Israeli Supreme Court Overturns Law Establishing Netanyahu Dictatorship

Since Israel is at least in structure a parliamentary democracy, majority power in the Israeli Knesset, the country’s legislature, is always controlled by the same ruling coalition that appoints the country’s prime minister to power.

The law under review was part of a package of legislation which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “judicial reforms”.

Those so-called reforms radically changed the way new judges are selected for the Supreme Court, effectively rigging the Judicial Selection Committee which nominates candidates for the Court, so that nominees are recommended and voted on for the highest court in the land by representatives of the ruling party within the Knesset and others hand-picked by the prime minister.

The “reforms” also arranged for the Knesset to have the ultimate power to override decisions made by the Israel Supreme Court through a simple legislative vote. The new law was widely opposed by Israeli citizens. 

Under the Israeli Constitution, which was modeled to a significant extent on principles insisted by the United States at the time the nation of Israel was established in 1948, the government of Israel is theoretically structured with a balance of powers present between the Executive Branch including the prime minister and the Cabinet, the Knesset, and the Supreme Court.

According to that Constitution, the 15 judges on the Israel Supreme Court act as the ultimate appellate judicial body in the country, with authority to review and rule on all lower court decisions along with some specific legal authority for certain cases which make it to the Court without going through an appeals process. The Supreme Court rules on government decisions from the legislature and the executive branch in addition to legal challenges brought up through the judicial system. Up until the new law was passed, the Supreme Court had the final decision-making authority on the legality of all measures brought forth by the government. The high court also had the explicit power to reject laws which it deemed “unreasonable”, a power which is even broader than that held by other courts of similar stature.

Under the judicial reforms Netanyahu’s team proposed and rammed through beginning in December 2022, and which were signed into law six months ago, that balance of power dissolved into a fascist dictatorship where the prime minister, who was appointed by the legislature and whose ruling coalition always controls the legislature, now has the power to direct votes to toss out decisions made by the Supreme Court that he does not like. It also specifically removes the power of the Supreme Court even to rule on “unreasonable” government actions.

As the texts of the judicial reforms were published and began going through public debate, they triggered widespread protests over what was clearly visible as an attempt by Netanyahu and his cronies to establish the prime minister as the ultimate power in all things. People rallied in the hundreds of thousands around the nation to call for the government to bring a halt to its plans to pass the judicial reforms. Tech companies, which make up a substantial portion of the country’s tax base, openly threatened to move their bases out of the country if the law were passed, and the venture capital companies which funded them from startup through expansion phases began to cut back on the amount of money made available for them.

The proposed judicial reforms also brought pushbacks from outside the country, including from international human rights organizations and even public statements against the moves by senile Joe Biden, though he in no way threatened continued unconditional support for Israel as a means of putting pressure on it to change its ways. That is of course the same as war criminal Biden’s path now, where he postures publicly that perhaps Netanyahu may have killed a few too many innocent Palestinians and yet refuses to throttle even one dollar of U.S. military aid to Jerusalem in response.

The radicalization of the everyday public against the reforms raised enough concerns that Netanyahu on multiple occasions told the public he would bring a temporary pause to the legislative review and voting process on the new laws. The last major one of those came in March 2023 and lasted over a month. It seemed to calm the protests, but in the background Netanyahu, who himself is being tried in parallel in the courts on three major graft and corruption charges which those same courts he was attempting to seize control of would rule on, manipulated events so there was no major new dialogue on the reforms. The debate simply moved to private quarters in chambers blocked from the public eye and ear, with the law finally passed just four months later with barely a whimper allowed to be heard from those opposing it.

Soon after the law was passed, it was challenged in Israeli court via a legal petition filed on behalf of 38 human rights organizations in the country.

On January 1, 2024, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled to toss out the judicial reforms relating to changes in its powers in an 8-7 split decision. It did so by declaring the law would cause serious harms to Israeli democracy. The fascist Jews lost by a slim margin. 

It was a historic decision in many ways, as it was the first full seating of the judges of the court since the October 7 phase of the brutal genocidal war by Israel against the Palestinians began. It was also a ruling which in the texts of the majority decision and the dissensions, laid bare the sharp distinctions between the two sides of the case.

Esther Hayut, the outgoing President of the Supreme Court, authored the majority opinion. She wrote that “the Basic Law [which outlined the changes in powers for the Court] constitutes a significant deviation from 'the evolving constitution' and therefore must be accepted with broad consensus and not by a narrow coalition majority."

Basic laws are a sort of near-constitutional set of laws the Knesset can pass. The ruling yesterday is one of the few ever issued which threw out one of those laws after passage.

For those who might question how the Court could justify making a ruling of this kind during wartime, Hayut sidestepped commenting on the genocide in Palestine itself while making the point that the court must always proceed with its responsibilities no matter what else may be happening around it.

“Even at this difficult time, the court must fulfill its role and decide the issues brought before it, all the more so when it comes to issues concerning the characteristics of Israel’s basic identity as a Jewish and democratic state,” she wrote as part of her ruling.

"The demand to apply the law to those at the top of the pyramid is at the heart of our rules, no person is exempt from the rule of law,” Justice Ofer Grosskopf wrote in a concurring opinion, backing the decision to rule against this Basic Law, despite that it might seem itself to be an overreach of Supreme Court authority.

In counter to those decisions, Justice Yechiel Kasher argued in a dissenting opinion that while she did not support the law as passed, she believed the Supreme Court did not have the authority to strike it down.

"The task of legislating Basic Laws is within the purview of the Knesset and not of this court,” Kasher wrote.

Justice Kasher was joined in that dissent by Justice Noam Sohlberg, who wrote that, “most of the judges and presidents of this court stand with me in my opinion (not to invalidate Basic Laws)."

In commenting on the ruling yesterday, Attorney Gil Gan-Mor, who was a senior leader of the legal team which petitioned to have the judicial reform law removed, he applauded the decision which set aside “an attempt to infringe upon the human rights of every Israeli citizen and thwart judicial oversight of government decisions”.

He went on to note the significance of the court’s ability to render such a decision, especially, he said, “in the absence of a robust constitution safeguarding human rights.” That the Court managed to do this, he continued, is “indispensable for the preservation of democratic governance and human rights”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not come on the air to denounce the ruling in any live forum. He instead limited himself to a short official statement released in writing from his office to blast the high court's action.

“It is unfortunate that the supreme court chose to bring a ruling at the heart of the social dispute in Israel precisely when IDF soldiers on the right and the left are fighting and risking their lives in the campaign,” the statement read.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the senior official within the Netanyahu Cabinet who reportedly authorized the new law, reacted angrily to what had happened. Also drawing on the “war card” to justify himself, he said the ruling stood in precise opposition to “the spirit of unity required these days for the success of our soldiers on the front”.

He said this despite that what he really was challenging was the undermining of his and Netanayhu’s Cabinet’s authority to do what ever they want in the grand usurpation of power that have seized control of ever since taking power as of a year ago.

Based on statements made as the case against the new law was being heard, it appears the Netanyahu administration intends to simply ignore the Supreme Court ruling and plow ahead. It may sometime create a revised version of the law, ram it through the compliant Knesset, and put it back on the books again. The amended law will certainly be challenged anew by the same human rights groups which orchestrated the removal of the current one. But this time the Netanyahu gang will have the opportunity to take advantage of the narrow margin by which the current ruling was made, and of the fact that at least one of the high court’s Justices, President Esther Hayut, will have been replaced at this point.

Under other current parts of the judicial reforms which are in place, Hayut’s successor would more likely be a backer of Netanyahu’s fascist Likud Party positions than one who would attempt to stand in the way of them.

Consider this ruling then mostly a speed bump for the Netanyahu regime, as it attempts to set in concrete its transition to an iron-willed fascist regime having only a passing resemblance to the democracy it claims it is.