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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4039 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 26, 2023

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Can someone explain the ongoing crisis in Israel? I have trouble making sense of it.

From what I see described online the leftwing (broadly defined) has made a series of anti-democratic grabs for power through the judiciary since the 90s through abusing the mess that is Israel's legal system.

The rightwing, now dominated by a combination of far rightists and religious extremists are unhappy about this and seeks to curtail the supreme court's ability to prevent legislation from happening based on shit all. The opposition to how the judiciary operates is broader than the current coalition in power but due to polarisation people can't agree on what should be done.

This makes everyone very mad. Both sides sees the conflict as existential and widespread protests are now happening.

The reform by itself isn't really bad on an object level, the issue is that Bibi is a piece of shit and parts of his coalition are extremists and people fear what they might do with the democratic mandate they've won.

People are so hysterical that I have trouble making sense of this and would appreciate for someone more in the know to add context and correct me where necessary. I'm open to having completely misunderstood this.

Israel has a byzantine political history, which was almost completely dominated by the left initially (look up Israeli newspapers on the day Stalin died...)

That changed in 1970s where the right parties gained some political power at the first time, however many institutions - such as academia, courts, hitech to a significant measure, unions (still super-powerful in Israel, though a bit less than when they used to own the country wholesale) etc. - are still dominated by the Left.

Together with the fact that Israel law system is a weird mishmash of leftovers from Ottoman and British rule, mixed with decades of own organic growth, this led to the situation where there are no formal definition of powers for some institutions, e.g. the powers of the Supreme Court aren't strictly defined anywhere. And lately (as in, couple of decades at least) the court has been more and more active intervening into the politics, under activist judges declaring "everything is judgeable". Since the setup of the Court is such that they basically appoint their own successors (it's more complicated, but effectively it is so), that creates huge dis-balance of power where the Court can intervene into any matter and other branches of the government can not do anything about it. Since the Court is owned by the Left, the intervention is usually to override something the Left dislikes. And since the Left in Israel, after the disastrous Peace Process in the 90s, is in deep electoral hole, it creates the situation where the Right can elect the government, but can not govern, because anything they do is blocked by activist judges, which often use strange and vague explanations for why exactly something is unlawful - since Israel has very little in terms of constitutional law, and those basic laws that exist are kinda vague and open to various expansive interpretations.

This all is complicated by the propensity of the Israeli Police to open very protracted and complex investigations against certain politicians, which frequently lead nowhere (though not always), drag on for many years and significantly disrupt political climate - since Israel is a small country, taking a couple of persons off the board for a major party may have very profound consequences. And of course, the judiciary wield a lot of power here too, e.g. in deciding whether the investigations can continue, which consequences they have and whether or not they may prevent certain political figures from serving in one or another capacity.

So, the Right decided to do something about it and even the chances - to make the system a bit closer to what the US has, for example. I am not going into the details because a) I am not sure I got all the details exactly right b) precise details don't matter too much as the Left would oppose any reform that takes the all-powerful Courts from their hands and c) these details can - and probably will - change all the time as wheeling and dealing is going on.

Of course, since the Left is about to lose one of the major power centers, and they already are in pretty dismal situation electorally, they feel something needs to be done. And of course, when Left wants to do something against the Right, it declares that fascists are about to (or already did) take over, and must be stopped by any means necessary. Thus, you observe what you observe.

If you see some similarities so some other country in these events, you are not alone.

The rightwing, now dominated by a combination of far rightists and religious extremists

Everybody on the right is always "extremist", just as every US Republican candidate is always literally Hitler. While this makes the world model much simpler - you don't need to learn anything about any new candidate, just move the "literally Hitler" sticker from one name to another - it rarely helps understanding anything.

the issue is that Bibi is a piece of shit

This is an extremely deep and profound political analysis, to which I can't contribute much besides an eye roll.

parts of his coalition are extremists

Again, word "extremist" is usually means not much more than "belongs to the party opposite to which I like, and doesn't want to come to our side". Which is pretty useless.

and people fear what they might do with the democratic mandate they've won.

They might change the arrangement of power in Israel in a way that would make the Left less powerful. Scary for some, but in my opinion, about time. The situation where a narrow group of judges declares themselves supreme authority in every question in politics is not normal and not sustainable. Israeli society is very divided and beset by myriads of disagreements, but having a body with clear partisan composition that usurped the power and rules at its whim does not improve the situation any.

parts of his coalition are extremists

Again, word "extremist" is usually means not much more than "belongs to the party opposite to which I like, and doesn't want to come to our side". Which is pretty useless.

I think "extremist" is a perfectly reasonable description of "parts of his coalition", for example:

Bezalel Yoel Smotrich (...) is an Israeli far-right politician and lawyer who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. (...) Accused of inciting hatred against Arab citizens of Israel, he told Arab Israeli lawmakers in October 2021, that "it's a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn't finish the job and didn't throw you out in 1948."[5] He has called himself a "fascist homophobe",[6] and has stated that gay pride parades are "worse than bestiality".[4]

Of course everybody on the right would be "accused of inciting hatred", just as any Republican in the US is by default "racist". Of course, in this case the hatred is real and obvious, but nobody needs Smotrich to "incite" anything, the hatred existed decades before he was born, and the same Arab members to whom Smotrich addressed his - regrettable - words, has been calling the establishment of the State of Israel (in which Parliament they sit) a "catastrophe", and has been openly supporting terrorist movements for years. Smotrich is very outspoken in that he does not consider this situation to be right, but I don't think discussing this situation makes him an "extremist".

That said, Smotrich is definitely on the deep right side of Israeli political spectrum. Israeli politics is much more conservative and the religion plays much deeper role than in the US, where it plays almost none beyond token assurances of top politicians to be Christians - which nobody believes but everybody are required to pretend they do. In Israel, if somebody is religious, they are usually serious about it. Which mandates certain approach to issues like homosexuality that would not be mainstream anymore in the US. I am not passing a judgement here, I am saying that's how the politics in Israel is, so there's nothing "extreme" in a particular politician to have the same opinions many other politicians do. BTW I couldn't locate the source of the "bestiality" quote - the primary link on Wikipedia refers to the article, which links to another article, which has no such quote. He did organize an event where they were mocking gay parade by pretending to be zoophiles, but he himself said he regretted doing it and it was done when he was "young and stupid". I imagine there were other incidents like this, which provide good ground for gotchas.

His views are certainly very different from many other politicians, and he is very outspoken and direct in his approach, often even provocative. I am not nominating him for any awards here. But as far as I know, he didn't do anything extreme, at least not recently, outside of his "young and stupid" years, and the policies he supported were also supported by many others. His rhetoric has very little to do with what is happening now - the thing the Left is fighting against is not Smotrich saying provocative things. The fight is about control over the court system - and given how activist courts have become in Israel, ultimately over the country's political direction. If the Left keeps absolute control over judiciary, and the judiciary keeps eagerly intervening in the politics, there's no reason for the Right parties to exist, other than playing the diet version of the Left parties - they couldn't pass any policies or appoint any people that couldn't be removed immediately by the Leftist courts. Just recently, there has been lawsuit submitted that claimed the Prime Minister is prohibited to speak on the matter of judicial reform. Can you imagine how a society can function where the head of the government, the leader of the party winning the elections, can not even speak on important political matters, let alone make decisions? This situation is certainly abnormal.

That's practically what happened several years ago, where anti-orthodox coalition won the majority. Unfortunately for them, they couldn't really handle anything properly, taking Arabs into coalition has been largely a disaster since they didn't gain anything and were seen as being easily blacklmailed, with Arabs seeing this (probably correctly) as not a bridge building opportunity but more like "grab whatever you can, it won't last" opportunity, and covid happened on top of that... so eventually their coalition fell apart and Bibi came back. I feel kinda sad that Israel couldn't find any better solution - I'd feel much better to see Bibi to retire and new generation to take over, but the alternative to Bibi so far has been so clownish it was predictable people would come back to him. My feeling is if some strong right or right-center leader emerges he could displace Bibi, but so far it hasn't happened. The Left right now can't offer much since they bet the house on New Middle East and Peace in Our TIme, and that obviously isn't happening, so their credibility is not exactly spectacular. There's no love lost between orthodox parties and secularist parties, but secularists can't win while being weak on security, especially as terrorists has been quite active recently.

A slaps B

B slaps A

A slaps B

... Repeat a gazillion times. A and B, both kinda suck in their own sucky ways.

That's an extremely rudimentary but useful model of the Israel-Palestine issue in a nutshell. You won't find any conclusion. You can spend a month going over every event in painstaking detail to arrive at the conclusion above.

I have personally given up trying to make sense of it, it's the culture war to end all culture wars, every explanation of an event I can read up on has 10 recursive yet alternating asterisks about it's actually just propaganda.

The current dispute in Israel is about Netanyahu's proposed judicial reform. It has nothing to do with the Palestinian conflict.

Yeah I figured, I was out of the loop

I'm not wondering about Israel Palestine.

Netanyahu being a major crook seems like it’s also an important factor.

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