Over 100,000 Israelis hit the streets in the nation’s capital, Jerusalem, on Monday to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of the Supreme Court.
Despite objections from Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who has warned the reform could bring the nation to “the brink of constitutional and social collapse,” Netanyahu’s administration introduced the controversial bill before the Knesset on Monday.
The new bill would permit a majority of parliamentarians in Israel’s Knesset to overturn Supreme Court judgments. Critics believe the revision will undermine the judiciary’s independence and upend Israel’s delicate balance of power shared across the country’s three branches of government.
Netanyahu has condemned opposition leaders, including Herzog, former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, and former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, of “dragging the country into anarchy.”
“I call on the leaders of the opposition: stop it. Stop deliberately leading the country into anarchy. Get ahold of yourselves, show responsibility and leadership,” Netanyahu argued in a video statement. “Most Israeli citizens do not want anarchy. They want a substantive discussion and in the end they want unity.”
In a rare move, President Joe Biden called for caution in a statement provided to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times published on Sunday.
“The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary. Building consensus for fundamental changes is really important to ensure that the people buy into them so they can be sustained.”
Friedman added it was the “first time I can recall a U.S. president has ever weighed in on an internal Israeli debate about the very character of the country’s democracy.”
The bill passed a vote on the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee and is set to face a first reading before a full legislative body on Wednesday. Before it becomes enacted, the bill must pass three readings.