The Anticlimactic End of Israel’s Democracy Crisis
On Monday, Israel’s Supreme Court issued arguably the most momentous ruling in its history: A slim one-vote majority of the justices struck down an attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to curb their power. And yet, the country largely shrugged. After months of mass protest and talk of constitutional crisis, an event that was supposed to be seismic turned out to be a sideshow. External war had eclipsed internal war. It’s hard to remember at this point, but before the Hamas slaughter on October 7, Israel was embroiled in the worst civic unrest since its founding. The cause was the Netanyahu government’s attempt to undermine the country’s judiciary. Many Israelis and outside experts had long considered Israel’s Supreme Court to be overly powerful and in need of reform. But the hard-right legislation proposed by the ruling coalition did not rein in the court so much as neuter it, subordinating the body to politicians and allowing them to overrule its decisions. This audacious attempt to revise Israel’s democratic order, put forward by a hard-right government …
