Labor party chief accuses coalition of advancing judicial overhaul under cover of war

Labor party leader Merav Michaeli claims the coalition is continuing to advance its controversial judicial overhaul agenda under the cover of wartime.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin, according to a report yesterday, tried to promote two architects of his judicial overhaul as judges, in exchange for accepting the Supreme Court’s candidate for the court’s next president.

Michaeli calls on Minister Benny Gantz, whose centrist party has joined forces with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form an emergency government, to “stand by their original agreement and deal only with Israel’s security.”

Michaeli also criticizes Netanyahu for his deflection yesterday of a question about taking responsibility for the failures that enabled the October 7 massacres, when the premier argued that then-US president Franklin Roosevelt was not asked the same question in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.

“There’s no evidence that Roosevelt brought suitcases of cash to Yamamoto and the Nazis before the war,” she says, referring to successive Netanyahu governments’ policy of allowing cash into the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip, in hopes of holding Hamas in check through economic stability. Yesh Atid party head Yair Lapid made the same point, using the same words, in his faction meeting.