THE ISRAELI WINTER:

A quiet war is being waged in Israel. No firearms are employed, even though the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are involved. And none of Israel's external enemies are involved. Nevertheless, both of the warring sides view this struggle as an existential one, a real fight for survival, which is being waged within the very heart of the Jewish state. It is a struggle of the Old Israel versus the New Israel. It is a war between Israel's original Liberal-Zionist-secular statesmanship with the values on which it was established 70 years ago versus a more religious Israel, a more conservative and traditional mindset that is less liberal and also far less democratic. This newer Israel is now trying to exploit its electoral assets into the power to rule. A one-sentence summary: a war between everything that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu symbolizes, and everyone else. [...]

From a party that had once been a liberal democratic bastion in which no one feared expressing an opinion, the Likud morphed into a bulletproof vest with the sole objective of protecting its leader, even from state institutions and legal authorities.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked submitted on Sept. 14 to the Knesset a bill draft she conceived. If turned into law, this bill would allow the prime minister to declare war without the authorization of the Cabinet. In addition, while this very article is being written, the HaBayit HaYehudi party, led by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Shaked, is working hard on a new bill that would clip (with a 61-seat Knesset majority) the wings of the Supreme Court.

This new bill, which will officially be called the Basic Law of Legislation, is designed to empty the Supreme Court of its most essential powers. Today, the Supreme Court can override a law passed by the Knesset if the law is found to conflict with constitutional principles that are anchored in basic laws. Israel has no organized constitution; instead, there are a number of "basic laws," which are special laws that anchor the basic principles of law in Israel.

Although the Supreme Court does not invalidate Knesset laws frequently, it has done so recently (by suspending the regularization law) when it felt that the laws directly impinged on basic principles such as that of equality. Now the Knesset hopes to create for itself absolute superiority over the law, thus violating the very sensitive checks-and-balances system of Israeli democracy.

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