Daily Briefing Mar 23: Recusal law passes just before 'day of paralysis' dawns

Correspondents Tal Schneider and Carrie Keller-Lynn on surprise vote and angry opposition, what’s in store for next week, plus preview of interview with protest leader

Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Daily Briefing, your 15-minute audio update on what’s happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, from Sunday through Thursday.

Political correspondent Tal Schneider and Knesset correspondent Carrie Keller-Lynn join host Amanda Borschel-Dan in today’s episode.

Early Thursday morning, the Knesset passed a law that will protect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from a potential future court order to recuse himself, in a final vote of 61 Knesset members in favor and 47 against. Keller-Lynn sets the scene.

Earlier this week, the Knesset repealed part of the 2005 Disengagement Law. Schneider discusses the blowback from the United States and Israel’s Abraham Accord partners ahead of the start of Ramadan.

Keller-Lynn reported yesterday that a “grinning” Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was swarmed by 20 opposition members when he stepped down from the podium in “a chaotic spectacle even by the Knesset’s often indecorous standards.” What was so objectionable about his speech?

We hear about the many bills that are on deck for next week, including judicial overhaul legislation — and initial discussions on the budget.

And finally, we hear about Schneider’s interview with one of the grassroots protest leaders, Shikma Bressler, which she wrote for our Hebrew sister site Zman Yisrael. Shortly after we recorded today’s Daily Briefing episode, Bressler was detained by police while protesting on Route 4. (To hear more about — and from — internationally recognized physicist Bressler, check out this week’s What Matters Now podcast, which is released every Friday.)