Hundreds of protesters are marching from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, due here on Sunday.
Dear Friends & Family Abroad -
Events here in Israel are moving at a dizzying pace, and I
wanted to keep you updated.
Overnight, the Knesset Law, Constitution, and Justice Committee put the finishing touches to the “Reasonableness Bill” that would hamstring the judiciary from adjudicating government appointments and firings. The committee will now send the bill to the entire Knesset to debate and presumably pass into law as the Government controls 64 in the 120-seat Knesset.
Passage
would mean that, for example, Aryeh Deri could -- as Netanyahu wants -- be appointed Finance Minister, notwithstanding a graft record that landed him in prison. He is head of
the Sephardic Shas Party, an essential constituent in the Netanyahu government.
But let’s not lose sight of the forest because of a tree.
The reasonableness law is part of a slew of legislation
intended to castrate the judiciary and concentrate power in the hands of the
executive. It aims to fundamentally change the Israeli political system
so that the values of the benighted current leadership are permanently enshrined.
In the fullness of time, they intend to muffle the media, strengthen the ultra-Orthodox all-male rabbinical courts (which already
control marriage, divorce, and conversion), emasculate higher education, and take
charge of "culture." Indeed, this is a cultural war over values. And "live and let live" is not in the extremist vocabulary.
If you envision Israel as a Sparta permanently at war with
Muslim civilization; if, like the Sicarii of old, you believe that critics of
the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir government are “leftist traitors” and “haters of Israel”
who need to be dealt with; if you want messianic politicians to direct the country’s
domestic and foreign affairs (from reprogramming the youth to jettisoning ties
with the vast majority of Diaspora Jews) then by all means either sit quietly
or shill outright for the Bibists and Hardalnikim.
...Or if you want a tolerant, Jewish, and democratic Israel - join the Big Tent Opposition.
I am uncomfortably behind the same barricades as Gideon Levy and Tom Friedman. But just like Trump was occasionally right, so too are Levy and Friedman.
I am comforted by the fact that
every previous director of the Mossad and Shin Bet (save for Avi Dichter, who
is a member of Netanyahu's Government) and every previous IDF Chief of Staff, and every
previous prime minister and every previous governor of the Bank of Israel and
every previous Supreme Court justice and every previous Attorney General and police commissioner and
the leaders of high-tech, academia, the business world, and the union
chiefs ALL OPPOSE the Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir putsch for regime change.
Elite members of the IDF who have proffered their time to the country are drawing the line and announcing they will volunteer no more. Not to a country that is going the way of Poland and Hungary. We are not talking about draft dodgers (like many in the Haredi community) or refusing to serve while on active duty (as was the case during the Gaza disengagement). These folks have already gone above and beyond the call of duty.
Get involved if Israel is precious to you, no matter where you are.
As the axiom goes: “If you are not a part of the solution,
you are a part of the problem.”
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And here are some links that caught my attention:
A leading "As a Jew" pundit named Goldberg noch endorses a canard about Israel.
MICHELLE GOLDBERG The Hysterical Overreaction to Jayapal’s ‘Racist State’ Gaffe
While our Prime Minister focuses on his putsch, the enemy is making plans of its own.
Biden's soft talk falls on deaf ears.
The Biden administration may not replace the outgoing US Ambassador to Israel.
"אם ביטול עילת הסבירות יעבור, ביידן לא ימנה שגריר חדש"
את הדברים אמר חוקר יחסי ישראל־ארצות הברית וחתן פרס ישראל פרופ’ אבי בן־צבי, והוסיף שהגענו למצב של "שבר טקטוני ביחסים". הוא מכריז שאין אופציה לתקיפה באיראן כי היא "תגרור עימות חריף עם אמריקה" ומזהיר ש"ישראל חוזרת להיות מטרד עבור ארה"ב, לא נכס"
Elliot - so, apart from screaming and protesting, what can be done when there is an automatic majority to vote for this lunacy? if the real Likudniks were going to stop this, they would have done so by now but they all seem too scared to lose their Mitsubishis and Mazda 6s. Next week is גורלי, and rather disturbingly שבוע שחל בו and that's when this all comes to a vote - if the national pressure + Biden's quiet words haven't stopped this by now, what do we think will? the constitutional crisis that arrives when בג'ץ strike the law down as illegal? and then what? half the country will stand in favor of the courts, a third fully against and a sixth will not bother either way - and Bibi and his cronies will still be in control - I don't see the endgame here
ReplyDeleteWe scream and protest because that is the Zionist thing to do not because we are optimistic about the outcome. It’s like davening— we daven because we’re obliged to. I take your point but we want to feel that we did what we could. Likud is a Jabotinsky-free zone. The benches are full of either demagogues or political cowards. Hardal is the driving force in this government and increasingly in the party that calls itself Likud.
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