Israel’s Leader Wants To Weaken The Courts. People Are Furious

leaders and academics. Even soldiers have been taking part in mass protests for more than two months. They accuse far right and ultra orthodox parties of trying to weaken the checks and balances between the branches of government in an effort to introduce a semi religious autocracy. Israel has the

most far rights government in its history. The protesters warned the policies will undermine the business friendly climate that's driven strong economic growth and shake Israel's support from the US and Europe as a stable democracy in a volatile region of the world. Bloomberg's Israel bureau chief Ethan Bronner has been covering this unfolding crisis, and he joins me now from Tel Aviv to explain what's happening and where it

goes from here. Ethan, can you start by describing the changes Prime Minister Netanyah who wants to put through that are causing these huge protests around the country. The truth is that there's a whole bunch of things all related to the role of the Supreme Court of Judiciary in

this country. Nittagyah who won in November and then he put together a government which is unprecedented in this country in terms of it's being very right wing and very religious and very religiously nationalist, and then came to the country and the Knesset and said, Okay, here are the things we're going to do. We're going to change the

way we select the judges. We're going to end the ability of the Supreme Court to overturn something unless all fifteen justices agree, and if they agree, we can still overturn it with a simple vote of the Knesset. So it was a quart of a whole set of things that as people looked at it felt like this is going to really remove any checks and balance system that we have in this country. Because one more point to make, and that is that in the United States we have

the executive and then we have the legislative. In this country, they're really the same because in order to rule, to become prime minister, you have to have a majority in the Knesset. So Nitzagyah, who of course has what he needs for a government, he has sixty four votes. And they have parliamentary discipline in this system, so if a vote comes, they have to vote or the government falls. And so all those things together are what are freaking out a lot of people here. You talked about some

of the right wing parties, the ultra orthodox parties. Can you describe some of the parties in this coalition and what they want? Well, yes, I mean you do have a couple of parties that have been joined together in a coalition called Jewish Power, and their leaders are settlers. They live in settlements in the West Bank. They believe

that a Palestinian state is complete anathema. They believe also that God, of course gave this land to the Jews, and that their settlement of it and the spread of religious theocratic rule is in fact what God wants from them. And so the more national religious type of rule they have, the better they will be able to fulfill the desk that has been handed to them. So these are very unpragmatic kind of people who have learned but one foot in front of the other and to win, and they've

gotten much further in this country than anybody imagined. Their parties, by the way, were outlawed by the Supreme Court forty years ago and then repermitted later into the political spectrum. So these are very very marginal voices that are now in positions of enormous power, and that is what is really driving these demonstrations anything. What is the complaint that

these far right parties have with the courts? In essence, the Supreme Court in this country about thirty years ago announced, based on a basic law that had been passed to human dignity, that it was from then on going to be judging laws on their constitutionality based on a set of criteria that they thought was appropriate. We're familiar with this in the United States, of course as well, but in Israel there is no constitution, so the idea of

a law being unconstitutional is slightly complicated. But they said, we'll call these basic laws the essence of our constitution. So even instead of a constitution, there are these thirteen basic laws. What are they? What do they pertain to? So some of them are just the way the government

is organized, the executive and legislative, the judicial. There are several that have referred to equality, to equal treatment, to human dignity, and those are the ones that have caused a lot of problems for the right, so that, for example, when there was an attempt to prevent the ultra Orthodox from being forced to join the army, the Supreme Court said, well, that is unequal, that violates our equality claws. When there's been a problem in this country, as there is in

many countries, wealthy countries where refugees have come in. These are African refugees in Israel, and the government has been trying to prevent them by being pretty tough with them and putting them in prison camps for a while, and the Supreme Court said this violates human dignity. So it's

sort of overturned some of those policies as well. There are questions, for example, of in the West Bank and the occupied West Bank, of whether settlements can be built on land that is known to be personally owned by Palestinians.

The Supreme Court said you can't. So there's been a lot of times like that where the agenda of the right, which is to be tough about the border, to spread settlements, to make it possible for the ultra Orthodox not to serve in the military, all of these things have they've

gotten in the way, if you like. So from the point of view of the moderates or the liberals or the left, this is the only way that minorities, minority rights, and human individual civil rights will be protected, because if you leave it up to the majority, there is what we know in the law is known as the tyranny of the majority. So that's the issue. So the Court has been in doing that. Now there are several issues that the right and people who voted for Antonia who

have been angry about for a long time. One is that they feel that the selection of judges is a kind of self selection, which is to say, unlike in the United States, where the president nominates in the Senate confirms, in Israel there's a committee of nine people, and five of those nine are members of the bar, including three members of the Supreme Court, and the rest are politicians.

And so there has been a feeling that the judges can sort of choose their fellows as they move forward, and as the government's turn to the right, they still can prevent the governments from putting right wingers or conservatives in, so there's a selection process. There's the question of exactly under what circumstances the Supreme Court can overturn a law passed by the Kinesse at the Parliament. There's a question of also the role of legal advisors in each ministry.

So there's a whole bunch of things in which it is felt by the right the legal establishment has kind of taken over a lot of politically sensitive issues through the law because they can't win at the ballot box even Can you describe why this is happening now? The complaints that you're describing about the thirteen Basic Laws, The ultra orthodox, the far right of the country has had these complaints for years. Why is it coming to the

four right now. The simple answer is that the extreme right parties and the ultra religious parties together are for the first time in the governing coalition, so that Nintenyaho we think of as a conservative, it is on the left flank of his own government. And this is because there have been four indecisive elections in the last few years, and this election, this was the only way that he could form a stable government, stable meeting a majority of sixty one or more of the one hundred and twenty

seats in the Knesset. Now there's an additional factor here, which is the Natanyahu himself has been indicted for a series of corruption charges, and that has added to the left and the Center's desire not to enter a coalition with him. He is being accused of also going after the legal system because he had grown bitter about the charges against him. He, by the way, believes that the charges against him are political that in a certain way, just an analogy would be in the United States with

Donald Trump. That's the sense that you couldn't win an election, so you would set the legal establishment after him and his companies and so forth. I mean not saying that that is what happened, but that is the view of many on the right in the United States. So like that Natanya whose argument was, you are coming after me on fake charges because you can't win an election against me. And in fact, he is the longest serving prime minister seven I think government and twenty years so it's a

very long time, you think. Can you describe how the system works in Israel where a prime minister is elected but then has to form a government among other parties if his own party doesn't have a majority. Yes, So in the system in this country, there isn't a separate election for the chief of government for what's the prime

minister here? That person is whoever is leading the party with the most seats in the Knesset and then forms a coalition because you have to have more than sixty You have to have a majority of one hundred and twenty to rule. So this has been true for a long time. One of the problems is that the system allows small parties to get past the threshold. You only need a certain number of votes to be able to have a seat, so you would typically have five or

six parties in a ruling coalition. And that's what you have here. And as I say, because the center and the left in this particular election, as said, we're not going to sit with the Tanyaho. Then he turned to the far right. So people are very upset. It's almost

like the proud Boys have been brought into government. For the United States, that's the sense people have, and so when you look at who is in power and then their desire to take down the checks and balance of the court system, suddenly people are in deep alarm in this country about what this could mean for the democratic system. And that's how we get to these demonstrations that we've

been seeing. And so some of these far right smaller parties Net and Yah, who made a coalition with they have the power to crash the government if he doesn't go along, because if they pull out, then suddenly the government is no longer viable. That's right. And so in some ways he's between a rock and a hard place in the sense that he even if he would like to compromise on the digital question, and there's good reason to think that he would, he would lose his governing coalition.

So he's not done that yet. You mentioned the charges against net and Yahoo. Is there a feeling that net and Yahoo is also trying to gain sway over the judiciary in order to prevent them from furthering charges against him. This is certainly the accusation that you hear all the time here. It's difficult to assess exactly how accurate it is. I would say the way in which the Prime Minister could benefit from these changes or re rather slow in terms of the turnover on the bench and so on.

It's not so much that he thinks it will keep him out of jail, as that he is very angry at the legal establishment for what he believes to be a politicized case against him. My conversation with Ethan continues after the break. This feeling that acracy in Israel is under threat if the kinetic can simply overrule the courts has caused enormous protests throughout Israel. And as you write, it's not the usual people you would think who would

be pouring out into the streets to protest. So we have a fascinating situation ten weeks in a row of at least once a week and usually twice a week, tens of thousands. In some cases there have been several hundred thousand people in the streets, and they're led by the kind of upper middle classes, professional classes, hedge fund managers, bankers, you know, all the major banks are basically letting their

employees out of work to go to these protests. We have CEOs and chairmen out on the street holding Israeli flags. There is a sense that these people feel who've been saying, you know, we've been doing our business of building companies. We've had a sort of implicit deal with the government. You take care of stuff and we'll build the economy. And suddenly they feel that they've allowed too much to go on and if they don't step forward now, the

society that they want to live in will disappear. And that bargain has been pretty good for Israel because has become a powerful economy, a leader in tech, in in other industries. If you look at gross domestic product per capita twenty or thirty years ago, it was a fraction of what it is today. The Israeli economy is really an extraordinary success story, particularly the last twenty years, in which has been driven by tech and driven by the

people who are on the streets. So there's another factor here we haven't really talked about, which is that on the right you also have the ultra orthodox parties, in which you have many many men who basically study for a living, have six seven, eight children and are not productive in the typical capitalistic way we think of, and the economy is being carried by the people who are in the streets and who feel that the people who are studying and not in the streets in fact don't

understand how modern society works, and they're going to allow a takeover of the court system in order to create what they're afraid it will be a kind of theocracy, and which the Torah studiers may not actually object to. Some of the people who are out in the street obviously they're protesting because they feel a sort of patriotic

sense that the country is slipping through their fingers. But it's also bad for business that businesses are worried about what's going to happen for the ability to keep Israel as a driver of economic growth. That is correct. There is a deep, deep concern that the conditions for business, which have been very very pro market, very helpful for the kind of technological advance and innovation that has been going on here, will disappear if the legal system is

a slave to the political system. Right, if you don't have kind of courts that you can count on to make the sorts of reasonable decisions that the modern market system requires, that is scaring people. And the truth is it's two components. One is the legal system will not be reliable. The other is the people who are typically innovative today will not want to live here, and so the combination could really do terrible things to the economy.

And in these weeks of protest, there has been you know, it's been very difficult to assess the amount, but there's unquestionably been money not coming in and money leaving out of concern that the reliability of the Israeli's system is under question. Even you went out into the protests and tell Aviv, what were they like? What did you hear

when you were talking to people? It is really and I've been visiting this country for many, many years, whilst I've really never seen this level of anxiety and of a kind of spiritual patriotism that you found on this streets. For one thing, the demonstrations in the heart of Tel Aviv occur in the high Tower part of the city, So you have these massive towers, all a result of the money that's come in over the last twenty or

thirty years. You have the Defense Ministry within sight. You have all of these middle aged people carrying Israeli flags and kind of singing Israeli songs. The Declaration of Independence as it was read by the founding Prime Minister David Ben Gurion is heard in that Crackley Radio recording of the original nineteen forty eight one has been broadcast in

various places. You will be added to the sides of buildings that are owned by high tech companies have the words of the Declaration of Independence put up on them. Big electronic billboards that advertise McDonald's and Coke are also saying we're here for democracy. And the other thing was happening is because it's been going on regularly for at the same time every week, you have almost like a farmer's market feeling. The doctors are there, the lawyers are

the psychologists are there. They all have their kind of signs and their slogans, and there is a little bit of a block party feeling to it as well. You know, these are all people who kind of know each other. I have to say that in the socio ethnic breakdown of Israel, it is heavily Ashkenazi, which is to say, Whitish Jews of European origin, not so much Middle Eastern, very few Arabs. So in that sense, you know, that's one of the ways in which the other side of

this debate can say, look, they're self dealing. They're protecting themselves. These are the sort of old, rich, white Ashkenazim who want to hold onto their power and their money. But I found an enormous amount of sincere concern. I did go out one night with a man who co founded one of the largest investment companies in the country, are called Kumer Capital. His name is Arras Shahar, He's fifty nine years old, and he said to me, look, I've

never been politically involved. I thought I had a deal. You keep the country safe, I'll build an innovation economy. And instead I realized that's slipping out from under me. I am here to say we're going to take this all the way. And now the question of court is what does it mean Natania, who does have a majority in the government, what can this side accomplish. So now I can say to you that there is talk led

largely by the President of Israel. This is Isaac Hertzog, who has relatively symbolic role, it's not a role of real power, who's trying to find common ground to say, Look, I'm open to the idea that there needs to be changed. This change is too radical and too sudden. Let's find

ways to move this forward in a reasonable way. But another thing that's happening, and Shahar and people around him felt this way, is that Israel needs to put into a constitution certain rights that will be inviolable ball so that if in fact, the ultra Orthodox community grows and becomes a third of the population in fifty years, which is the prediction, that it will not be possible for them to vote in a kind of tyranny of the majority way for a theocratic state. So that's ultimately their goal,

and I don't know if it's accomplishable. You spoke to Schachar, and let's listen to a little bit of what he had to say. So the traditional reform is a whitewashed term for really turning Israel into an autocracy. The courts are actually being dismantled in this move, and the government gets complete power on legislation without the court supervision and oversight.

So this is the playbook of turning a democracy into authocracy. No, it's very rare to see tech people, venture capitalists go out of the street to demonstrate, but we feel that we're fighting for our homeland, we're fighting for our country, and we've taken a position a very clear one that we will not let Israel become a non democracy. So we are fighting for a liberal democratic Israel. There could be no other Israel where things go from here when

we come back Ethan. Another big thing that's happening here is that the military, which is one of the core cultural institutions of Israel, is also in turmoil over this, and some people are saying they'll refuse to serve. The military is a central institution in this country, apart from the ultra Orthodox and Arabs. There is compulsory service, so about fifty sixty seventy percent of people serve in it, and it's the longest compulsory service of any demand Christian

in the world, three years for men. One of the things that happens because it's compulsory military service here, the military watches kids in high school and anyone who shows quantitative promise is pulled aside, and if he's really good, and I say he could be here or she really good, they will be sent into units that specialize in cyber and high tech and that sort of thing, and then they are a central part of what's the intelligence unit

in the Israeli militaries, known as Unit eighty two hundred is the largest in the military today. And so they form bonds, professional bonds in the military, and then when they lead, they form startups based on the knowledge and

the sense of the establishment here. Sometimes when I was out on the street, I thought of the Vietnam protests in the United States in the late sixties, And the difference is really quite important, because, yes, these are educated, relatively well off people in the streets complaining about a conservative government's policy. But in this case, it is not kids who don't want to go to the military. It's

people who've spent their lives in the military. So the establishment, the absolute establishment of what has made this wealthy, advanced country is in open revolt against a kind of populous set of proposals, and it's fascinating Ethan. All of this is of course also happening against the ongoing backdrop of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Recently we've seen another uptick in violence. How is all of this playing into that they are intimately linked For a bunch of reasons.

You made reference to the fact that there are people in the military who are saying, if these changes of the judiciary go through, they might not actually respond to the call up for service. Those are reservists, and if as the problems get worse in the West Bank, they were to suddenly not show up, that would certainly cause

an enormous alarm in this country. But I mean, the other thing is that one of the great divides in this country politically is what should happen in the occupied West Bank in East Jerusalem, with the left saying it needs to be the basis for a Palestinian state and the right largely saying there should not be a Palestinian state. We need to absorb this land, and that's our historic Jewish homeland, biblical homeland, and that's where we want to

continue to build our country. So the conflict with the Palestinians touches on this issue at every point. Do you think that pressure being brought to bear by the US government or by Western European governments can actually force netya who's hand? You know, the question of whether pressure works is one of the eternal questions of the human condition.

I don't know. I do believe that, you know, one of the things that has been the case for the last twenty years is that a certain kind of Western government and Western thinker has been critical of Israel and the Natanya who governments and those around him have learned to sort of say, listen, those guys, the hell with them.

They don't care about us anyway. But one of the things that is so striking about these last two or three months is that people who have stood by Israel, the Likud party, Natanya who in the past, are standing up and saying no, no, no, this is the wrong way to go. There are a whole series also of other middle of the road politically Jewish thinkers in the United States and elsewhere who are vociferously calling for this to stop. So I feel like it's another quality of objection.

Although again, where does it go. We don't really know. Israel status as a democracy in a region which is very volatile has given it a lot of support, especially from the US and also Western Europe. Does this threaten to shake that relationship. Israel is pretty dependent on support from the West. You know, The truth is that I think it's a little less dependent than it once was. It is a very very healthy economy with an extremely

powerful military. But that said, it values enormously a sense that it is a member of the kind of club of liberal democracies essentially in the West, and it is

opposing a challenge to those relationships. The leaders of France, Britain, Germany, and the United States have all said allowed that they are concerned about these tradicial changes, that an independent judiciary is core to a democratic system, and the American Jewish community, which has been very important to Israel's existence and survival

over the years, is alarmed about it as well. I mean, it's complicated because they're also alarmed about some of the members of the government that Nigenia who have brought in, who have a history of racist state So, yes, it's all up in the air. The sort of people who might read Bloomberg in Israel are deeply depressed right now. In Israel. They feel that their country is slipping from their hands. Although there is also the sense that they are going to stand up and prevent this from happening,

they're not sure they can win. Well, that raises the question can they win If net and Yah, who has a coalition government, he has the votes to pass pretty much anything that he wants, how can this be stopped? I mean, I don't really think anyone knows exactly what

that answer would be. I think the feeling is that if the pressure is so intense, if it really were clear that money, or if we think of the SVB bank run, that if we think of that as kind of a model that could happen here, which is there's concern you never know and then suddenly everybody wants to pull out that if there were a run, if you like on the Bank of Israel, and enough reservists said, you know, I'm not going to do it, that somehow

it would That's somehow those are around Natanya who would say, listen, this needs to stop. We need to negotiate. So that is I think the only scenario I can imagine in which he loses, because I don't think any member of his coalition is going to peel away to the center of the loft at the moment. But it's an enormous mystery. How can this go anyway except the way he wants it to go? Ethan Browner, thanks for talking with me today. Been a pleasure, West, Thank you thanks for listening to

us here at the Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Bergelina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Rebecca Chasson is our producer. Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Raphael M. Seely is

our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm Westcasova. We'll be back on Monday with another Big Take. Have a great weekend. H