Judicial overhaul ‘a threat, not a reform’ Lapid says, promising battle

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid says that Justice Minister Yariv Levin timed announcing the government’s plan to place political control over Israel’s judiciary in order to exert influence over a Thursday hearing on the propriety of recent legislation paving a way into the cabinet for Aryeh Deri.

“Like a gang of criminals, the day before the High Court hearing on the Deri Law, the government put a loaded gun on the table,” the opposition head and Yesh Atid party leader says. Last week, the new coalition passed a Basic Law change to enable Shas leader Deri to become a minister, despite a recent tax fraud conviction.

Promising to fight the “madness” of Levin’s sweeping plan to place political control over Israel’s judiciary, Lapid says his bloc will reverse reforms if they return to power.

“What Yariv Levin presented today is not a legal reform, it is a threat. They threaten to destroy the entire constitutional structure of the State of Israel,” says Lapid. “We will continue to fight, we will return, we will cancel everything.”

National Unity party MK Gideon Sa’ar, who until last week occupied Levin’s seat in the Justice Ministry, tweets that Levin’s plan to neuter the judiciary betrays the ideals of Likud founder Menachem Begin, whom Levin name-checked at the start of his address.

Levin’s “words were no less than a death sentence for Menachem Begin’s… doctrine,” Sa’ar tweets shortly after Levin’s presentation. “There is no doubt that Menachem Begin would have rejected each of the sections of the plan to change the regime in Israel.”

Sa’ar, a former senior Likud member before breaking with Netanyahu in 2019, wrote that Begin’s “true disciples have the duty to fight it. And so I will.”