Opinion
Israeli resistance to government overreach contrasts with Indian indifference
Summary
Both governments have been trying to push through controversial changes that would give them more power over the judiciary. While Israelis have united in protest, Indians remain largely unaware or unconcerned
It has been less than three months since Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu returned to power as prime minister of Israel. With a coalition of strongly religious, right-wing parties, Netanyahu has, not surprisingly, sparked a series of crises in Israeli society and its foreign policy.
Using its election victory, the Netanyahu government has launched efforts to ‘reform’ Israel’s judiciary, which it calls left-leaning and accuses of exercising powers beyond its mandate. The key argument is that the judiciary is an unelected elite answerable to no one, unlike the politicians that run the government.
The government has, therefore, sought a say in both the appointment of judges, and to allow the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, to overrule court decisions with a simple majority vote.
The November 2022 elections saw Netanyahu’s Likud party win only just over 30 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Forming a coalition to cross the majority mark was not easy. One of the promises Likud had to make to potential coalition partners was to enact these judicial changes.
The Israeli polity has responded with massive protests, with opposition cutting across political lines. The protests are primarily a reaction to the threat to democracy that the reforms pose – weakening judicial oversight of the government’s decisions is expected to affect not just the separation of powers but also the rights of women, minorities, and labourers.
The protests have even forced Israeli military reservists – crucial to national defence in a country with a difficult security environment – into opposition. Significant numbers have refused to report for duty, causing Netanyahu’s own defence minister to oppose the judicial reforms. It was his firing that triggered the latest round of protests.
While Netanyahu has called a timeout on the reforms to provide “a real opportunity for real dialogue", the bill has nevertheless been submitted to the Knesset for a vote, which would allow the government to bring it in for approval later. Clearly, Netanyahu is unwilling to back down in practice. What’s more, he has also sought to blame an “extreme minority tearing Israel to shreds".
Both the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform plan and his language should be familiar to Indians in their own context. That’s because the Israeli government’s actions have clear echoes in India. Unlike Israel’s coalition government, however, India has an all-powerful executive backed by a substantial majority in Parliament but similarly determined to change the way judges are appointed to the Supreme Court.
It is not so much that the central government in India has been more careful than its Israeli counterpart in not setting off protests, but that the wider Indian public seems unaware or unconcerned about the challenges faced by institutions in an era of majoritarian democracy.
The country’s Reserve Bank and the Election Commission – both statutorily independent bodies – have come under a cloud in recent years for seemingly bending to the demands of the central government.
Israel has a largely positive image among the Indian population for its ability to fend off wide-ranging threats and achieve military victory against seemingly impossible odds. Whether Indian citizens will follow the lead of their Israeli counterparts and resist with similar determination the withering of their domestic institutions, however, remains an open question.
