More than just a tragedy: Benjamin Netanyahu destroys his country's identity

Opinion The judicial reform breaks a promise made since the founding of the state, according to which a preferably Jewish state can also be a democratic state

by Lutz Herden

[This article posted on 9/5/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.freitag.de/autoren/lutz-herden/israel-benjamin-netanjahu-zerstoert-mit-justizreform-identitaet-seines-landes.]

Israeli police prevent demonstrators from blocking the road to the Knesset, where parliament voted on the judicial reform

Israel is not currently facing an existential threat. There is no need for an authoritarian regime that alone can guarantee the preservation of the Israeli state. If an ultra-right-wing government nevertheless rises to exemplary self-empowerment, then it does so without necessity, but with self-assured arrogance. The judicial reform, parts of which have just been passed by the Knesset, breaks a promise that seemed to have been kept for decades: a primarily Jewish state is not a state of God, but a democratic state. Virtues such as plurality and the separation of powers are worth almost as much as its existence itself. Protecting Israel has always meant protecting not only its right to exist, but also its understanding of values. Legitimacy and identity were based on this.

Is that now a thing of the past? Or how much of it is lost when theocratic-looking rulers attack with messianic fervor what was previously considered impregnable? Is the thirst for recognition of extremists who parade as Israel's redeemers but do not rule forever being discharged? Or is it something more? Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to chain himself to ministers such as Yariv Levin, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who want to be less politicians than men of conviction. Only by making a pact with this clientele could he once again become head of government, and only if this pact holds will he remain so. In this respect, it was futile from the outset to try to take the affront and provocation out of the judicial reform through a compromise. When the categorical imperative becomes a government's last resort, such an approach is bound to fail and snub millions of dissenters who have been taking to the streets for months to avert disaster.

It would be wrong to lament this as a “tragedy”. Tragedies have the unexpected or inevitable quality of a stroke of fate. No such tragedy has befallen Israel. The hubris of the national-religious has its history and has to do with more than half a century of arbitrariness in the occupied territories. Anyone who has few scruples about regarding the Palestinian people as a second-class evil and, if necessary, using force to get rid of them, is robbing their democratic constitution. He will have to pay tribute to this at some point. If you ask yourself which decisions the executive will be allowed to deny the Supreme Court the right to appeal in future, decisions that promote settlement construction, disregard the Palestinians' right to exist and push ahead with the annexation of the West Bank come to mind. This is not fate, but calculation.

Temporarily or forever, Israel is thus becoming more like the Arab autocracies that populate its surroundings. This does not have to carry the seeds of new wars. On the contrary, when systems level out, it can normalize relations between states shaped by them. While relations with Egypt and Jordan have long been relaxed, this is now also true of the Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco thanks to the Abraham Accords. The Netanyahu government has just recognized Rabat's claim to the Western Sahara, with no regard for international law or UN resolutions. Those who annex themselves encourage others to annex. It is hard to imagine that Yitzhak Rabin or Shimon Peres would have even dreamed of gaining recognition in Arab or North African states in this way. They must have known what it means when Israel begins to mutilate itself.