Levin calls Supreme Court judges ‘dictators,’ accuses them of subverting Knesset and gov’t

In a furious riposte to the High Court’s decision ordering him to hold a vote to appoint a new Supreme Court president within a month, Justice Minister Yariv Levin accuses the justices of Israel’s top court of turning themselves into “dictatorial rulers” who “trample on the choice of the people.”

Levin has refused to appoint a new Supreme Court president for over a year since he did not have the votes in the Judicial Selection Committee to install a hardline conservative justice he favors for the position.

The justice minister does not state whether or not he will comply with the court’s new order.

“The Supreme Court justices are taking the powers of the government and the Knesset for themselves, trampling on the people’s choice, repeatedly throwing away the votes of millions of Israeli citizens, and turning themselves into dictatorial rulers, intervening and determining everything, instead of what the people’s choose,” Levin fumes.

The justice minister, who led the hugely divisive judicial overhaul agenda in 2023, also declares that the court has “shoved all of us to the point” where a decision was needed whether or not to “restore democracy” by “defending the authorities of the Knesset and the government, an allusion to reviving the contentious reforms he advanced which would enable the government to take control of the judiciary.

“Israeli citizens have the right to live in a democratic country that has a judicial system, and not to be the servants of a handful of masters who think that the court is supreme over the country and its citizens,” Levin insists.