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Dear editor:
I agree with Bruce Ticker. (Column: NYC’s African Mayor on Antisemitism: ‘We Have to Educate Our Way Out of This’ boulderjewishnews.org January 3, 2024) There is a lot of incorrect information circulating about Israel and it makes for bad media coverage, whether the problem is deliberate misinformation spread by Israel’s enemies or it simply results from lack of knowledge. An example of the former: an influx of Arab money contributed to the ANC’s bringing suit against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-800333
An example of the latter: blaming Israel’s “right-wing” government for the hostility of Israel’s neighbors. The truth is that Palestinian leaders have rejected peace proposals from Israeli leaders spanning Israel’s political spectrum; furthermore, some of the Israelis killed on October 7, 2023 had been working to make life easier for the Palestinians in Gaza.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-67592468
Like the US, Israel is a democracy. Israelis, whether Jewish or not, have freedom of speech and often express their complaints, vociferously. However, there are distinct differences between the structure of the government in Israel and the government in the US. Israel’s government is parliamentary; therefore, the separation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative branch is not quite as strong as ii is in the US. In national elections, every Israeli votes by choosing one of the many party lists of candidates for Knesset seats. After the voting is completed, Israel’s President (who has a largely ceremonial function) invites the person most likely to succeed in establishing a ruling coalition to do so. If that person succeeds in the task, he (or she) becomes the Prime Minister with a nominal four-year term. However, with the ruling coalition being made of several distinct parties, it is not at all unusual for varying positions to be held, with differences between parties sometimes being so extreme that a party may decide to leave the ruling coalition to become a member of the Opposition.
In the first decades following 1948, a Labor party often ended up with control of fifty or more seats, meaning that assembling a ruling coalition required partnering with one or two small parties that brought in the small number of additional seats needed to have a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. If a small party, for any reason, decided to pull its few members from the Coalition, the majority party could easily find a new party. However, in the 1990’s, Israel experimented with direct election of the Prime Minister (each voter voted twice – for a party and for Prime Minister in a race between two or more candidates. This meant that people could vote for a small party (which had no chance of having its leader being asked to form the Coalition) and still have a say in who would become the nation’s leader. Although this innovation was dropped after two elections, people seem to have liked voting for small parties. Every national election in the past thirty years has resulted in a coalition composed of many small parties, together holding just a few seats over the bare (61 seat) majority. Recently, this resulted in Israel holding elections for Knesset five times in four years.
https://aceproject.org/main/english/es/esf02b.htm
The “fragile coalition” issue played a part in the disputes over judicial reform. Because Israel has no written Constitution (and the set of Basic Laws, meant to function as a Constitution, has not been completed), Israeli courts really can’t rule on the Constitutionality of any legislation passed by the Knesset. The Supreme Court, sometime ago, arrogated to itself, the right to rule that some laws are “unreasonable.” This is less a “check and balance” than an usurpation of power, as the Knesset had no way of overturning a declaration of unreasonableness. However, many Israelis felt the proposed solution (giving the Knesset the ability to override a judgement that a law was “unreasonable” with a simple majority) would not restore balance but would give the Knesset too much power over the Court. There were calls to amend the “Override bill” by requiring that a two-thirds majority of the Members of Knesset (which would mean, in this time of fragile coalitions, that the government would need the support of members of both the Ruling Coalition and the Opposition to override the Court’s judgement). The matter will likely remain unresolved until Israel achieves a definitive victory over the enemies who have been threatening to destroy Israel and have been putting those threats into action.
As to claims that Israel is being too rough on the Palestinians, recall the words of Major John Spencer, head of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point: Israel is trying valiantly to avoid harming civilians. Criticism of Israel’s efforts to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas is prolonging the war and causing more deaths.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/17/opinions/israel-gaza-hamas-war-us-arms-spencer/index.html
Toby F. Block
Atlanta, GA
