhere don't count because they are part of broader society. The same is true of Mormons. I know you said the First World specifically, but I will also add here that I'm not aware of any groups like this in the Islamic world.

I agree with this, but at least within the US conservatives have noticeably more children and have them at younger ages, and the gap between conservatives and liberals has been gradually growing in size since ~1990, before which it didn't exist. There are conflicting surveys on just how heritable political preferences are, so it remains something of an open question how much this will end up affecting American society. (There really isn't evidence for a gap like this in Europe, but I wonder about Latin America; Santiago, Chile, is supposed to be the metropolitan area with the lowest fertility rate in the Americas, while I've purely anecdotally noticed that conservative Chileans -- both politicians and just people I met when I visited that country -- tended to have large families, belying the country's low fertility overall. This is entirely a guess, though.)

It seems self-evident that religious people are more fertile than irreligious people, and perhaps in the long run this will lead to increased religiosity in society. Groups like the Haredim being the beneficiaries appears to be a specifically Jewish phenomenon.

I think the Haredim being so politically organized, both in Israel and the US, is a specifically Jewish phenomenon; you don't really see Amish bloc-voting in ways deliberately meant to position their community as kingmakers. (On reflection, many of these groups -- including Haredim -- seem to be particularly strong within the US, as opposed to other parts of the First World, and perhaps in some deep way to be the result of a specifically-American memetic environment). But "persistent closed-off ultra-religious high-fertility subgroup" does not seem to be a specifically Jewish phenomenon.

All of these groups participate in the labour market. Haredi participation is exceptionally low and if you deduct the faux jobs in their educational system male employment sinks to around 30%. there's nothing really like them

[Hnv1]

Seriously? After several defections (starting arguably with Bennett), and new attempts to create a Bibi-less Likud-style party, surely whoever is in Likud now is a die hard?

Not everyone. Bitan, Edelstein, I. Katz, Barkat, Danon, and others are not Bibi enthusiasts and are loyal to various extents with varying motivations. They won't form a breakaway faction (well Edelstein might leave but that's about it) though, only pressure Bibi from within.

As much as some of them dislike Bibi personally, they know he's on borrowed time. Bibi's demise has never been closer. Why portray yourself as a traitor with the post-Bibi era around the corner?

I think they're wrong in one key aspect: they all assume Likud is going to remain a single unified party and I think it will splinter.

[Hnv1]

I think it's unprecedented as armed forces are usually to the right of the elected government and not to the left. Kemalist Turkey is indeed the closest but even there that's not really a like to like.

Just want to add to that, that during the 1948 war Ben Gurion disbanded the Palmah and ousted left wing officers as he feared they might push him out of power (sadly they haven't done so). The senior command of Hagnah headed by Galili and Alon was far more liberal then the provisional government headed by Ben Gurion.

[Hnv1]

The abysmal polling sent Ben Gvir and Otzma on a tantrum. They stopped voting with the coalition until the government adopts "a real right wing policy to Gaza". Likud threatened to fire Ben Gvir, Ben Gvir told them to fire him if they want.

Now I don't think either side really wants it atm, but this sort of things can spiral out of control rapidly

[Hnv1]

The abysmal polling sent Ben Gvir and Otzma on a tantrum. They stopped voting with the coalition until the government adopts "a real right wing policy to Gaza". Likud threatened to fire Ben Gvir, Ben Gvir told them to fire him if they want.

Now I don't think either side really wants it atm, but this sort of things can spiral out of control rapidly

Any idea on the updated coup/government collapse odds by the end of the year?

Coup greatly diminished. I don’t think the government will hold. We might even see it implode by the end of the month during the budget votes

[Hnv1]

Tidbits:

YA:
Lapid is doing another silent purge. Stern and Barbibai might run for that mayorship of Haifa and Tel Aviv respectively, Lapid conditions the party's funding that they resign from the Knesset. Ben Barak said, for the fifth time, that he wants to primary Lapid for leadership.
I feel like Lapid wants to kick all these veterans out and build a younger team around the likes of Merav Cohen and young protest leaders.

Labour/Meretz:
So Meretz is borderline bankrupt, and Labour is borderline electorally insolvent. The merger is going to go down in the immediate future. There's almost unanimous backing in both parties to the merger. Knowing both parties they will somehow manage to make the merger even less appealing than it is to left wing voters.

Likud:
Barkat and Katz reconciled. I read this as a move by the moderates to concentrate efforts against Levine and the populists.

Otzma:
The minicrisis ended but they simply can't be a party holding ministries. I can't see them lasting long in the coalition like this.

Bennett:
Remember that guy? He's clearly making noises like he wants to be back in the mix

[Hnv1]

If the judicial reform wasn't enough the next budget is basically robbing the public to fund Haredi and religious towns. They're even hurting Likud leaning cities in the "college belt".

Next election is going to be a bloodbath

[Hnv1]

Aymen Odeh announced he will stepdown as chairman of Hadash and the Joint List before the next elections.

I have no idea if Hadash will go for a more nationalist leader or a more socialist one. Odeh started as the latter and was very promising, but soon found himself pushed to the nationalist agenda

[Hnv1]

The Haredi are nothing like the Taliban. Please stop this nonsense

[Hnv1]

No, they aren't *the same*.

On the other hand, there are surely parallels.

There are parallels between any two social categories. What matters is the degree of relevance and essence. The Haredi are far more like the Amish than they are like the Taliban. If anyone in Israel is similar in any meaningful way to the Taliban it’s the Hardal or the northern section of the Islamic movement.

[Hnv1]

Aymen Odeh announced he will stepdown as chairman of Hadash and the Joint List before the next elections.

I have no idea if Hadash will go for a more nationalist leader or a more socialist one. Odeh started as the latter and was very promising, but soon found himself pushed to the nationalist agenda

In an interview Odeh Said he wanted to meet Obama but the old tankies in Nazareth vetoed the visit to D.C.

Commies…

[Hnv1]

Levine says he wants to appoint judges to the SC that will make segragation legal*. I hope the US administration announce him a persona non grata.


*Israeli law currently allow for segragation in very small settlements with under 450 inhabitants that are ran as cooperative or communal village. still a disgrace, but Levine is aiming at a wider scale.

[Hnv1]

The Israeli bar elections, usually a super dull affair (I only voted once in all of my years as member), aroused quite a lot of attention. The bar selects two members of the judicial appointment committee, and the anti-reform candidate won the chairmanship with over 70% of the vote. A big f u to Levine from a generally centrist population


Edit: lol Likud now wish to disband the Israeli bar association

[Hnv1]

One has to admit Bibi and co. are playing this smart: Cross the Rubicon by having at least one law passed and then let the protest movement wither during summer recess.

Wither? Nonsense. Cross the rubicon and it’s a done deal. The public isn’t going to let it slide, this is simply the beginning of a new nastier phase

[Hnv1]

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

There are these people

This is a minuscule population in Israel and as far as I know they identify as Arabs. The only Christian sect with a somewhat differentiating attitude to their classification as Arabs are the Maronites

[Hnv1]

Bibi had a  cardiac pacemaker emergency transplant last night. Levine filled in as PM. Legislation going as planned (as Bibi really doesn't have a choice).

[Hnv1]

So the "reasonableness" bill just made it into law. What now?

We go out on the streets. Here be dragons.

good luck to everyone heading out.

[Hnv1]

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.

We don’t a robust democracy, we want a robust liberal democracy. In a liberal democracy a parliamentary majority is constrained by institutional constraints like rights enforced by courts. These rights are not subject to the whims of a majority, any majority. And the Israeli majority has a pretty terrible track record of hurting people. Badly. So it’s quite reasonable people aren’t quite thrilled about a majority of backwards backwater ignorant basket of deplorable getting more power. If that makes us less of a democracy and more of a liberal bureaucracy then fine by me.

[Hnv1]

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'm seeing a lot of Dunning-Kruger here, so as the only (afaik) Israeli lawyer here let me clear some issues.

A/ The narrow 'reasonableness' standard - 'NRS' (equivalent to the Wednesbury (UK) standard in Britain), applies to administrative acts, not legislation. I think the Chevron case in the US created a similar standard, and regardless American courts apply very intensive review of administrative acts using fairly ambiguous constitutional norms.

B/ NRS is applied to a small section of decisions where other administrative review standards such as ultra vires, procedural faults, and proportionality are met. In Israeli law, it is quite important as a lot of norms we have were either drafted by the British colonial rule or in the early days of Israel, so they include fairly wide wording creating very wide powers. e.g., British emergency laws from WW2 are still in force, and the local IDF officer ranking LTC has a prima facie power to seize my house for security reasons. It became apparent that with powers in such wide scope, it was paramount to create a flexible standard to meet issues that are not codified in other legal standards.

C/ The two main issues courts have used the NRS in regard to our appointments and indictments. Israeli politicians prefer to appoint politicos and extended family members. It was terrible during the days of Labour, and the right took it to completely new levels as their politicos are more often than not incompetent. The SC started using the NRS in the '80s to block some ridiculous appointments, and the NRS was expanded to review ministerial appointments in the 90s. As Shas and Likud have on average at least one politician under criminal investigation at all times, you can see why this brought several confrontations between the government and the judiciary. Lately, again with thrice convicted Aryeh Deri'i
The NRS amendment passed yesterday was worded to prevent judicial review of all appointments by ministers. Likud already has several felons and such in line to appoint to high-ranking offices.

D/ NRS was used to vacate some administrative decisions about distribution, such as unequal tax breaks and such. This is a very narrow field but potentially disastrous as the Likud developed a client state for the settlers and Haredi. NRS is pretty much the only barrier we have to stop the looting of the treasury by them.

E/ the NRS in itself is not that big of a deal. Other administrative standards can be expanded to tackle these issues. The problem is two-fold: the precedent where the legislator creates black boxes with no judicial review; and the very acute concern that this is only the first step of a much wider plan that was temporarily halted in March\April after the Gallant riots.

[Hnv1]

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.

Your judiciary employs a hermeneutic method of sticking to the literal sense of words uttered by a bunch of people over two hundred years ago to reach astonishing conclusions such as Shinn v. Ramirez last year when they decreed that innocence is not enough to overturn a death sentence.

The American justice system is a backward dumpster fire, and there is no reason to export yet another terrible American way of thinking to the rest of the world. We're happy without legal giants such as Scalia and Thomas.

[Hnv1]

Yair Golan's heroism during the attack has also boosted Meretz's numbers. I think it's very likely Labor and Meretz will run together in the next election under General Golan.

That would surprise me. He's a hero, but a political fool. I can't see it happening.