Israel’s democracy movement is ready for a fight — and we need your help

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a joint session of Congress a week ago that democracy was in our people’s very DNA. The Knesset’s decision to eviscerate democracy just a few days later shows that the people will have to fight for their freedom, nonetheless. It will be a difficult and drawn-out struggle.

The calamitous bill passed last Monday 64-0 because the opposition walked out of the chamber in disgust. The legislation usurps massive power from the judiciary for the executive, essentially eliminating judicial oversight. The “reasonableness standard” it abolishes has been a staple of Israel’s jurisprudence, similar to the situation in many countries based on common law. It had been used sparingly but was critical for discouraging the worst government abuses and corruption. But with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on trial for bribery and other corruption counts, the government he leads wanted to clear the way for him.

In so brazenly overreaching their authority, the coalition lawmakers demonstrated their lack of the most elementary patriotism and sense of responsibility. The task of fixing the crisis they created now falls to our vibrant civil society and to the Supreme Court itself. Seven petitions to annul the new law have already been filed, and the Supreme Court decided last Wednesday that it would hear them in September.

But we could also use some help from our friends, first and foremost the United States. President Joe Biden, who clearly loves Israel, should show some tough love this time. Netanyahu has not earned a meeting with the American president at the White House (or anywhere else for that matter).

Israelis — and Netanyahu, in particular — need to learn the consequences of going down a path that diverges dramatically from the values we have shared with the U.S., and the Biden administration should make this crystal clear. So should members of Congress. To have a special relationship based on shared values, you need to actually share values.

We recall a meeting with F.W. de Klerk, the former South African leader, who explained what caused him to turn his back on apartheid some three decades before. He said it was the combination of international pressure with the insurrection from within. 

Despite the differences between the two cases, we fear it will have to happen to and in Israel, as well. 

The coming days will demonstrate what values Israel actually adheres to. If the Israeli Supreme Court strikes down this contemptible law, expect the reckless and cynical Netanyahu government to try to circumvent it, perhaps by firing key gatekeepers whose job is to guarantee the rule of law. A constitutional crisis beckons. Everyone will need nerves of steel, including the police and the other law enforcement bodies, such as the Shin Bet security agency (which a co-author of this piece once led).

Of course, many true friends of Israel have long bristled at the more familiar actions of the ultra-nationalist right in Israel: the oppression of the Palestinians, the growth of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the tolerance of Jewish hooligans violently rampaging in Palestinian areas. 

Compared to these outrages, the so-called “judicial reforms” might seem to be a nuanced matter. But in fact, they are a dagger striking at the heart of the notion that America and Israel have shared values. 

The proposals included measures letting the government to appoint cronies to the Supreme Court, override even its puppets on the court via its majority in parliament and remove critical checks on corruption. Down the road, they include removing “fraud” and “breach of trust” from the list of crimes officials can be charged with — two of the three charges Netanyahu is currently facing in his trial.

Given that Israel lacks a formal constitution — its idealistic 1948 Declaration of Independence and a series of easily amended “basic laws” are no substitute — and that the same coalition controls the government and the parliament, these proposals amount to a near-Putinization of what has until now been a liberal democracy for 75 years. Netanyahu would effectively control all three branches of government.

This reflects a vulgar view of democracy as amounting to a tyranny of the majority, wildly out of sync with the American system of checks and balances on top of guarantees for each citizen secured by the Bill of Rights.

Moreover, these “reforms” — more accurately the systemic oppression of the rule of law and the demolition of the judiciary — were never put before the voters, as Netanyahu’s Likud party had no platform, and Netanyahu did not even mention them in a major speech on his priorities for the new term delivered days before they struck.

All the polls show he would lose today, and strong majorities oppose the reforms. For more than half a year, hundreds of thousands of Israelis from all walks of life and from all parts of the country have been demonstrating against the assault on their democracy. The leaders of the protest movements include a wide array of top figures from the military and security establishment, from industry and business, and in particular from the high-tech sector — which accounts for about a sixth of Israel’s economy, half its exports and most of its growth.

Israel’s security is also imperiled: Reservist units critical to national defense are warning they will cease to volunteer for duty if the Jewish state ceases to be a proper democracy.

Friends of Israel need to understand that Netanyahu is lying to foreign media that any reform will be done only by wide consent; the reality here in Israel is that the progress of the judicial coup d’état continues apace, as this week’s vote tells us.

It is ironic that the legislation comes the week Jews observe Tisha B’av, the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. The annual fast is widely seen as a symbol of the calamities that have come when the Jewish people were needlessly divided and weakened before their enemies. 

Israel is by now on the threshold of dictatorship. Yet we are optimistic, because the massive resistance movement that has arisen in Israel, with hundreds of grass-roots organizations working together and more being created by the day, shows that President Herzog was actually right. It shows that after years of indifference and fence-sitting, the liberal-democratic camp understands that it needs to fight for its freedom and the future of Israel as a liberal democracy, in a determined manner and for the longer term. But we cannot do it alone.

Admiral Ami Ayalon was the director of Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet; the commander of the Israeli Navy; and a cabinet minister. Gilead Sher is a former senior peace negotiator, chief of staff to Israeli PM Ehud Barak and cofounder of the Central Headquarters for the 2023 pro-democracy resistance. Orni Petruschka is a former IDF pilot, high-tech entrepreneur and social philanthropist, who cofounded the Central Headquarters for the 2023 pro-democracy resistance.