IIsrael, the state which wanted to be both Jewish and democratic, is tearing itself apart. These two components, explicit since the declaration of independence of 1948, collide head-on after the vote in Parliament, Monday July 24, of the first part of the justice reform , desired by Benyamin Netanyahu's coalition.
We can put into perspective the scope of this amendment to one of the fundamental laws serving as a constitution in the country, which has never adopted it. This text facilitates the dismissal by the executive of senior officials it displeases, as well as the appointment of political allies whom the Supreme Court could suspect of incompetence or corruption. But what arouses disapproval in Israel is that the ruling coalition chose to impose it, despite broad consensus on the toxicity of the amendment.
This fear has been expressed for months by the opposition, which boycotted the vote, by the entire judiciary, the business community and the head of the country's central bank, as well as by the army and more than a million demonstrators out of the country's nine million inhabitants, and more broadly by an opinion which is said, in the vast majority, according to polls, to be hostile to reform if it passes without compromise.
Secular and liberal opponents of the text see it as the first step in a revolution in the balance of powers, to the benefit of the executive. They fear the emergence of an authoritarian state, controlled by religious fundamentalists, racists and supporters of a “greater Israel”, assuming a regime of Jewish supremacy between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.
These ideologues promise to continue reform in the Knesset, after the summer break, by attacking the method of appointing legal advisers to the government and judges to the Supreme Court. They intend to take advantage of a historic opportunity to defeat the government and judges to the Supreme Court. They intend to take advantage of a historic opportunity to defeat not the Palestinian enemy, in poor condition, but those liberal Israelis who hinder their ambition.
Schism within the army
As early as 2005, one of these ideologues, Moti Karpel, wrote in his magazine, Nekouda , that “to prepare again for the political fight between the right and the left is to prepare for the previous war. (…) It is on the Jewish-Israeli axis that the next fight is looming. Those who are Jewish first face those who are Israeli first. (…) To the Israeli vision of a State for all its citizens, with all that that means, we must oppose the vision of a Jewish democracy.”
