Why you should be worried for Israeli democracy

This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Tuesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

Israel does not have a constitution to underpin its foundational ethos as a majority Jewish and democratic state and guarantee its citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms. Nor does it have three separately effective branches of government — just an executive branch and a judiciary, since the legislature is overwhelmingly controlled by the governing majority.

Today, almost two years after it took office and immediately set about attempting to gain control of the judicial system, Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing, far-right and ultra-Orthodox coalition is moving to consolidate ever more authority in the government’s hands — at the expense of the gatekeepers of democracy and all state, security and civil establishments, including the court system, the police, the state prosecution, the office of the attorney general, the IDF, Shin Bet and the free press.

Within that coalition, moreover, including in the most senior forums of government such as the security cabinet, power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of Netanyahu himself, with internal opponents and dissenters marginalized or, as in the case of defense minister Yoav Gallant last month, dismissed from office.

The following causes for concern are neither exhaustive nor presented in order of gravity. They are all playing out right now, however.

1. Insisting on mass draft-dodging by the fastest-growing sector of the populace

Netanyahu and almost all the members of his coalition are doing everything in their power to maintain the undemocratic, unequal, untenable and socially destructive exemption from IDF or any other national service of the Haredi community. Fourteen months into a multifront war, with the standing army and the reserve forces pushed to their limits and beyond, and the IDF desperately short of soldiers, the prime minister adamantly refuses to right a decades-old aberration and perversion of Jewish principles.

In order to keep his coalition intact, he instead insists on non-Haredi Israelis shouldering the additional military burden that stems from government-overseen mass draft-dodging, and also subsidizing the young ultra-Orthodox segment of society that is not part of the national workforce.

(Yitzhak Goldknopf, head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, did not serve in the IDF; Aryeh Deri, head of the second coalition Haredi party Shas, served for three months. Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry, served a much-reduced stint in the IDF. Otzma Yehudit party leader Itamar Ben Gvir, whose authority extends to the paramilitary Border Police, was not called into the IDF because of his far-right extremist activities.)

2. Reviving the executive takeover of the judiciary

Netanyahu continues to encourage his Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s obsessive crusade to subjugate the judiciary to the will and whim of the coalition majority. Unfazed by the evidence that Hamas and the rest of Israel’s Iran-led enemies recognized and were emboldened by the fact that Israel was tearing itself apart over Levin’s misnamed “judicial reform” ahead of October 7, 2023, Levin and his coalition colleagues are now working to unfreeze a revolution under which the coalition intends to exert near-total control over the choice and promotion of all judges, and radically constrain the capacity of the Supreme Court to intervene in legislation and government decisions. This would leave no dependable protection for the individual rights of Israelis from the abuse of the political leadership.

While he works on his renewed legislative effort, Levin has prevented a vote to elect a Supreme Court president for more than a year since the previous president, Esther Hayut, retired in October 2023, in violation of a court ruling that a new president must be selected immediately. Ordered by the court to convene the Judicial Selection Committee, Levin reluctantly did so last week, but again refused to call a vote to elect Hayut’s successor because he opposes the election of liberal Justice Isaac Amit, who would win.

3. Preparing to fire the attorney general

Netanyahu last month urged Levin to find “a solution” to rid him of the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, the government’s chief legal adviser whose crime has been to advise the government when its policies and actions veer beyond legal limits. (Baharav-Miara, incidentally, has opposed petitions to the Supreme Court demanding Netanyahu recuse himself while testifying in his criminal trial, backed the IDF’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, and endorsed Netanyahu’s right to fire his defense minister.) Netanyahu’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, is proudly collecting ministerial signatures to demand Baharav-Miara’s ouster, with the goal of replacing her with a more malleable appointee.

4. Centralizing power in the hands of the prime minister

Netanyahu is working relentlessly to cement all essential governing authority in his own hands, and to rid Israel’s political leadership of dissenters and all who would challenge him. This reached its apogee last month, when he dismissed Gallant.

Netanyahu had temporarily fired the defense minister in March 2023 for warning about the security dangers posed by the rift over the judicial overhaul, but relented amid vast public protests. This time — after Gallant publicly opposed his Haredi draft-evasion policies, pleaded for a hostage deal even at the price of ending the war in Gaza, and demanded the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding Hamas’s October 7 invasion and massacre — the prime minister summarily dismissed the experienced former general and replaced him with ultra-loyalist Israel Katz, who has no significant defense and security expertise but can be relied upon to never defy him.

Underlining how powerful Netanyahu has become, his security cabinet voted 10-1 last week to approve the highly contentious ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with even Smotrich voting in favor and Ben Gvir, the only dissenter, refraining from issuing his routine threats to bring down the government over the deal.

5. Marginalizing the diplomatic corps

To succeed Katz as foreign minister, Netanyahu installed Gideon Sa’ar, arguably the least credible of all Israeli politicians — a former senior Likud minister who challenged Netanyahu for the party leadership, bolted Likud when he lost, memorably urged voters not to support his ludicrously named “New Hope” party if they wanted to see Netanyahu in power, before joining, leaving and rejoining the current Netanyahu coalition.

Netanyahu has marginalized the Foreign Ministry throughout his 17 years as prime minister, wary of a robust and independent diplomatic corps, and intent on personally overseeing both Israel’s key diplomatic relationships and its public diplomacy efforts. The Foreign Ministry remains underfunded and marginalized during the ongoing war, while a National Public Diplomacy Directorate run out of the Prime Minister’s Office has failed to deliver real-time responses to key developments in the war or to craft and disseminate an effective global public diplomacy narrative.

6. Targeting independent and critical media

Under Netanyahu, the coalition is working to intimidate, marginalize and in some cases shut down non-sycophantic media outlets. It has canceled all government advertising in the left-wing Haaretz daily, after the newspaper’s publisher characterized Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters. It is now moving to sell off, and if not to shut down, the independent-minded state-funded Israel Broadcasting Authority, and to close Army Radio.

The slavishly pro-Netanyahu Channel 14, a rising TV power, meanwhile, routinely denigrates coalition opponents and peddles coalition-serving conspiracy theories, including against the IDF’s top brass and the Shin Bet security agency. The comments section of its website has featured incendiary content targeting opposition figures and security chiefs, including calls for the execution of IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.

7. Avoiding non-loyalist media

The prime minister does not give interviews to non-sycophantic local media outlets — those that would challenge him, on behalf of the electorate that entrusted him with their national and individual fate.

8. Brutalizing the police in its minister’s image

Ben Gvir, the national security minister, is an oft-convicted hoodlum and anti-Arab racist who is inexorably remaking the national police force he controls in his own violent, Jewish supremacist image. He has been installing and promoting his own loyalists, from the commissioner on down, booting and marginalizing those who would challenge him, and brutalizing the force — as emblemized by the shift from protecting to violently dispersing demonstrators, including families of hostages and their supporters.

This week, a new scandal erupted in the Prison Service, which he also controls, with his appointee as commissioner probed for hours on suspicion of breach of trust and obstructing justice in a case whose details are currently covered by a gag order.

9. Discrediting the Shin Bet security agency

Netanyahu is currently engaged in open rhetorical warfare against the Shin Bet, the domestic security agency that reports directly to him, and its chief Ronen Bar. Ten days ago, the prime minister issued a lengthy recorded video harangue, asserting that the agency was ignoring a flood of leaks of sensitive material from cabinet and security consultations but had trumpeted an investigation that resulted in the indictment of one of his aides, Eli Feldstein, on grave national security charges.

He further alleged that Feldstein and a second man charged over the case — which involves the theft and leaking of classified, highly sensitive IDF intelligence material — had been treated like “the worst terrorists” when under investigation, so that they would be pressured to incriminate him. And he claimed that Feldstein and other suspects in the case had worked to obtain such intelligence materials because the heads of Israel’s security organizations were deliberately keeping vital intelligence material from him.

In fact, as Bar specified in an extraordinary letter that hit the TV news on Monday night, the Shin Bet has probed 19 incidents of allegedly illegal leaks since October 7, 2023. The Shin Bet’s investigators, furthermore, had no way of knowing that its probe of the Feldstein case, which began when the IDF called it in to find out how material from a sensitive IDF document found its way into the pages of Germany’s Bild, would lead into the Prime Minister’s Office.

Bar clarified that suspects in the Feldstein case and all other such probes are investigated without torture and under judicial and other external supervision. And, without naming Netanyahu, he denounced those who were peddling conspiracy theories about the case as “people with particular interests” who seek to “weaken and delegitimize the organizations that are fighting to defend the [national] home.”

Netanyahu’s claim that Feldstein and other suspects in the case acted in order to bring to his attention vital intelligence material that was being unconscionably kept from him ignores the fact that, by his own account, they did not, in fact, bring the material to his attention.

The document that Bild reported upon was purloined from the IDF and conveyed to Feldstein in June, according to the indictment. Feldstein held onto it for two months, and began trying to leak it after six hostages were murdered by their Hamas captors at the end of August — when hundreds of thousands of Israelis were demonstrating against Netanyahu’s failure to advance a hostage deal — allegedly because its content could be used to strengthen Netanyahu’s argument that Hamas intransigence was preventing a hostage deal. Netanyahu indeed referred to the Bild report immediately after it was published.

When news of the probe into the document theft and leak emerged at the start of November, his office stated that Netanyahu first learned about the document from the media.

Several former senior Shin Bet officials denounced Netanyahu’s assault on the Shin Bet and expressed concern that the prime minister would move to fire Bar and install a cipher. One former head of the service, Yoram Cohen, a Netanyahu-appointee, accused Netanyahu of “abhorrent behavior” designed to discredit the agency; another, Tamir Pardo, castigated him for accusing the Shin Bet of “treachery,” and Yisrael Hasson, a former deputy head of the agency, warned that Netanyahu wants to install people “who serve the king and not the kingdom” and asserted that “we are weeks away” from “losing the country from within.”

10. Establishing a loyalist intelligence oversight mechanism

Even though the Shin Bet and Mossad both operate under the direct authority of the prime minister, the coalition is advancing legislation to establish a new intelligence oversight body under the prime minister’s control. This new body would have the right to demand intelligence information from “any intelligence body… or any other state institution,” including the IDF Military Intelligence branch, the Shin Bet, Mossad and the National Security Council.

Underlining fears that the goal is to create a body more powerful than the existing security agencies that is staffed with people primarily loyal to the prime minister, the new body would be prohibited from employing anybody who has served in an intelligence agency within the prior two years.

11. Protecting suspects who steal classified intel

The government is advancing the so-called Feldstein Law, which would provide immunity from prosecution for soldiers and other members of the defense establishment for giving classified intelligence, without authorization, to the prime minister or defense minister.

The “Feldstein Law” title is a misnomer. Feldstein would not be covered by its provisions — he is not a soldier, and he did not give the material he obtained to the prime minister or defense minister.

The legislation would appear designed, at least in part, to bolster Netanyahu’s claim that the very intelligence services he oversees deliberately keep vital information from him — a key defense advanced by him and his supporters as he tries to evade ultimate responsibility for the failures surrounding October 7 — and to place overwhelming blame on the military and security services for not preventing the catastrophe.

12. Selectively using administrative detention

One of the first actions of new Defense Minister Israel Katz was to bar the use of administrative detention against settler and other far-right extremists for alleged acts of terrorism — while retaining the measure for use against Palestinian suspects — making it more difficult for the authorities to bring such perpetrators to justice.

13. Raising obstacles for Arab would-be MKs

The coalition is advancing legislation that would make it easier to bar Arab-led parties and MKs from running for election. Proposed by Likud MK Ofir Katz, it would amend Basic Law: The Knesset, under which Knesset candidates can currently be banned from running if there is a significant body of evidence that they have supported terrorism, and would instead enable their banning for isolated acts construed as support for terror, including visiting the family of a terror suspect.

It would, further, enable the banning of a candidate by the Central Election Committee, which is composed of MKs and overseen by a Supreme Court justice, without needing the final approval of the High Court of Justice, as is currently the case.

14. Awarding MKs near-total immunity from criminal prosecution, civil lawsuits

Ministers are advancing legislation that gives MKs much-expanded immunity from prosecution. Proposed by Likud MK Tally Gotliv, it would prohibit the hearing of civil suits or opening of investigations into lawmakers, unless the Knesset determines, with the support of 90 of the 120 MKs, that the alleged activity was not carried out by the MK in the performance of their duties.

The attorney general has warned that the legislation would turn parliamentary immunity “into a de facto sanctuary from criminal investigation and prosecution, and the filing of civil lawsuits.” To which Gotliv — who is being sued by anti-government protest leader Shikma Bressler over claims made by Gotliv that sought to connect Bressler with Hamas and the October 7, 2023, onslaught — retorted that the attorney general’s warning “does not hold water.”

15. Allegedly corrupting the IDF’s handling of the war in Gaza

Moshe Ya’alon, a former IDF chief and Likud defense minister under Netanyahu a decade ago, this week charged that the IDF is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza and that he can no longer in good faith describe the IDF as “the most moral army in the world.”

Ya’alon has long seemed consumed by the most bitter personal animosity toward Netanyahu, and, after leaving Likud, partnered with another former IDF chief of staff and defense minister, Benny Gantz, in an effort to oust him. But Ya’alon is also widely perceived as a figure of integrity and he was adamant, in speaking out this week, that his concerns about what the IDF is doing in Gaza were based in part on worries expressed to him privately by commanders in the field.

He clarified that, when alleging ethnic cleansing and “what are defined as war crimes,” he was not accusing the IDF of mass murder of Gazans, but rather of “evacuating a population from its homes.” He also elaborated that while he did not doubt that the IDF believed it was carrying out the legitimate orders of the political leadership, he feared that the politicians giving those orders were doing so for ulterior motives, including preparing the ground for resumed Jewish settlement in the Strip.

President Isaac Herzog, Gallant and many other respected and relatively consensual voices have denounced Ya’alon and rejected his allegations, as has the IDF. At the same time, Ben Gvir and fellow far-right minister Smotrich are avowedly pushing for long-term Israeli control of the Gaza Strip and the resumption of settlements there, and Smotrich has publicly estimated that half of Gaza’s 2.2 million populace could be “encouraged” to leave within two years. Ben Gvir claimed this week that Netanyahu is showing “some openness” to the idea of encouraging an exodus of Palestinians from Gaza, and leading settler activist Daniella Weiss said the IDF has allowed her to make numerous visits to Gaza to scout out sites in preparation for renewed settlement.

16. Preventing the appropriate investigation of October 7’s catastrophe

Netanyahu is refusing to establish a state commission of inquiry to probe the failures surrounding Hamas’s October 7 slaughter and prevent a recurrence. A state commission is the only body with the requisite independence and investigative powers, and Netanyahu fears it, since he knows that its conclusions would likely be personally devastating for him.

On Monday, responding to a petition to the Supreme Court, he stated that the justices do not have the authority to order him to set up a state commission and warned that any attempt by the court to do so would “shred the principle of separation of powers.”

A Civilian Commission of Inquiry last week concluded that Netanyahu consistently undermined the government’s national security decision-making process, creating a rift between the political and military leadership and leaving the country unprepared for Hamas’s massacre. Beyond Netanyahu, the commission’s report alleged that the entire government had “failed its primary mission” and that the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet, and other organizations “completely failed to fulfill their sole objective — protecting the citizens of Israel.”

The commission, established by relatives of the victims of the Hamas attack in light of Netanyahu’s continued refusal to approve a state commission of inquiry, held four months of hearings in which it interviewed some 120 witnesses — including former prime ministers, defense chiefs and intelligence officials.

17. Asserting the ‘right’ to regime change

Communications Minister Karhi last week called for “abolishing” the High Court of Justice altogether and replacing it with a new judicial court “whose powers would be defined by the Knesset” and which would not “gnaw away at the foundations of democracy.”

He also asserted that the government has the right to carry out “regime change” and do away with long-established norms and procedures, since it was elected by the public. “We are elected by the public; we can change the regime if we want to,” he declared.