Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump have not spoken in years, but Netanyahu’s victory Monday on judicial reform shows the two still have much in common — and can help each other.
Netanyahu held his fractious ruling coalition together, against overwhelming pressure from protests, the media, U.S. President Joe Biden, and even the military to pass the first of several proposed fixes to Israel’s judiciary.
The reform itself is rather modest — almost laughably so. It prevents Israel’s all- powerful judiciary from blocking government policies on the basis of what judges themselves decide is “reasonable.”
Almost no one, even in Israel, is defending the current practice, which was adopted by the left-leaning judiciary over the last several decades. But the left tried to shut down the country lest Netanyahu try to make further reforms.
Netanyahu followed Trump’s practice of asking for more than he thought he could get. Of the judicial reforms, most of which parallel existing U.S. practice, one goes too far — as even some Israeli conservatives admit. It would allow the Knesset to overrule the Supreme Court by a simple majority vote.
But just as Trump often proposes something outlandish at the outset of debate, Netanyahu shifted Israeli opinion toward reform by asking for the most dramatic changes possible. Even critics of his specific proposals came to admit that some of the judiciary’s existing powers were too sweeping and felt pressure to say they were open to change.
Israel’s opposition leaders tried to argue that they were defending “democracy” — even though Netanyahu’s reforms would make the system more democratic. In the last days, some on the left dropped the pretense and called for a military coup — which they admitted was already under way, as leftists encouraged reservists in Israel’s citizen army not to show up for duty.
That was a tactical mistake: Netanyahu’s supporters united not just in favor of reform, but in opposition to desertion and the brazen attempt to politicize Israel’s military.
Still, it showed the depths to which Netanyahu’s opponents were willing to descend.
President Biden, issuing a warning on Sunday against going ahead with the reform bill, did not even bother to wish Netanyahu a speedy recovery from heart surgery: the prime minister had a pacemaker fitted and came out of the hospital to vote.
Trump still holds a grudge against Netanyahu, because the latter recognized Biden as the winner of the 2020 election in the U.S. He was not the “first” to do so, as Trump claims, and he likely had no choice: he had already delayed for days. He could not afford to alienate the incoming Biden administration unnecessarily, both for domestic and diplomatic reasons.
In the meantime, Netanyahu has provided a model for Trump’s comeback.
Like Trump, Netanyahu has faced phony criminal charges.He has fought them in the courts, and exposed the abuses of power by law enforcement authorities who were determined to push him out of politics. He was ousted in 2021 but came back to office after winning last year’s election at the head of a unified coalition of conservative parties.
Now he has overcome a “color revolution,” international pressure, and even a health scare.
If Trump wins, or any other anti-establishment candidate, they will have to look to Netanyahu’s example of courage and resolve.
Winning an election is not the end; for all the talk of “defending democracy,” the left does not recognize the legitimacy of elections it does not win, and will try to prevent any populist government from governing.
Netanyahu has stared them down, and kept his coalition together. Trump would do well to learn.
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 recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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