‘Don’t you dare’: Herzog warns against reviving judicial overhaul divisions, in plea for unity
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Speaking to the Israel Bar Association, President Isaac Herzog cautions the government against resurrecting its highly divisive judicial overhaul legislation from last year, issuing a strident call for unity and insisting that “the soul and future of the nation are at stake.”
Referencing the bitter fight over the sweeping reform that gripped Israel in 2023, Herzog says he sees the “fracture that weakened our resilience and strength is beginning to return to our lives.”
“I hear the voices and initiatives of those who seek to return us months back to the same arena where it all began, I recognize the dangerous fumes in the air and I warn against them here, and honestly ask: Is this what Israeli society needs now?” continues Herzog. “Is this what thousands of bereaved families need? This is what tens of thousands of families are asking for who don’t sleep at night out of worry for their loved ones at the front, because they are evacuated, or God forbid because their loved ones are kidnapped and held by brutal murderers? Is this what the wounded in body and soul are shouting to us? I say clearly — No!”
Herzog’s speech comes two days after hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets demanding a hostage-ceasefire deal after the army recovered six bodies of hostages executed by the Hamas terror organization. It also comes weeks after Justice Minister Yariv Levin reportedly pushed for the renewal of the government’s legal overhaul, which has been frozen since October 7.
“Don’t you dare,” says Herzog. “Let us recover and heal after the terrible break. We must not make fateful decisions regarding the country’s core values without a broad consensus, and an in-depth and shared dialogue.”
Herzog urges all sides of the political spectrum to leave their echo chambers.
“It won’t help us if everyone climbs barricades on every issue,” he says. “Listen for a moment to other parts of the nation, to your sisters and brothers, to whole communities in Israel that think a little differently.”
Herzog, who spoke at the funeral of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin yesterday, also says that Israel’s leaders have “an urgent and immediate task — to act to the best of their ability to save those who can still be saved, and to return all our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters to their homes in peace. This is a supreme moral, Jewish and humanitarian order of the State of Israel to its citizens.”
