For several years now, the news from Israel has included reports on judicial battles between the Knesset and Israel’s supreme court.
The supreme court strikes down laws passed by the Knesset, supports an explosion of harassment cases against the legislature and the Prime Minister himself… and generally acts as a partisan political body would.
So, after much debate and considerable public outcry, the Knesset finally passed a set of judicial reforms on July 24, 2023, to curtail some of the powers of the supreme court.
It is difficult for us in the United States to appropriately judge this action, until we consider some of the differences between our two countries.
The United States of America constitute a constitutional republic. Our government consists of three branches, each with levels of authority determined by the Constitution, carefully designed to constantly check each other’s power to resist overreach.
In our system, all three branches are required to follow the Constitution, but that’s not enough: in all cases, the other two are always encouraged to jealously slap down the third, whenever one oversteps its bounds. Whether they have done so or not, in the century since the Framers’ plan was upended by the 17th amendment, at least the design and opportunity still remain).
Israel, by contrast, has no such written constitution. They just have a legislature, the Knesset, and a separate judiciary… neither of which is particularly bound down by limits of authority.
To the extent that the “good government” goal of a republic is to restrain the acquisition of undue power by government, the Israeli political system achieves that goal almost accidentally: by having a multitude of small parties, preventing opportunities for true majority-party governance. It is so difficult to organize a stable government in the Knesset, the process of coalition-building encourages political restraint.
Unfortunately, no such tethers hold down their supreme court.
Over the past 75 years, we have therefore seen Israel’s judiciary get more and more daring in its definition of, and subsequent exercise of, its own power.
One of the first scientific laws that any child learns in school is this: Nature abhors a vacuum. And Israel is the perfect example of this law, as we have watched Israel’s courts move in, wherever a weak or divided legislature has given them room.
The July 24 judicial reforms, therefore, are just Israel’s rational, long-overdue response to this woefully lopsided power structure. As the Israeli public has elected Benjamin Netanyahu, again and again, and their cocksure judiciary has taken every opportunity to slap down his party’s initiatives, something had to give. At long last, the correction has begun.
Here on our side of the Atlantic, we have had a taste of the same challenge. We have always had the territory struggles between branches that our framers anticipated… But we have had the good fortune of a constitution that carefully allocated each branch’s powers, thoroughly delineated their limitations, and thoughtfully provided the means to resolve such issues peacefully.
As we watch Israel’s unrest from far away, and as we watch the global Left take yet another opportunity to attack the noble leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his majority, we would do well to take some lessons from their experience to heart.
We have a great deal to be thankful for here. As difficult as it is sometimes, as our own unelected judiciary often flexes its muscles and restricts our freedoms, at least we enjoy a system in which our Framers built in some solid tools with which we could defend ourselves.
We pray for Divine Providence to look after our friend Israel… and every day, we thank Him for our Founding Fathers.
Copyright 2023 John F Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon.
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