Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg published an op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday warning against the Netanyahu-led government’s plans to reform its left-leaning judiciary, saying Israel was “courting disaster.”
Bloomberg opened with the disclaimer that he has “never gotten involved in [Israel’s] domestic politics or criticized its government initiatives,” but then launched into a diatribe railing against the reform, which he said was “due to my love for Israel, my respect for its people and my concern about its future are now leading me to speak out against the current government’s attempt to effectively abolish the nation’s independent judiciary.”
The failed 2020 Democratic nominee for president, who proved he does not even understand the U.S. Supreme Court system and its Constitution, had no reservations meddling in internal Israeli politics and calling on the country to “pull back and slow down.”
The judicial reform is “imperiling Israel’s alliances around the world, its security in the region, its economy at home, and the very democracy upon which the country was built,” Bloomberg wrote in the op-ed.
Many in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition believe the judicial reform proposals would correct a power grab by the Supreme Court and restore a balance of power to the executive branch. The overhaul calls for a restructure of justices, in which the elected government would have more influence over the selection of judges. The proposals, presented early last month by Justice Minister Yariv Levin, also call for cancelling the so-called “reasonableness measure” by which the Supreme Court can strike down any law or government action it deems “unreasonable.”
For example, the court ruled it “unreasonable” to allow religious Jews to pray on the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – because doing so would anger the Arab world.
The reform would also see an amendment to the so-called override clause, enabling the Knesset to re-legislate laws that the Supreme Court had struck down, pending a 61-MK majority.
The billionaire noted a “disturbing” trend where some have already begun pulling money out of the country while “re-evaluating their plans for future growth there.”
“As the owner of a global company, I don’t blame them,” he wrote.
Companies and investors “place enormous value on strong and independent judicial systems because courts help protect them — not only against crime and corruption but also government overreach,” he said.
Bloomberg does not mention, or does not know, that many Israeli companies include a clause in the contracts that future litigation occur in overseas courts because the local legal system is so flawed and is heavily dependent on the whims of individual justices and vague notions of “reasonableness.”
“The extraordinary rise in Israel’s economic standing over the last generation may be Mr. Netanyahu’s greatest achievement,” Bloomberg wrote. “Yet unless he changes course, Mr. Netanyahu risks throwing all that progress — and his own hard-earned legacy — away.”
Bloomberg also warned that Israel imperils its close ties to the U.S. if it would continue to “mirror…authoritarian countries.”
Israel, he noted, is in “one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods”.
“The more divided it is at home, the weaker it appears to its enemies,” Bloomberg said. The move “could even imperil the future of the Jewish homeland.”