The dispute over judicial reform is a legitimate thing in a democratic regime.
While the majority of the Israeli public believes that a reform is needed in the relationship between the authorities, a significant part of it fears that the proposal led by the coalition will lead to damage to the status of the Supreme Court, which, since the constitutional revolution led by then Supreme Court president Aharon Barak in the 1990s, has gained substantial power compared to its counterparts in most of the Western world.
Indeed, reforming the judicial system is a necessary and important step, and the majority of the Israeli public and its representatives in the Knesset understands that the decline in public confidence in the Supreme Court is no accident. And the right to oppose the reform is no less important, when the true power of democracy allows for a serious discourse without restrictions on freedom of expression.
However, this discourse also has limits, and it should be conducted knowing that, in the end, especially in the context of the State of Israel, we do not have a spare country, as the late president and prime minister Shimon Peres used to say, and we should remember that our strength is in our unity.
Many ways to share opinions publicly
Although, in today’s era, anyone with a profile and many followers on social media can spread his opinions widely, in the end the main discourse is conducted between the heads of the political system, who have a double and multiple responsibility to maintain a unifying and not divisive discourse, even if there are disagreements among the public.
No, I am not referring to junior members of the Knesset and “formers” from the Right and the Left, who express themselves day and night on the issues on the agenda and sometimes use words that create a rift and division among the Israeli people. I mean the statements of the leaders of the political parties, especially the large ones, whose words have great power and impact.
The terrible discourse on judicial reform illustrates this well. True, it is unpleasant to hear former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz, who opposes the legal reform, say that “the state is we who hold the parasites on their shoulders,” and former prime minister Ehud Barak’s call for the refusal to obey military orders and for a civil war, claiming that Israel is turning into a dictatorship.
I am mainly referring to opposition leader Yair Lapid, who heads a large party that won 24 seats in the last election, which, throughout the legitimate protest by the opponents of the judicial reform, and even before it, chose to express itself in a divisive and inciting discourse.
True, the heads of the political system have expressed themselves in an inappropriate and divisive manner in the past. Yitzhak Rabin’s statement, when he was prime minister during the Oslo process, about the settlers, “I deride them,” is well remembered, as is Benjamin Netanyahu’s whisper as prime minister in 1997 that “the people of the Left have forgotten what it is to be Jews.”
But it seems that if there were a competition for the most divisive senior politician in Israel’s history, opposition leader Lapid would be the undisputed winner by a large margin. Lapid’s statement in the 2020 elections is well remembered, when he called the right-wing bloc “s***heads” and claimed that “they stole our country,” and in his short tenure as prime minister he even stated that “we will not allow the forces of darkness to break us apart from within.”
But these days, when there are those who would argue that Israeli society is torn and divided, and while Prime Minister Netanyahu, within the limits imposed on him by the attorney-general to express himself on the issue (which illustrates above all that the reform is a justified, moral and democratic move), maintains a conciliatory discourse urging for talks between the coalition and the opposition in order to reach agreements on the judicial reform, opposition leader Lapid continues to conduct a divisive discourse, instead of calling for national unity and dialogue.
In conclusion, the statements and practices of the opposition leader play an important role in the resilience of Israeli society, especially in moments of crisis as the State of Israel is experiencing these days against the background of the judicial reform.
It would have been appropriate for Lapid to learn a lesson in national responsibility and begin to behave in a stately manner and work for a discourse of negotiation and compromise among the people of Israel.
The writer, who holds a PhD, is a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a research fellow at the University of South Wales, UK.