by Ceoli Jacoby
As thousands of Israelis filled the streets to protest proposed judicial reforms Thursday night, a group of students, faculty and experts on the other side of the world gathered to discuss the flawed democracy’s future.
The Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies and the Meyerhoff Program and Center for Jewish Studies conceived the hybrid event, titled “Israeli Democracy in Peril?,” in a joint effort to help the University of Maryland community make sense of the proposed judicial reforms and their potential implications for those living under the Israeli government’s control.
Put forth by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right coalition government, the proposed reforms would allow the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to override Supreme Court decisions with a simple majority. They would also limit the Supreme Court’s ability to conduct a judicial review — requiring a near-unanimous vote in order to exercise the power — and increase the proportion of Judicial Selection Committee members who would be appointed by the Knesset.
Supporters view the proposed reforms as a necessary check on judicial overreach. But critics, including all four panelists at the event, view them as an attack on the last bastion of democracy in a state with no constitution and no entrenched bill of rights.
“Israel for 70 years has invested in its Zionist and its Jewish identities, and that has come at the expense of civil society,” Myerhoff lecturer Scott Lasensky said.
Speaking on Zoom, University of California, Los Angeles teaching fellow Tamar Hofnung explained how the proposed reforms could lead to further subjugation of historically marginalized groups, including women, Druze people, and Jews of Middle Eastern descent, under the country’s laws.
“It is very easy to make and remake laws in Israel,” Hofnung said. “If there is a discriminatory law, there will be no institution that can really evaluate that law.”
According to Shay Hazkani, associate professor at the Meyerhoff Program, Palestinians living inside the state and in the occupied territories stand to lose the most in Israel’s democratic backslide. He pointed to a proposed piece of legislation that would impose the death penalty on those convicted of “nationalistically motivated” killings of Israelis, but not on those convicted of the same offenses against Palestinians, as evidence of the new government’s prejudice and illiberalism colliding.
Several experts stressed, however, that these trends are not exclusive to Israel. Media scholar Anat Balint, who joined the discussion via Zoom from Israel, said that what is going on in the country is “part of a global phenomenon of the rise of populism and facism.”
“I tell my students all the time that Americans understand Israel a lot more now that you have had Trump — except we have had Netanyahu for 20 years,” she said.
Hofnung likened Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for corruption, to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — both of whom have increased executive control over their respective countries’ judiciaries.
Lasensky, the Myerhoff lecturer, noted that Israel’s democratic backslide is not only distressing for those who live under the control of its government, but also for Jews in the Diaspora — some of whom now live in liberal democracies after fleeing oppressive regimes in their home countries.
Whereas in the past Diaspora Jews have tended to shy away from Israeli politics, Lasensky said, there has been a “notable shift away from deference” since the proposed judicial reforms.
In Israel, too, the proposed judicial reforms have prompted those who were previously unconcerned with the country’s rightward shift to think critically about Netanyahu’s government and its vision for the country.
“This change that is going on in Israel right now is a fundamental change in what Israel is,” Hazkani said. “My parents are out there protesting, and these are people who have a completely apolitical household.”
Balint, who attended the protests in Tel Aviv before clashes with police began, agreed.
“I think the one really beautiful thing that is happening is the reawakening of civil society,” she said.
Featured image: Lecturer Scott Lasensky and Professor Ilai Saltzman listen as doctoral student Thair Abu Ras answers a question from the audience onscreen, Thursday, March 2, 2023. Photo by Ceoli Jacoby.