Despite their gaping difference in values, there are also reasons to give credit to bitter political rivals. Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Knesset Constitution Committee chairman Simcha Rothman are to a large extent responsible for the important protest movement that has spread across the country in recent months and altered the political discourse. Instead of talking about “governability” and “lavish gifts,” the public has begun talking about justice and democracy, an equal sharing of the burden and about trust and integrity. The protests put the contract between Israelis and their government at the top of the agenda and made clear that harming the country’s democracy meant violating that contract.
Levin and Rothman forced a fast-track constitutional process upon the Knesset. They presented their plans to the public in full. Levin’s ideologically crazy plan was designed to realize his longtime ambition to achieve total political control over the judiciary. Rothman, who represents the Kohelet Policy Forum and is a follower of his party leader Bezalel Smotrich, was aggressive in his humiliation of his political rivals. He also forced Knesset members to talk to no one but themselves.
The two of them took advantage of the weakness of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appeared at wit’s end and nearly wasted. The prime minister barely expressed himself and left it to the two to lead their dangerous revolution. He saw the dimensions of the protest but thought that tarring the protesters with the magic word “left-wing” would render the protests a passing phenomenon. That was a gross mistake.
But with characteristic irony, history will apparently hand them one saving grace. These Kohelet Policy Forum prophets of wrath of a new order unwittingly gave rise to an alternative in the form of an enormous protest movement with integrity, one that fights for its agenda, believes in itself and is not prepared to accept Israel’s transformation into a corrupt country or the destruction of the judiciary or of the protection of civil rights by an arrogant government.
The leaders of the judicial overhaul will go down as the ones responsible for fulfilling the biblical vision of the dry bones: A political camp that appeared to be beaten and broken has now come back to life and created clear political facts. Now there’s a strong liberal force in the country that is capable of changing the dangerous direction in which the State of Israel has been heading.
Rothman and Levin looked wistfully at the scope of the protest, at its persistence and its power, but they didn’t believe that it could stop their fully right-wing government. Netanyahu “went into the event” with full force and made a fatal mistake by dismissing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for fulfilling his own duty to inform the public about the dangers that the judicial coup presented. In firing the defense minister, Netanyahu went one step too far – giving the protest movement the boost that it needed to defeat him.
Netanyahu’s defeat was crystal clear. Granted, along with a full retreat, he promised National Security Minister Ben-Gvir a national guard made up of West Bank hilltop youth, but as with many of the prime minister’s other promises, that too won’t be realized. Now there will be negotiations under President Isaac Herzog’s auspices over a reasonable judicial reform that would deprive the government of any prospect of taking over the judicial system. Proper adjustments – yes; destruction and ruin – no.
The newly constituted camp must persist in its critical task of supporting Israel’s rehabilitation from the damage caused by religious, messianic and populist segments of the population. It can only do that through a democratic party that would constitute an ideological and political alternative to the pro-Netanyahu right wing.
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