In the face of mass protests, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has backed down from his plan to overhaul the judiciary—for now.
, fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, a reserve major general whose mother had been a Polish refugee on the S.S. Exodus. His offense was patriotism. The night before, Gallant had appeared on prime-time national television, calling for a “dialogue” on the fate of the Israeli judiciary and a temporary “halt to the legislative process” that is, in effect, assaulting it. “The growing rift in our society is penetrating the I.D.F. and security agencies.
Even before Netanyahu acted, the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, and the opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid had welcomed an opportunity for a real dialogue; in fact, Herzog had presented his own formula for judicial reform earlier in the month. Yet both Herzog and Lapid committed to enshrine protections for equality and individual liberty in law—which, arguably, some of Netanyahu’s theocratic allies could never accept. Dialogue, in that case, only delays the inevitable collision.
This, all knew, was a preëmptive strike: Netanyahu is on trial for fraud, bribery, and breach of trust—all of which he has denied—and yet he heads a government that is famously aiming to “reform,” as he puts it, the very judiciary that is trying him. apparatus that, from the start, has only partially observed liberal-democratic boundaries—allowing rabbinic control over marriage and divorce, or separate state-supported school systems, for example—and left other civil rights unprotected. Netanyahu’s theocratic allies, to whom he’s made himself hostage, see themselves as custodians of the general will, which is, they believe, divine.
Just last week, more than a hundred Air Force reservists announced that they will not report for routine and nonemergency service, joining hundreds more in the Military Intelligence Directorate, in special-operations units, and in offensive cyber units. “In one battalion of the elite 551st Paratroopers Brigade,”Amos Harel reported, “only 57 percent of the reservists who were called up this week reported for duty on the first day—a steep drop from the typical turnout of 90 percent.
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