The head of a conservative think tank closely associated with the Netanyahu government's judicial overhaul has blamed Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties for one of the plan’s most controversial proposals, which would allow the Knesset to override Supreme Court rulings invalidating legislation.
Speaking in New York last Wednesday, Kohelet Policy Forum chairman Moshe Koppel said that his organization had advised Justice Minister Yariv Levin that “the override is completely idiotic.” His remarks, which reveal cracks and tensions within the political coalition supporting the judicial overhaul, were first reported by Israel’s Channel 13.
“We never wanted the override. It was a political matter,” Koppel said during a talk at an Orthodox outreach organization on Manhattan’s Upper West Side as more than 200 American and Israeli Jews gathered in protest outside, shouting “shame.”
“The Haredim were convinced” it was necessary “because of the draft law,” he asserted, referring to previous court decisions undermining efforts to legally exempt ultra-Orthodox men from military service.
The High Court ruled in 2017 that a law providing such an exemption to the ultra-Orthodox community was unconstitutional, but allowed it to remain in force pending the legislation of a replacement, repeatedly approving the state’s requests for postponements. A main reason ultra-Orthodox politicians aim to weaken the Supreme Court is a fear that the justices will end this discrimination at some point.
“They want it because they have certain specific issues that they are concerned that the Supreme Court will strike down. The draft exemption is one. Also, gender separation,” Koppel continued.
One ultra-Orthodox party insisted in its coalition agreement with Netanyahu that ultra-Orthodox public events, which are frequently gender segregated, will be exempted from legislation against discrimination. They also demand to amend current legislation so that Israeli businesses will be allowed to discriminate against customers for religious reasons - for example, refusing to serve LGBT customers.
“Now the Haredim are fighting amongst themselves because [ultra-Orthodox party] Shas now says ‘just solve the draft exemption in a basic law and we don’t care about the override’ but Gafni from UTJ is insisting they keep the override,” Koppel said.
Shas chairman Arye Dery was recently removed as interior minister after the court declared that his appointment was “unreasonable in the extreme” since he has been convicted three times of criminal offenses and failed in his previous public positions to “serve the public loyally and lawfully.” The coalition is currently pushing through legislation to allow him to return to his position, by forbidding the Supreme Court from interfering in ministerial appointments.
UTJ leader Moshe Gafni has been a leading proponent of the measure, recently declaring that “without an override clause with a majority of 61, the government has no right to exist.”
Koppel has previously come out against the idea of an override, calling it “a dumb idea” during a talk in Tel Aviv last month. What he did not explicitly say is that if the government will succeed in promoting the other elements of its judicial overhaul, there would be no need for an override: the government will have complete control over judicial appointments, and the supreme court would only be able to conduct judicial review in cases when 80% of the justices agree a law is unconstitutional.
Koppel’s talks in New York have been dogged by protests. While he was making his comments in Manhattan, hundreds of protesters yelled outside, some of them dressed in red robes and white bonnets in the style of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a Margaret Atwood book and Hulu television series about a misogynist Christian dystopia. The costumes have become a popular mode of protest in Israel and have elicited comment from Atwood herself, who called one of the displays “astonishing.”
Protesters outside a subsequent appearance in New Jersey screamed “shame on Kohelet” as he spoke in an Englewood synagogue.
Koppel isn’t the first member of Kohelet to cast doubt on some aspects of the judicial overhaul.
Earlier this month, Michael Sarel, chairman of the Kohelet Economic Forum, a branch of the larger Kohelet organization, wrote in an open letter that efforts to undermine the independence of the Israeli judiciary could lead future coalitions to "significantly erode the principles of representative democracy.”
And while he insisted that some reforms are necessary, he declared that “when there is no separation of branches and the coalition is given almost unlimited power, it is likely that it will want to use this in order to increase the chances of its political survival."
JTA contributed to this report.
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