Netanyahu Is Racing Against the Clock to Putinize Israel

Will it backfire? Elections are now set for Oct. 27. here's an Israel update for Paid Subscribers.

As Israelis prepare for what may be the most consequential election in the country’s history, now set for Oct. 27, the Netanyahu coalition has launched an extraordinary legislative blitz before the Knesset’s summer recess, which begins at the end of this week. Already they passed a pair of laws legitimizing Haredi draft evasion, and next is a raft of bills weakening democratic oversight.

Viewed individually, some of the initiatives seem about technical legal questions arcane to anyone not steeped in constitutional law, and might perhaps not be urgent for AQL readers. But bear with us if you care about Israel, because taken together, they’re clearly a coordinated attempt to weaken nearly every independent institution capable of restraining executive power, and amount to an arrow shot at the heart of Israel’s claims to be a Western-style democracy.

That means weakening the civil service and the office of the attorney general, as well as independent regulators and also taking over the mechanism by which the greatest failure in Israeli history, the Oct. 7 massacre, will be investigated. The legislative package is, in other words, a constitutional project meant to entrench elected autocracy.

Adding injury to insult, the government is spearheading a massive expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The fanatical finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and Netanyahu recently signed a $434 million package for new homes and roads, part of a far larger framework whose goal to reach one million settlers. Here’s what I had to say about that:

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So, back to Netanyahu’s Putinization Project: what Ergodan did to Turkey — dragging it in the direction of fake democracy, and ever closer to the nightmare scenario of Russia, Netanyahu is trying with Israel.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not abolish elections but rather gradually weakened the institutions capable of constraining executive power while maintaining democratic forms. Today Turkey ranks 163rd out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. Critics don’t fear that Israel will become Turkey overnight. But they understand that democracies can erode incrementally through legal mechanisms enacted by elected governments.

For details, read on.

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