Some of Israel Startup Nation’s most prominent firms announced that they will join a work stoppage to protest the judicial reforms proposed by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government that would drastically curtail the authority of Israel’s Supreme Court. The companies include Wiz, INX, Cheq, Natural Intelligence, and Luminescent. The “strike” is set for 11 A.M. local time Tuesday morning and will last for one hour, during which time a demonstration will be held at the Sharona complex in Tel Aviv.
The strike is coming at a precarious moment in Israeli politics. New laws were passed just before Israel’s new coalition government was formed that altered the authority and power structure within a number of Israel’s government departments. Even the Ministry of Defense, considered inviolable and above all politics by Israelis, had its chain of authority altered to accommodate Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the right-wing Religious Zionism Party. And the leader of another right-wing party, Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) was not only named national security minister but was given expanded controls over security forces – like Israel’s Border Police – in the West Bank that were traditionally under the authority of the IDF.
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And more than 100,000 people came out to protest the past two Saturday nights in Tel Aviv against Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reform plan. Members of the opposition, former jurists, and legal experts have condemned the proposals. Even Israel’s current Supreme Court President Esther Hayut.
“We assume that you are aware of the public discourse about the legal reform and the protest it has provoked,” said the strike’s organizers in an open letter addressed to Benjamin Netanyahu himself. “We have employees with diverse opinions and we always include and respect every person regardless of who they are.”
The reforms were revealed in a press conference held by Israel’s new Justice Minister Yariv Levin and include changing the current system of selecting new judges, passing new laws to limit the power of Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by the Knesset and also limiting the powers of Israel’s Attorney General whose Hebrew title literally means “Legal Advisor to the Government.”
It is the second proposal that is getting the most attention and condemnations from former Israeli supreme court ministers to legal scholars and opposition politicians alike. The main critique is that these reforms would undo Israeli democracy. Israel’s former Chief Justice Aharon Barak, Barak, who served in that capacity from 1995 – 2006, is one of the judges whose decisions increased the court’s powers to the objections of many Israeli politicians.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel in support of the planned strike issued a statement of its own calling Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans a “dictatorial coup” that the group said, “will severely damage civil rights, the Israeli economy, and all avenues of life.”
And so, the organization added that “it is incumbent on us to take drastic measures. The economic damage notwithstanding, we are taking this step as a first step to say loud and clear to the Israeli government that the coup d’état will not go through. The state of Israel will not become a dictatorship because it will not function a single day without the central arteries of the Israeli economy and society.”
