"This is how dictatorships start.
This is how dictatorships start.
Well in that case from 1948 - 1953 Israel was a dictatorship as all judges were appointed by politicians.
Currently Israel appoints its judges the same way we do by a Judicial Selection Committee. It is the make up of this committee which is the flashpoint.
Currently the committee is comprised of nine members, and the appointment of a judge to all courts other than the Supreme Court requires a simple majority of the committee members present, as long as no less than seven members participate in the vote.
The nine members include the Supreme Court president; two other Supreme Court justices selected by the justices of the Supreme Court; the justice minister, who chairs the committee, and another cabinet minister; two members of the Knesset chosen by the Knesset in a secret vote (usually, but not always, one MK from the coalition and one from the opposition); and two members of the Israel Bar Association chosen by the association’s national council.
Under this system, the government and the coalition together usually have three members on the committee (the two ministers and one MK), the judiciary has three members, the Israel Bar Association has two members, and the opposition has one.
One of the key complaints raised by advocates of the government’s reforms is that, when choosing judges for the lower courts, the elected officials can easily be ignored by the unelected members of the committee — that is the judges and lawyers.
This is not the case for appointments to the Supreme Court, which require a majority of seven votes, and therefore a much higher level of consensus. In effect, the judges and the government representatives both have a veto over appointments to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman Simcha Rothman and other advocates of the government’s overhaul have insisted that even this power of mutual veto between the government and the judiciary gives too much influence to the latter, to the detriment of the will of the people.
Remove judicial independence and appoint the judges that hold the state to account.
In the US all Supreme Court justices, court of appeals judges, and district court judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate, as stated in the Constitution. So politicians nominate and appoint judges who have life tenure. So are they truly independent ??
The key point there being the US Constitution which is something Israel doesn’t have, so there is no clear division of the legislature, executive and judiciary.
In the absence of a constitution Israel has a number of basic laws and it has been the Supreme Court in Israel using its power of judicial review and overturning of laws which has been cited as one of the reasons for the proposed changes.
Except the Defence Minister has identified this as a threat to national security.
What he identified as a risk to national security was military reservists were threatening not to turn up for their refresher training, which in a society where the military is held in high regard came as a complete shock.
Is it a coup if the military will not serve under these conditions?
No if the army had overthrown the government that would be a coup. The military potentially not obeying orders is technically mutiny which is a not a situation you would want either.
The situation in Israel is unfortunately a product of its creation in that the First Knesset failed to create a written constitution.
The Knesset is only a unicameral assembly, there is no upper chamber to hold it to account and the president has no executive power (being elected by a secret vote of the Knesset).
In addition the low threshold of votes needed for a party to gain seats in the Knesset is also a factor. The electoral threshold is currently set at 3.25%, with the number of seats a party receives in the Knesset being proportional to the number of votes it receives. So being a multi party democracy means lots of small fringe parties which the main parties have to bargain with to gain a majority. Israel has only ever had coalition governments in its history (potentially an argument against PR).
Is Israel about to become a dictatorship? IMO no
but that’s just my opinion, the reasons for this situation have been developing for years and I can remember watching all the demonstrations when Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David agreement and all the talking heads remarking on how Israel was potentially going to fall apart and it’s still here. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, they usually do. "
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