Published: 3 March 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Former Israeli PM showed up Australian Jewish leaders when he addressed them on the threat to Israeli democracy. The time is long overdue for them to speak out.
Some passionate Israel advocates and Jewish organisations across the Diaspora are speaking out against the threats to Israeli democracy by the Netanyahu coalition government.
Organisations including the Jewish Federations of North America and the Union of Reform Judaism, and individuals such as Alan Dershowitz, Abe Foxman and Charles Bronfman have expressed deep concerns.
Other sections of Diaspora leadership have been slow to voice concerns about Israel’s civil crisis. “They seem to be turning in on themselves as if the situation is too painful to confront,” Colin Shindler noted in The Jewish Independent last month.
The situation is indeed very painful. The judicial override bill would allow the government to choose all judges on the Supreme Court and overrule the court’s decisions. If passed, it would represent, in effect, the erosion of the rule of law in Israel, and pose a grave threat to the country’s democratic foundations.
Yet here in Australia, we have heard no public statements about the crisis from Jewish leaders.
At least not until last Sunday, when Sydney’s Jewish community heard the following declaration: “There is a mega-crisis going on in Israel. It’s probably the biggest domestic crisis Israel has had. I am worried. And it’s fully self-inflicted.”
When the threat comes from outside, the community leaders are fast and forceful. When the threat comes from within, they are mute.
But the speaker was not an Australian Jewish leader.
It was an Israeli Jewish leader: Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister of Israel, addressing a UIA fundraising event.
