Soon, we may not know who gives orders to Israel’s military

Israel's nightmare scenario is that the Supreme Court strikes down Netanyahu's judicial overhaul and the PM refuses to accept the verdict. Then what?

A final vote in the Knesset on a portion of the judicial overhaul legislation could take place as early as next week.

Immediately following that, opponents of the plan would appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court and ask the court to strike down the legislation. Leading legal experts, including former attorneys-general and Supreme Court judges, are almost unanimous in their belief that the court would indeed strike it down on the grounds that it contradicts Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state.

If the legislation is struck down, some of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition allies, particularly from the ultra-Orthodox religious parties, would call on the Prime Minister to ignore the court’s ruling. These politicians have been challenging the court’s legitimacy for years, mostly because they view it as a liberalising force in Israeli society that is solely responsible for much of the progress Israel has made in recent decades on issues such as LGBT rights, women’s rights and equality for minorities. The parties would pressure Netanyahu to "put the justices in their place" and refuse to accept their ruling.

At that point, the moment of truth would arrive. Israel could face an unprecedented constitutional crisis, with widespread civil disobedience and thousands of reservists refusing to show up for military duty. What would the leaders of the military, the police and Shin Bet do if they were given illegal orders to crush such resistance – or instructed to help the government install new judges to replace the ones who had struck down the legislation?

The Biden administration and the American Jewish community need to begin preparing for this eventuality or they will be caught unprepared, as the US Capitol Police were on January 6, 2021.

READ MORE

A month from today, we may not know who gives orders to Israel’s military (Haaretz)

Israel’s High Court will strike down the coup legislation, top legal experts say (Haaretz)

Coalition to push ahead with judicial overhaul, bills to assist Netanyahu and Deri (Times of Israel)
Constitution committee will hold back-to-back hearings ahead of likely final votes next week, while bills to help PM and Shas chief with legal problems will also be advanced 

RELATED STORIES
Sephardic chief rabbi calls for judicial reform dialogue to avoid civil war (Times of Israel)
Yitzhak Yosef says the heated debate over planned legislation is ‘disturbing and very painful’ but insists High Court should refrain from ruling on religious issues.

Hundreds of elite IDF reservists stop showing up for duty over judicial overhaul (Time of Israel)
Officers and soldiers who volunteer in Military Intelligence’s Special Operations Division and cyber warfare units begin boycott ‘until this attempted coup is over’.

Keren Hayesod reacts to the judicial reforms and calls for negotiations between the sides (Jerusalem Post)
Keren Hayesod world board of trustees chairman Steven Lowy and world chairman Sam Grundwerg issued a letter expressing 'deep concern' over the proposed reforms but stopping short of the strong criticism issued last week by the Swiss branch.

Ben-Gvir barred from giving operational orders to police, High Court rules (Jerusalem Post)
Ben-Gvir says he will pass further amendments to counter the ruling.

Netanyahu discusses judicial overhaul with US President Biden in phone call (Haaretz)

'Astonishing': Atwood Responds to The Handmaid’s Tale Becoming Israeli Protest Symbol (Haaretz)
Initiator of Israel's Handmaid's protest, which now numbers thousands, explains: 'We aren't waiting until [the government] puts headscarves on us. We don't want them to decide when we can go shopping, where we'll sit on the bus and when we'll take our child to the doctor'

RELATED ANALYSIS
For a glimpse of Israel’s future, look not at Poland or Hungary, but at Afghanistan (Dan Ben David, Times of Israel)
Israel has reached its demographic-democratic point of no return. At some point, the secular Netanyahu will be gone. Not so his Haredi and Jewish supremacist partners

Israelis are turning against each other: Can the nation step back from the abyss? (Yossi Klein Halevi, ABC)
The dread of repeating a fatal, self-inflicted wound is a powerful undercurrent in Israeli discourse.