Israel passes first law weakening Supreme Court following months of civil strife

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s government has passed a law restricting the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws, the first piece of a proposed overhaul of the country’s judiciary that has led to massive street protests and a growing movement of civil disobedience.

The vote, which was boycotted by the opposition in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed 64-0 and is a landmark moment in a conflict that has consumed Israel since the beginning of the year and drawn the attention and criticism of world leaders and a range of Diaspora Jewish organizations. It is the first measure of the right-wing government’s proposed judicial overhaul — which has aimed to sap the power and independence of the Supreme Court — to be enacted into law.

That proposed package of legislation has drawn hundreds of thousands of Israelis to weekly street protests and has led more than 10,000 veterans to pledge to boycott their reserve duty. Proponents of the overhaul say it will curb an overly activist Supreme Court. Its critics say that weakening Israel’s judicial system will endanger its standing as a democracy and will put minority rights at risk.

Among the opponents of the overhaul is President Joe Biden, who has suggested that its passage could damage the U.S.-Israel relationship.

The law that was passed Monday bars the Supreme Court from striking down government decisions it deems unreasonable. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on passing the law despite the growing protest.

“This is an extraordinary moment,” Justice Minister Yariv Levin, one of the architects of the overhaul, said in a speech following the law’s passage. “We have taken a first step in the historic, important process of fixing the judicial system and returning the authority that has been taken from the government and the Knesset over the course of long years.”

As the law was being voted on, thousands of protesters converged on the Knesset grounds, with some pitching tents in a nearby park. Netanyahu’s opponents in parliament vowed to keep fighting despite the legislative defeat Monday.

“Believe in yourselves,” Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of the opposition, wrote on Twitter to protesters. “Believe in your clear and strong voice. Believe that the future belongs to whoever never gives up.”

Reaction among American Jewish organizations was swift. The centrist American Jewish Committee expressed “profound disappointment” over the passage of the legislation, saying in a statement that it was “gravely concerned about the long-term impact of continued unilateral efforts” to change Israel’s judicial system.

“The new law was pushed through unilaterally by the governing coalition amid deepening divisions in Israeli society as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets,” the AJC said.

The Anti-Defamation League soon followed. “This initiative and other judicial overhaul proposals could weaken Israeli democracy and harm Israel’s founding principles as laid out in the Declaration of Independence,” its statement said.

The Jewish Federations of North America said it was “extremely disappointed that the leaders of the coalition moved ahead with a major element of the reforms without a process of consensus, despite the serious disagreements across Israeli society and the efforts of President [Isaac] Herzog to arrive at a compromise.”

The ADL, the AJC and the JFNA, like President Joe Biden did in a statement, urged the Israeli government and its opposition to continue to seek a compromise even in the wake of the passage of the momentous law. Groups to their left, including the Reform movement, urged American Jews to step up the pressure on Israel to make changes, and J Street said the Biden administration had a role in leveraging that pressure. The Conservative movement said that the passage of the law “represents a clear and present danger to the country’s independent judiciary, which may still come under further assault.”

But in recent months, the reluctance to speak out changed, and not just because weakening the courts undermines the branch of Israeli government that has protected the non-Orthodox. American Jews, rattled by perceived antidemocratic tendencies at home, seem more attuned to the threat the same tendencies pose in Israel, according to a poll last month by the Jewish Electorate Institute. It showed pluralities of U.S. Jewish voters concerned about erosions of democracy in both countries.

“This is our fight too – and the vast majority of American Jews believe in a Jewish, democratic Israel that lives up to its founding values of equality, freedom, and justice for all,” said Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a national public policy group, in a statement on Monday.

The Israel Policy Forum, a group with deep roots in the American Jewish establishment that advocates for a two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the changes in the law risk alienating the Diaspora.

“This move is particularly dismaying to many American Jews, who support Israeli democracy and will now have a more difficult time identifying with Israel and defending it from those who seek to demonize it, leaving Israel today more of a state exclusively for Israeli Jews and less of a state for Jews around the world,” it said.

Liberal American Jews, who have taken the lead in the past in protecting the rights of women and the LGBTQ community, have raised alarms about pledges by some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners to diminish the rights of both sectors.

“The Israeli LGBTQ community has been protesting these proposals for months because it is the Supreme Court that has helped to safeguard the civil rights of all Israelis, including the LGBTQ community,” said a fundraising appeal emailed after the vote from A Wider Bridge, a group that has advocated for Israel in the American LGBTQ community.

Not all U.S. Jewish groups expressed dismay. Some groups on the right praised the enactment into law of the “reasonableness” bill, the piece of the legislation approved on Monday.