opinions & letters
What’s Really Happening in Israel
Jerome M. Marcus
W hen Israeli judicial reform was proposed
in January, the left protested, demand-
ing that the legislative process stop so
negotiations could take place. It was illegitimate, said
the protesters, for the parties who won a majority of
the Knesset to use their control to pass a law that
didn’t have broad support
Now the legislative process has been stopped at
the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Just as the protesters demanded, teams have been
appointed and talks scheduled at the president’s
residence over the coming weeks.

But the protests have not stopped. What they have
done, however, is reveal what they’re really about:
not judicial reform, but undoing the last election.

In Israel, there have been no claims that the last
election was tainted by fraud or manipulated by the
Russians. The left claims that the people who won
the election are bad and should not have won.

Why? Listen to their own words.

In Ashdod, one of the protest leaders — Eliad
Shraga, chairman of the innocently named Movement
for Quality Government — explained: “We are
the light, and Netanyahu and his partners are the
darkness. We are democracy, and they are dictator-
ship. We are love, and they are hate!”
“Netanyahu, like a man who runs from the truth,
knows deep inside that he is not fi t to be the prime
minister. He knows he doesn’t reach the minimum
ethical bar to be prime minister. He knows he’s
corrupt, he knows he’s ethically rotten and he knows
he doesn’t lead by example,” Shraga proclaimed.

The reason for the protests, Shraga honestly
stated, is that the offi ceholders chosen by “the
people” are, in the opinion of the protesters, bad.

The protests are being held to throw those elected
offi cials out of offi ce by making it impossible for them
to govern the country.

The protesters have never been opposed to any
specifi c legislative proposal. Yair Lapid and Gideon
Sa’ar, like many other members of the current opposi-
tion, are on record supporting judicial reform. What
they are opposed to is the results of the last election.

They are convinced that the people who won should
not have won, and that the voters who chose these
people have no right to do so. Because democracy.

to this proposed right-wing coup, then they get what they
deserve and have no one to blame but themselves.

headedly bemoans as an anti-democratic “coup”
the success of both internal and external protesters
in apparently derailing (at least for the present) the
Netanyahu government’s intentions of undermining
the judicial branch of the Israeli government.

Tobin’s argument conveniently ignores a fundamen-
tal requirement for any healthy democracy — namely,
an independent judiciary with the authority to uphold
the rule of law and enforce the core values of society.

In the U.S., those core values are outlined in our
Constitution — which necessarily includes protections
from the tyranny of the majority by providing for courts
with the fi nal say in interpreting and applying laws
governing fundamental rights and institutions.

While even core values can and do evolve, and
changes rightly have been made over time through
amendments to our basic social contract, that process
was wisely made arduous by our founders, requiring
supermajorities. With a judiciary that can be overrid-
den by a simple majority vote of the current legisla-
ture, Tobin’s desired democracy in Israel would likely
devolve into autocracy or dictatorship, such as we see
in pseudo-democracies like Turkey, Russia and China.

Surely, that is not what he wishes for Israel.

Majority rule, as provided for in a democracy, is not
without necessary and appropriate limits, checks and
balances. It would behoove Tobin to consider such
necessities before denigrating those who truly respect
Israel’s democracy and seek to preserve it. ■
See Marcus, page 14
letters Israeli Situation Not That Diff erent From
One in US
Reading Jonathan Tobin’s op-ed (“A ‘Resistance’ Coup
Just Defeated Israeli Democracy” March 29), I couldn’t
help but think how remarkably similar Israel’s situation
is to our own under Donald Trump. Tobin’s right-wing
defense of Netanyahu and his strident criticism of
Israel’s left sounds eerily familiar to Trump and his
friends’ savaging of the American liberals.

Tobin opines that Israel is a “juristocracy,” with too
much power to interpret the law. How does that diff er
from the American Supreme Court in which one man
(Trump) can pack the court with enough conservatives
to thwart the will of the people? Polls have shown that
the majority of Americans supported abortion, hated
Citizens’ United and want sane gun control laws, but
the court ignored the “will of the people.” If that’s not a
juristocracy, I don’t know what is.

I would submit that the protesters in Israel are protect-
ing democracy against the threat of an autocracy.

They know that without a system of checks and
balances, it leads down a slippery slope. If the prime
minister and the Knesset can arbitrarily decide which
dictates of the courts to follow, which to ignore and which
to rewrite, can the loss of democracy be far behind?
The “will of the people” is not a coalition of dispa-
rate views that come together for a political purpose. It
represents what the majority of the country thinks and
wants. Before the Israeli government takes any action, hold
a national referendum on this issue. If the majority consents
Jeff Ettinger, Huntingdon Valley
History’s Lessons
Jonathan Tobin’s perceptive and sagacious opin-
ion piece (“A ‘Resistance’ Coup Just Defeated Israeli
Democracy,” March 29) brought to mind warnings from
the past outlined in Jehuda Avner’s celebrated book,
“The Prime Ministers,” specifi cally the chapters devoted
to the tenure of Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Avner recounts Begin’s description of the events
surrounding the Roman attack upon Jerusalem in
70 C.E., during which Jews were fi ghting amongst
themselves, even burning food stores, and thus weaken-
ing the overall defense of the city. Sigmund Freud once
observed that “history repeats itself because man
repeats the same patterns of behavior.”
Of course, currently, the enemies of Israel are not
at the gates. And the country is not burning in a literal
sense. But is Israel on fi re in a rhetorical sense to
weaken, if not destroy, the fabric of society?
Woe to those who fail to exercise judgment for the
benefi t of Israel, rather than seeking only personal
aggrandizement! Arthur Solomon Safi r, Warwick
Consider Core Values
Jonathan Tobin’s recent op-ed (“A ‘Resistance’ Coup
Just Defeated Israeli Democracy,” March 29) wrong-
Lawrence Serlin, Havertown
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