Israel

As Israel turns 75, it faces an acute existential crisis in the form of an Iran bent on joining the nuclear-weapon-state club. Compounding Israel’s peril is the fact that its primary ally, the United States, sports an administration openly hostile to the Jewish state. Team Biden is obsessed with the desire to make a new accord with Iran akin to that made by former President Barack Obama; it is equally obsessed with pressuring Israel to withdraw fully to its pre-1967 boundaries, which former Foreign Affairs Minister Abba Eban famously called “Auschwitz lines.” And with incredibly foolish perversity, it is intent on prioritizing its twin obsessions over the historic Trump-brokered Abraham Accords, which made for the first “warm” peace between Arab and Jew in the 14 centuries since Islam first appeared on the world scene.

In the war of words over Israel’s judicial reform, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the disputants, the word “democracy” appears to have suffered a bit of a roughing-up.

Canada must rethink its friendship with Israel

This week, the Israeli parliament approved a controversial law that constrains the Supreme Court’s ability to provide judicial oversight of government actions. According to many critics, this is only the first step in a plan by the coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to concentrate power in the executive branch. The Netanyahu government, which includes Jewish supremacists and is the most extreme in the country’s history, has also taken steps, and will likely take additional ones, toward Israel’s further annexation of the West Bank.

I can’t wait till they conflate Israeli Supremacism with White Supremacism.

Worth reading an opposing opinion on the Judicial flap in Israel which to my view resembles the Canadian public’s dismay with our own unsolicited judicial activism. Well some of the Canadian public’s dismay.

The truth about the Israeli protests

This elitist, anti-democratic movement wants to constrain the power of the Israeli parliament.

On Monday night, amid large-scale protests, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed the first part of the government’s judicial-reform package.

The ‘reasonableness’ bill, which passed 64-0, is designed to curb the sweeping powers of Israel’s Supreme Court. As Jeremy Sharon has outlined in Times of Israel, using the tool of ‘reasonableness’, the Israeli Supreme Court has been able to strike down the actions of elected ministers or officials as ‘unreasonable’. It can do this even if those actions ‘do not violate any particular law or contradict other administrative rulings’. If it becomes law – incredibly, the Supreme Court could still declare the reasonableness bill to be ‘unreasonable’ – that will no longer be possible.

Protesters pitched tents and took to the streets of Jerusalem in their thousands on Sunday as part of a last-ditch attempt to halt the plans of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, to pass a law limiting the powers of the Supreme Court.

In a pilgrimage born of necessity, a throng of demonstrators marched on Jerusalem to set up camp near the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and take part in a four-day protest along the steep approaches to the city . Hundreds of thousands of others across the country mobilised to protest against the government’s controversial vote on Monday.

Update: Israeli parliament approves key part of judicial overhaul that has exposed deep fissures in society

Israel’s Netanyahu not on Trudeau’s invite list despite proposed U.S. visit

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he is not currently planning to join the American president in inviting his Israeli counterpart for a visit.

“We remain steadfast friends of Israel, but every now and then we do have to point out where we disagree,” Trudeau told reporters Thursday.

Trudeau is slated to speak with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon, after months of strain between the two countries.