DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Judges on Israel’s Supreme Court claimed Tuesday that the country’s Declaration of Independence gave them authority to overturn changes to the country’s Basic Laws if they threaten “democracy.”

The judges made that claim as the full 15-member Supreme Court heard challenges to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first judicial reform, which bars the judiciary from overturning laws or policies it finds “unreasonable.”

Netanyahu’s government has claimed that the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case, because the reform amended Israel’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws, from which the Court itself claims to draw its judicial authority.

The government was represented by a private attorney, after Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, a holdover from the previous administration, refused to defend the judicial reform in court. During the hearing, which drew live national coverage, the judges argued with attorney Ilan Bombach, appearing to act as litigants rather than judges.

The Times of Israel reported:

During fraught exchanges between the court and the attorneys defending the so-called “reasonableness” legislation, one justice indicated that Israel’s democracy was at stake, noting that “democracy dies in a series of small steps,” while the coalition’s lawyer took aim at Israel’s foundational Declaration of Independence as an ostensible source of judicial authority, calling it a “hasty” document endorsed by unelected signatories.

But justices also pushed back against demands the measure be annulled out of hand, with court President Esther Hayut saying that only a “mortal blow” could justify the radical step of voiding a Basic Law, as lawyers representing petitioners against the law argued that the legislation and other government proposals to overhaul the judiciary were a “deadly … strike against the court’s independence and the separation of powers.

…

Ilan Bombach, the attorney who is representing the government in the High Court since Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has refused to do so, argued that the justices are merely empowered to interpret the legislator’s words, and that there is no legal or constitutional basis for them to review Basic Laws.

At one point, a conservative lawmaker in the chamber heckled the judges, prompting a rebuke from the bench.

The judges’ attempt to treat the Declaration of Independence as a constitutional document drew pushback from the government’s attorney, who said that 37 unelected signatories could not bind future generations. Critics were also livid:

The hearing dragged on well into the nighttime hours, in what observers are calling a “constitutional crisis.”

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.