Knesset panel meets to ready ‘reasonableness’ bill for final 2 readings

The Knesset Constitution, Justice and Law Committee convenes to ready the “reasonableness” bill for the second and third plenum vote it must pass to become law, after the Knesset approved the controversial measure in its first reading last night.

Appearing before the panel, opposition leader Yair Lapid says that passing a curtailment of the reasonableness test will hurt the economy and make the country “weaker, poorer, and more divided.”

“Every citizen will feel it in his pocket,” he says.

On the diplomatic front, he says, the approval of the legislation “will isolate us, it will enter us into a club of states that the world backed away from.”

He also invokes the destruction of the Second Temple, which is mourned on the fast day of Tisha B’Av in two weeks.

“The true lesson of the tale of the destruction, the final days, is that extremists never see or want to see the consequences of their actions,” he says, referring to the infighting among Jews at the time.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid speaks at a hearing of the Knesset Law and Justice Committee on the “reasonableness” bill, July 11, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)