Feminist pioneer and author Phyllis Chesler has spoken out against the vociferous protests in Israel against judicial reform, noting that they are using uncivil, undemocratic means while claiming to defend democracy.
As Breitbart News has reported, the new government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on a series of judicial reforms designed to increase the power of the legislature and executive branches. Many of these changes parallel standard practice in other democracies. Israel’s judiciary is among the most powerful in the world, following the constitutional “revolution” declared by Chief Justice Aharon Barak 30 years ago.
The reforms have been opposed stridently by Israel’s opposition, which has claimed that they amount to a “coup” against democracy, though their effect would be to make Israel’s system more democratic, not less.
The protests have included efforts to block major highways, and some demonstrators have even trapped legislators in their homes. Some Israeli reservists have also said they will desert if the reforms are enacted.
In an essay for the Jewish News Syndicate, Chesler — who dissented from her colleagues on the left two decades ago in defending Israel against terror — warns that Israel’s left-wing opposition is tearing the country apart.
She writes:
I may not be a lawyer or a legal scholar, but I have been an organizer, an activist, a leader who has acted on behalf of civil and human rights—especially women’s rights. But I have never acted in the way that Israeli rioters are now acting: Not stopping, threatening to continue until they’ve brought down an entire country.
These leftists/progressives/“good people” (my former people) seem to be behaving the same way that pro-Palestinian/pro-jihad students behave in the streets and classrooms of America. They are like hecklers in the classroom who will not allow a speaker with whom they disagree to speak, trying to chase them out of the lecture hall. These rioters are aiming to abolish a lawful and democratic election because they despise and fear the people’s choice. They aim to make their country odious in the eyes of the world.
…It seems to me that, in the name of democracy, the most uncivil, anti-democratic protests have been taking place against a democratically elected government whose views the protestors do not share. Why not start organizing to win the hearts and minds of the electorate? Why not plan for victory in the next election? Why not hold demonstrations that do not intend to shut the entire country down?
Chesler notes that she has been a critic of Israel’s religious establishment, fighting for equal access for women at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. (She notes that even Israel’s supposedly left-wing court has often deferred to religious authority on the question.)
Yet she adds that the methods of protest — even rioting — that opponents of the judicial reform have adopted are aiding efforts by Israel’s opponents to demonize it.
Read Chelser’s full essay here.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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