JERUSALEM, Israel – Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed the first key section of the Netanyahu coalition’s judicial reform law Monday, as protesters clashed with police outside the building.
Competing factions of lawmakers worked to reach a compromise, but the talks failed, and the opposition boycotted the final vote, which passed 64-0, with all members of the coalition voting in favor.
Thousands of Israelis marched on Jerusalem over the weekend, protesting the judicial reform legislation.
Supporters of the reform bill also gathered in Tel Aviv to stand with the coalition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was hospitalized this weekend for an implant of a pacemaker, returned to the Knesset and took part in the negotiations before the final vote was cast.
The Histadrut Labor Federation said after the vote that it will organize nationwide strikes. Its leader Arnon Bar-David said “any universal advancement of the reform will have grave consequences,” according to The Times of Israel, “up to and including a full strike” of workers’ unions throughout Israel.
The opposition maintained the judicial reform proposal will weaken the Supreme Court and open a path to dictatorship. Israeli author and globalist advisor to world leaders, Yuval Noah Harari, described the following scenario:
“With the Supreme Court neutralized, the government could easily rig the elections, for example, by denying Arab citizens voting rights or by closing down all independent media outlets. Israel will still hold elections, just as Russia holds elections, but it will become a dictatorship.”
Yet supporters of the legislation say it reins in a runaway Supreme Court.
Itzik Ben Yeshua came to the pro-reform rally to support the Netanyahu government.
He said, “I came here to support democracy. Democracy means the rule of the government elected by the people and agreed by the people, and not a regime in which the Supreme Court takes rights that it doesn’t have.”
Ohad Tal, a member of the Netanyahu coalition, told CBN News he believes the legislation actually strengthens democracy by re-balancing Israel’s government..
“Of course you have to have a strong court, but no one doubts that. But the question is, who’s going to make the policies of the country? Is it going to be a small group of people or is it going to be the people, by their representatives?”
Tal says many opposition members quietly favor judicial reform and their past actions prove it.
“I know what people are saying in closed rooms from the opposition,” he explained. “Many people are agreeing that we need to have this reform. And you don’t have to trust me about that. You just have to read the bills that many of the opposition members of today put on the table in just the past few years – which proves that they are supporting exactly what we are trying to promote today.”
The protests began more than 7 months ago, but some believe the goals are more than just thwarting legislation on judicial reform.
Israel’s Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel Arbaryan tweeted that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a major protest leader, aims to overthrow the government.
Earlier this year in an address at London’s Chatham House, Barak cited research examining protests over 100 years, and how those protests succeeded.
“They found a common denominator, all these protests which succeeded,” Barak said, “Where they watched a level of 3.5 percent of the general population. Tenaciously, persistently, keeping the protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and so on. At the end, the government(s) either fall or capitulate.”
Monday’s vote concerned Knesset action to eliminate the “reasonableness” clause, a Supreme Court chief justice’s decision several decades ago that the high court is allowed to strike down a law passed by the Knesset if they decide that law is, in their view, “unreasonable.”
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