Can Israel recover from its precipitous fall?

By dan meridor

Looking back over the past four months, it is astounding to observe how quickly and in how many fields Israel has sustained damages due to the actions of the Netanyahu government.

Currently, negotiations are ongoing between representatives of the Israeli coalition government and the opposition under the banner of searching for a compromise to the ‘judicial reform’ initiative and exiting this unprecedented internal crisis.

However, any serious attempt to reevaluate the balance of power between the three branches of government would, if done correctly, involve a lengthy process lasting a year or two. It would have to involve jurists from across the board, experts from a wide spectrum of views, representatives of civil society, Jews and Arabs, trade unionists and employers – in short, it would be an enormous endeavor. This isn’t something that can be seriously concluded in a matter of weeks.

Looking back, the question of how Israel reached this crisis point in the space of just four months must be asked. Economically, Israel went from being a powerful tech-based start-up nation with a booming economy revered around the world, to a country whose economic officials warn of billions of shekels in losses.

The people issuing these warnings are Netanyahu appointees, like the Bank of Israel Governor Prof. Amir Yaron, and former Bank of Israel Governor Karnit Flug, as well as the world-renowned economist Jacob Frenkel, also a former governor of the BOI.

The economic consensus is clear: if the judicial reform goes ahead, Israel’s outlook will be catastrophic.

Investors see that the government is trying to rob the judiciary of its independence, and, from there, financial damage is quick to follow. Even if the political crisis fades and the judicial changes are stopped in their tracks, the economic damage could be long-lasting as investors may be wary of betting on Israel.

Politically, Israel was considered to be the United States’ strongest ally – and derived much of its power from this alliance. Now, U.S. President Joe Biden explicitly informs the world that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unwelcome in Washington.

Warnings about common values have been issued by other senior American administration officials, such as the secretary of state and the secretary of defense.

And what of the flagship achievement, the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain? Suddenly, a cold breeze is blowing in Israel’s direction from the Gulf. The damaged Israeli – American alliance is part of the reason. Netanyahu’s vision of on-boarding Saudi Arabia to the Accords will have to wait.

On recent visits to European capitals, the Israeli premier was pummeled with criticism over the judicial reform crisis, albeit the style was less abrasive than Biden’s.

It’s not only relations with the U.S. administration that are on the ropes. So too are relations between the Israeli government and American Jewry. On the domestic front, several crises threaten to snowball into an avalanche. Reservists from prized army and air force units have announced they will not volunteer if the reform goes ahead and Israel is turned into a dictatorship.

All of this has eroded Israeli deterrence and challenged its security establishment –this according to none other than Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, whom Netanyahu initially fired for warning of the dangers posed by the domestic crisis, but then backtracked on his decision under pressure.

Incredibly, this can all be traced back to a single attempt to implement an extreme move to undermine the judiciary’s independence.

Israel has always known bitter disputes over policies and ideologies. Whether it was about reparations from Germany, or land and peace, Israelis have always argued intensely, but almost everyone was united around core democratic values and accepting the decisions of the courts.

In fact, the judicial reform initiative has, until now, been a marginal issue. While Justice Minister Yariv Levin has held strong views on the matter for many years, until the formation of this government, Netanyahu did not take it very seriously. Levin himself admitted in April that had the reform passed as initially presented, Israel could not fit the definition of a democratic state.

The damage hasn’t stopped at national interests – it has harmed Netanyahu politically. A series of polls have shown that the Likud party is losing altitude quickly.

What has caused Netanyahu to embark on such a destructive path? The answer can only be the attempt to weaken the legal system due to Netanyahu’s criminal trial. Although Netanyahu is innocent until proven guilty, he probably does not have an interest in seeing his trial play out and seeing whether he is convicted or not.

Netanyahu loves his country – he served in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando force and fought bravely – but he loves himself more. As a result, until now, Netanyahu has rejected any plea bargain arrangement, which would have likely meant an end to his political career, as he seeks to punish the system that ‘dared’ prosecute him.

In this manner, everyone perceived by Netanyahu as a threat has been tagged as a ‘leftist’ or someone who ‘betrayed the national interest.’ This includes the police, and its former commissioner, the religious settler Roni Alsheikh; the Yeshiva graduate and former state prosecutor, Shai Nitzan; and the religious former Attorney General and Netanyahu appointee, Avichai Mandelblit.

Suddenly, all of the above-mentioned and others are labeled by the Netanyahu lie-machine as ‘leftists’ seeking to harm the state. The worst part is that a swath of the public believes this.

As a result, in the Netanyahu narrative, the courts are now presented as a danger to democracy and to security that frames publicly appointed politicians.

The time is ripe for Netanyahu to face challenges over his conduct from within the Likud. The Likud was once a party that wasn’t afraid to criticize its leader. This was true during the days of Menachem Begin, whose peace deal with Egypt faced multiple challenges from within the party, and through to the era of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was challenged by senior Likud figures at the time, Ariel Sharon and David Levy.

It would be appropriate for some of the Likud’s 31 Knesset Members today to speak up and tell Netanyahu that he cannot continue harming the country in this way. 

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Dan Meridor is a publishing expert with The MirYam Institute. He was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intelligence in the Israeli Government from 2009-2013. Read full bio here.

Democratic norms and the rule of law at stake in Israel’s elections

By Dan Meridor

The upcoming November 1 Israeli national elections, the fifth in three years, are not merely another electoral contest, or just the latest effort to break out of political deadlock.

Rather, they represent a key junction for Israeli society, which will have to make fateful decisions about the kind of ethical and legal systems that will govern the State of Israel in the near and distant future.

Two factors are converging to threaten Israel’s democratic norms and rule of law. The first is the likely attempt by Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu to disrupt the trials underway against him, and the second is the rise of authoritarian political forces that wish to undermine the system of checks and balances and make the Knesset the all-powerful branch of state. These two elements are joining forces.

Until now, the rule of law in Israel has been based on a critical moral foundation of ethical values, which have underpinned Israel’s democratic – Jewish nature. These values are what enable the balance that Israeli democracy has successfully maintained between the Jewish national cause and adhering to liberal democratic norms.

Such norms include equality of all citizens, freedom of expression, and ensuring individual citizen rights. Israelis have relied on state mechanisms like legislation, the police, state prosecutors, attorney generals, and the High Court to ensure these values.

Now, unfortunately, this system is in jeopardy.

Since Israel’s inception in 1948, there have always been substantial disputes between political camps, and in that context, between Herut (the pre-Likud party) and Mapai (the pre-Labor democratic socialist party) over multiple issues. These ranged from whether or not to accept German Holocaust reparation offers in 1952, or decades of dispute over the land-for-peace formula, as well as bitter arguments over whether a free-market economy or deep government-involved socialism should govern the Israeli social-economic sphere.

Over the years, the electorate made its decisions, and Israel continued as a functioning state and society despite these serious divisions. What enabled this to happen was a national consensus on the need for a fundamental ethical framework, which was universally accepted. Institutions made their decisions and society accepted these decisions whether people agreed with them or not.

Until now.

For the first time in Israel, the High Court’s authority, or respect for legal institutions and legal rulings, are under attack. This flies in the face of the national–liberal tradition of the Herut party, which was always committed to upholding the rule of law.

The late prime minister Menachem Begin consistently argued that the High Court should have the authority to overturn Knesset legislation if it violates human rights. I am proud to have been the Justice Minister for the Likud when we initiated legislation to guard basic human rights (known as the constitutional revolution).

In 1953, the High Court told Ben Gurion that he could not decide the balance between freedom of speech and security, and overturned his decision to close the Kol Ha’am newspaper – not very long after the 1948 War of Independence.

The legal system has not changed. The same judges, now accused of being “leftists” by the pro-Netanyahu camp, ruled against Ben Gurion. In 1977, Aharon Barak, the Attorney General at the time, was about to indict former Labor Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, prompting his resignation. He then indicted a number of senior members of the Labor camp.  

This is what the separation of powers looks like, and this is how the judicial branch applies checks and balances on the government and the Knesset – just as it was designed to do – to prevent unchecked power or tyrannical rule.

Liberal democracy has never advocated for unchecked majority rule, and while the majority certainly can select the identity of the government and influence critical policies, it cannot decide who is guilty or innocent. A court has the legitimate and legal powers to also cancel rules that violate democratic norms.

In 1988, we in the Likud led the unusual initiative to ban the racist Kach party from running in the elections. We gathered public information about its activities and delivered it to the National Elections Committee. That is because racism has no place in a Jewish democratic state, whether one is on the Right or Left, Jewish or Arab -- according to the Basic Law, which was changed in 1985 by the national unity Likud – Labor government. The change we introduced banned racist parties.

Today, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a student of the late racist Meir Kahane -- the founder of the Kach party -- who until recently had a photograph of Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein in his living room, and who was convicted in the past of support for a terror organization, has gained, to our dismay, legitimacy in the political system. Netanyahu brought Ben-Gvir into the political sphere in order to reach a parliamentary majority.

This is the clearest demonstration of how values once taken for granted are now being questioned. Israel is a Jewish state because it has a Jewish majority, not because it discriminates individually against Arab citizens. The value of equality is now under assault.

The pro-Netanyahu bloc seeks to actively weaken the judicial system because it has identified it as the gatekeeper. The courts, the state comptroller (who has the power to expose corruption and who was weakened), and the police chief have all been targeted by rhetoric designed to delegitimize these institutions and to personally attack those who head them. This includes anyone who does not fall in line with the pro-Netanyahu agenda, such as the former settler police commissioner, Ronnie Alsheikh, the former religious attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, and the former chief prosecutor and yeshiva graduate, Shai Nitzan. None have been spared from the wrath of the Netanyahu camp or dodged charges of being “leftist” conspirators seeking to dislodge Netanyahu from power in a nefarious plot.

Such unprecedented attacks are, essentially, attacks on the state as we know it. A state cannot exist without agreed-upon methods for resolving disputes.

Now that the trials have already begun, Netanyahu, who has already accused the judges of being ‘leftists,’ is probably examining options to stop them. The past four elections held in Israel since 2019 were about one issue: The likely effort by Netanyahu to gain legal immunity and prevent criminal trials against him from starting.

A weakened court system, which could then be passed to cancel the trial using a step like the ‘French Law,’ is one such scenario that Netanyahu may hope to achieve.

While Netanyahu has the right to be assumed innocent until proven otherwise, a failure to complete his legal process would constitute a significant blow to the concept of equality in the face of the law.

Zionism is a just cause. Justice is critical to it.  Today, those that espouse values like democracy, human rights, and rule of law, are tagged as ‘leftwing,’ although these are the precise values that were espoused by Begin, Herut, and the older version of the Likud party.

Ultimately, all of these developments project onto the core of the Zionist movement. Zionism holds that after 2,000 years of not employing sovereignty or force – with disastrous consequences – the time for the Jewish people to return to statehood has arrived. However, the right to use force comes with the responsibility to preserve righteousness, and that, in turn, is based on the preservation of democratic rights and values.

It is this mix of national and liberal values that the old Herut party once championed, and which the current pro-Netanyahu bloc is threatening to weaken and largely disable.

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Dan Meridor is a publishing expert with The MirYam Institute. He was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intelligence in the Israeli Government from 2009-2013. Read full bio here.

INTERVIEW: Populist extremism must be ditched for national resilience

Dan Meridor interviewed by Yaakov Lappin

Former long-time Likud member and ex-Minister Dan Meridor has spent decades in the halls of Israeli power. He has played influential roles in multiple Israeli cabinets, with his last official position being deputy prime minister and minister of intelligence and atomic energy, from 2009 to 2013. A member of the Herut party, one of the forerunners of the Likud party, Meridor was close to the late prime minister Menachem Begin.

Today, nine years after leaving the political system, Meridor, 75, is more concerned than ever about what he describes as the “populist and extremist rhetoric” that has infected Israeli political discourse, and its toxic after-effects. In a wide-ranging interview with the Miryam Institute, Meridor sets out a comprehensive formula on how to rebuild Israeli national resilience and unity, based on a firm national liberal foundation.

Mr. Meridor, what do the words ‘national resilience’ mean to you?

“Let’s begin with terminology. What does the word ‘national’ mean? The word has different meanings and different contexts. In the American discourse, national means American, encompassing everyone from New York to San Francisco. It means all citizens who live in that country.

Israel is a nation-state, which is a different model. Based on the national self-determination vision of former American President Woodrow Wilson, the Jewish people formed a nation-state. So when we say national, do we mean Jews or Israeli citizens? There is an ambiguity here, and that ambiguity can be both constructive or destructive, depending on how it is used.

Israel is a majority Jewish state with a minority of Arabs living in it, some of whom refer to themselves as Palestinian-Israelis. If the word ‘national,’ in our context, means all Jews, that might sound exclusive to Arab Israelis. To be sure, I am deeply invested in my Jewish identity. It affects all aspects of my life, as it does, I believe, for most Israeli Jews. Our Jewish identity is what we are all about. But the Zionist idea came along and said that we are no longer just a community. We built a state, and in it, we are the majority nation. So when we say national and refer only to Jews, we could sound like we’re excluding non-Jewish Israelis.

There are ways of addressing this constructively, but passing the Nation-State Law [in 2018] only exasperated this tension. Where does this law leave the Arabs? What should their state be? How can we demand allegiance from them and in the same sentence tell them that this is not their state?

This is why the term national is so sensitive. We have multiple definitions of national here. I am fully Jewish and fully Israeli. We have Arab Israelis who feel fully Palestinian and Israeli. We both belong to the State of Israel.”

How has this tension played out in other nation-states around the world? Is there anything we can learn from their experience in managing it?

“Europe is filled with nation-states in which specific peoples constitute the majority, living alongside national minorities. This is the case in Russia, Hungary, Poland, and other countries. The majority-minority issue, in fact, rose to the surface in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the Jewish people played a key role in doing that.

In early 20th-century Poland, Jews numbered three million people, making up 10% of Poles. They were fully Jewish and fully Polish, so what were they? This is not a new question.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, whose theories and ideology deeply influenced me, was one of the first to write about optimal ways of dealing with minorities, penning down his ideas on this in Helsinki in 1906. He wrote that recognizing the rights of minorities is an essential part of the Zionist vision.

In his 1923 Iron Wall essay, Jabotinsky swears in the name of his generation and in the name of his descendants that the Jewish people in the Land of Israel will never violate the equal rights of minorities. This concept is part of the DNA of Zionism’s vision of a Jewish state.

Since the start of Zionism and to this day, we remain involved in a historic conflict between Arabs and Jews. On May 15, 1948, this struggle reached a turning point when the Jews succeeded in establishing a Jewish state, with a clear-cut Jewish majority. From that point onwards, we were no longer just a community. We were a state with a Jewish majority and an Arab minority.

THAT MEANS that norms that were once acceptable for a community are no longer suitable for a state. For example, in our pre-state reality, Jewish communities in the land said they preferred Jewish manual labor, as part of the Jewish struggle to rebuild the land. Once a state came into being, however, it is no longer possible to discriminate on that basis. Similarly, in the pre-state reality, the Jewish National Fund worked intensively to purchase and develop land for Jewish communities. Now, however, in the reality of the state, the land must be allocated proportionately for all citizens of the country. The land must be for everyone living here. When I say proportionately, it is important to keep in mind that Jews are a majority.

This creates in-built tensions. At the same time, a long process of gradual integration of Israel’s non-Jewish minorities into the state has been occurring. Non-Jews are fully-fledged members of Israeli society and serve in the armed forces, where there are large numbers of Druze personnel, and a growing number of Arabs, including Bedouin, Christians, and Muslims.

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish according to Halacha serve in significant numbers in the security forces.

When we speak of a national effort to fight terrorism, we need to remember that some of those doing the fighting, and some of those being killed in that fight, are not Jews. The Arab Christian police officer Amir Khoury who was killed taking on a Palestinian terrorist in Bnei Brak recently is the latest painful example.

So national resilience is based on creating unity, and that unity has to be built in an Israeli context. We are defending Israeli society here.”

In light of that, how do we define this Israeli identity, and how does it fit in with the Jewish identity of most citizens?

“Israeli identity requires a cohesive approach. First, it is important to note that the state’s Jewish identity is very clear. It favors Jewish education, literature, history, and culture. Now that we’ve established ourselves as a majority, we need to give minorities the same rights that we demanded for ourselves when we were minorities.

Druze and Arabs are in the security forces. To exclude them from the sense of Israeli national unity because they are non-Jews is both offensive and stupid.

Yet this is the dangerous place that the populist approach is leading us to. This is a discourse that is not based on values but on emotions. It is not based on ideology but on identity. It fosters the creation of groups in Israel and makes out that these groups must be in conflict.

THE FIRST step in rolling back this toxic discourse is to change the Nation-State Law, to add the basic principle of equality for all Israelis.

I have heard firsthand accounts of the pain that this law has caused patriotic citizens that come from the Druze sector. They have told me: We fight with you, we support the Jewish state, but this law alienates us.

Zionism was always about achieving a Jewish majority, based on the assumption that everyone votes in the political system. It never meant depriving non-Jewish minorities of their equal rights.

The Jewish communities that live in Britain or Switzerland accept the crosses on the national flags of those states and accept that they are minorities living in vast majorities that belong to a certain culture. So there is no reason that minorities can’t coexist justly among national majorities.

As Israeli Jews, our role in achieving this balance is to understand that we are a state, not a community, and a state belongs to all of its citizens. Because the majority of citizens here are Jewish, the state is therefore Jewish, and there is no contradiction between being a Jewish and a democratic state exactly because of this majority status.”

Now that we’ve defined what an inclusive Israeli national identity looks like, how do we in practice proceed to build it?

“Today’s politics is built on hating the other. This is a very dangerous trend, and we see it happening all over the world. The first step to strengthening unity is to understand that, as Israeli Jews, we are the winners here through the establishment of a Jewish nation-state, and in victory, we must be magnanimous.

Our Jewish heritage supports these very values. As the Book of Leviticus states: When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

THE WAY to advance these values is leadership. Today, unfortunately, people get elected because they’ve mastered the dark art of catering to the lowest instincts of voters. They ask the voters what they want to hear, and say it. That’s not leadership – that’s being led by the masses. Leaders show the people the way and find new ways of seeing things.

In 1948, David Ben-Gurion didn’t hold a poll before declaring a Jewish state. In 1977, Menachem Begin didn’t go to the people before deciding to give up every last inch of the Sinai to an authoritarian leader from Egypt. He even faced opposition from parts of the Left over this move, such as from Yigal Alon. Yes, he had to convince the country about the wisdom of this move. But he didn’t ask the majority the right way. He created the majority, but he did not follow it. 

At Mount Sinai, the people received the Ten Commandments because otherwise, people would have committed those sins. This is human nature. People need leadership to steer them away from their base instincts. Leadership can be elected today, or appear in the form of kings and prophets in ancient times. Anyone who has influence has a responsibility to wield it in a positive manner. 

When an Arab Israeli terrorist commits an attack, it’s up to our leaders to warn against generalizing against all Arab Israelis. The vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens have nothing to do with terrorism and reject it. Arabs fill our hospital hallways saving lives every day, and Arab and Jewish doctors fought against the COVID-19 pandemic side by side.

Only strong leadership can lead the people away from generalization, not only because it is morally wrong, but because it is unwise and harms the national interest. This is the basis of building unity, and only from there can we begin to talk about resilience.”

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Yaakov Lappin, is the in-house analyst at the MirYam Institute. He provides insight and analysis for a number of media outlets, including JNS.ORG. Read full bio here.

Dan Meridor is a publishing expert with The MirYam Institute. He was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intelligence in the Israeli Government from 2009-2013. Read full bio here.