Israel’s government has established the principle that court rulings can be ignored
Against some fierce competition, Israel’s Netanyahu government has been competing pretty hard for the Gold Medal in Elected Autocracy. This week it struck what may be the winning blow in a unanimous Cabinet vote announcing that the Supreme Court can be ignored.
Trump appoints rubber-stamp judges, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan jails them, and under Putin they certainly fear assassination. But Netanyahu’s solution may be the most elegant of all.
And it sets Netanyahu up for an effort to steal the October election. Netanyahu, like Trump, is not one for conceding.
At first glance, the latest outrage appears narrow. But unpack the government’s actions and it becomes clear that there is a fight to the finish against the ideals of liberal democracy set in place by Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence.
What follows is the detailed report, and it is not for the faint of heart.
The immediate dispute concerned the Second Authority for Television and Radio, an independent broadcasting regulator, and a technical disagreement over whether it may continue operating after resignations left it without the quorum ordinarily required by law. But the real issue is, of course, the principle: Never has the Israeli government done such a thing — and, indeed, it has probably never happened in a functioning democracy.
Anything can happen now — including the Attorney General putting ministers on trial for contempt — or sedition. They would probably welcome it, because what is actually happening is an effort to create conflict, and a populist narrative, ahead of the October election. The unpopular coalition, which oversaw the Oct. 7 catastrophe and almost three years of war and misery, has little offer other than the narrative that the Supreme Court is the unelected enemy of the people..
This confrontation comes amid a legislative blitz by Netanyahu’s coalition that is reshaping key democratic institutions and is likely to generate a series of constitutional challenges before the very Supreme Court it has not disobeyed. The package includes legislation to split the role of the attorney general and weaken the office’s independence; measures effectively preventing the arrest of ultra-Orthodox draft evaders needed for the coalition to survive; a proposed Basic Law elevating Torah study to a national value on par with military service; a sweeping communications bill that would increase political control over broadcasting; and additional proposals affecting judicial oversight, civil service appointments, and other checks on executive power.
All of it seems part of a setup to dare the court to invalidate laws, and them make the October election about this culture clash — pitting elected autocracy versus liberal democracy. Netanyahu will doubtless make every effort to cheap in this election, and the court’s efforts to block him will also be presented as null and void. That is basically what Netanyahu’s two decades’ worth of misrule have essentially come down to.
The dispute itself arose after the court froze controversial appointments to the Second Authority, including its chair, while petitions challenging the appointments were considered. Following the court’s intervention, several members of the council resigned in what the justices suggested appeared to be a coordinated effort to prevent the regulator from functioning. Their departure left the council without the statutory quorum needed to conduct business, including deciding on the proposed acquisition of the TV station Channel 13 by a liberal group led by tech mogul Asaf Rappaport.
The Court responded by ruling that those resignations would not be permitted to frustrate its earlier orders and allowed the regulator to continue operating pending a final decision. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi and Justice Minister Yariv Levin argued that the court had effectively rewritten the governing statute. Rather than seeking reconsideration, awaiting a final judgment or pursuing legislative change, however, the cabinet on Sunday adopted a resolution declaring that it would not recognize decisions taken pursuant to the court’s order.
Reasonable lawyers can disagree about whether the High Court reached the correct legal conclusion. Courts issue controversial rulings, and governments are entirely entitled to criticize them, seek legislative remedies, campaign to change the law or argue that judges exceeded their authority. But such disagreements in Israel always took place within a constitutional framework in which the government’s obligation to obey binding judicial decisions remained unquestioned.
None of this is happening in isolation. For several years, the current coalition has waged an increasingly aggressive campaign against institutions that constrain executive power. The judicial overhaul proposed in 2023 sought to weaken the courts’ ability to review government action. Ministers have repeatedly attacked the attorney general, legal advisers, prosecutors and senior civil servants as unelected officials frustrating the will of the majority. The latest confrontation carries that argument one decisive step further.
This is a watershed moment, of which none more serious, none more far-reaching and none more historic,” said veteran columnist Ben Caspit.
“The government wants there to be no limits on its power, and it is abominable,” said Aminadav Begin, grandson former Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The government now stands “180 degrees” from the democratic philosophy of his grandfather, who founded Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Menachem Begin’s famous declaration that “there are judges in Jerusalem” reflected a foundational democratic principle: that elected leaders, no less than ordinary citizens, are themselves subject to the law as interpreted by the courts.
The present government rhetoric frequently portrays judges, legal officials, sections of the media, academia and other independent institutions as unelected elites obstructing the popular will.
The timing is no coincidence. Israel is approaching what many regard as the most consequential election in its history, and public discussion has increasingly been shaped by fears — whether ultimately justified or not — that the country could face an unprecedented constitutional confrontation over the electoral process. Former top officials, officials, legal scholars and prominent commentators have openly contemplated scenarios that would have been dismissed as inconceivable only a few years ago, including attempts to delay elections, alter their conditions or challenge their legitimacy.
If Netanyahu loses, as polls suggest will happen, expect his minions to flood the zone with fake claims of violations in a bid to delegitimize the outcome. If such fears materialize, the Supreme Court would almost certainly become the institution called upon to save the day. A government that has already established the principle that it may refuse to recognize judicial rulings has altered the context in which any future constitutional dispute would unfold.
Add to that the fact that Netanyahu is still on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and that any ruling is likely to reach the Supreme Court, and you have the makings of a major constitutional crisis – in a country without a constitution.
