Bret Stephens has a screw loose. You read his latest column and you'd swear he is saying what all others are saying, that Israel as a democratic Jewish state is doomed. But then:
...the Israeli Knesset’s vote to approve contentious legislation limiting the power of the judiciary. This is a true disaster for Israel not because the bill is “anti-democratic” — if anything, it is all too democratic, at least in the purely majoritarian sense of the word —
So it needs to protect minorities, yes. ...No,
...because it risks depriving the country of its most potent weapon: the fierce loyalty of its most productive and civically engaged citizens.
With those citizens — the tech entrepreneurs, the air force reservists, the world-famous novelists and doctors — Israel stands in a league with Switzerland and Singapore: a boutique nation, small and imperfect but widely associated with excellence in dozens of fields.
Without those citizens, Israel is in the club with Hungary and Serbia: a little country, insular and pettily corrupt and good mainly at nursing its grievances.
The judicial legislation is too democratic, majoritarian uber alles. The bill is a disaster for Israel, Stephens argues, because the Ashkenazi techo-intelligentsia oligarchical minority is losing its historical hold on power to,
...Israel’s least productive and engaged citizens — ultra-Orthodox Jews who want military exemptions and welfare, ...the bigoted, the corrupt, the dependent and the extreme. ...settlers who want to be a law unto themselves, ideologues in think tanks — abusing their temporary majority to secure exemptions, entitlements, immunities and other privileges that mock the idea of equality under law.
...
Israel’s demographic challenges are well known...
Oh! I recognize "democraphic challenges" as code for "undersirables" swamping white Americans, sorry, Ashkenazi Jews. So Brett wants, in the popular phrase, "monitory democracy" to protect "the most productive members of society", not the loafers and welfare cheats. We want to keep those low-lifes down. This is becoming Ashkenazi-racist by Brett. Maybe Israel needs its own Buck v Ball and the Israeli Supremes could authorize forced sterilization of these fecund, lazy Negroes, excuse me again, Mezrahi.
...
Perhaps because of the long history of Jewish dispossession, many Israelis seem keenly attuned to the danger. A poll last week of 734 Israeli founders and C.E.O.s of start-ups and managing directors of venture capital firms found that more than two-thirds were taking steps to move their assets outside Israel in anticipation of the new law. There’s also been a reported surge in Israelis seeking second passports. Israel’s demographic challenges are well known, but there’s a challenge within the challenge: If the people who made Israel the Start-up Nation are heading for the exits, the long-term basis of Israel’s power will erode. Prayers won’t save Israel if it lacks a world-class economy to sustain a regionally dominant military.
Stephens prefers oligarchy to democracy, which can be too-too; he confuses democracy or, in contemporary usage, monitory democracy, with mobocracy. Unmonitored democracy, one without checks and balances from some other official body, is majoritarian mobocracy.
That’s not to say that the idea of judicial reform is meritless, at least in the abstract. Israel has an unusually powerful judiciary that over several decades arrogated powers to itself that were never democratically given and that elsewhere are considered strictly political, such as adjudging the “reasonableness” of ministerial appointments and actions....
"Never democratically given" should be a point in the Israeli judiciary's favor according to a critical mass of Stephens' argument. ...But he argues that the "reforms" would make the judiciary too democratic--bad.
...Israel has no written constitution clearly delineating, as America’s does, the separation of powers. And it has no meaningful institutional check on the executive and legislature other than the Supreme Court. It is the court that guarantees that human, civil, women’s and minority rights are respected and that parliamentary majorities can’t simply do as they please.
Right! It does! The reasonableness standard is unreasonable in my opinion but it kinda sorta served as the monitor for mobocracy's excesses.
So that's BAD, right?...Or no, that's good, since he doesn't like majoritarian democracy; the new legislation makes the court too democratic without the monitor function.
...
But the point of the legislation isn’t reform, much less consensus. It’s
an exercise in raw political power ...carried out by legislators bent on
trying to achieve legal impunity from a court that has tried to hold
them to account. Israel wouldn’t be in this national meltdown if
Netanyahu weren’t trying to wangle out of his criminal indictment by
holding on to power
A statesman sacrifices himself for his nation. A demagogue sacrifices his nation for himself.
...
...the new dividing line in Israel, as in so many other democracies, is no longer between liberals and conservatives. It’s between liberals and illiberals. It’s between those who believe that democracy encompasses a set of norms, values and habits that respect and enforce sharp limits on power and those who will use their majorities to do whatever they please in matters of politics so that they may eventually do whatever they please in matters of law.
But then, like the drunk fumbling to stick the key in the lock of the front door, Brett realizes that "more light is needed here" and arrives at a stupendous, happy ending:
Israelis have a penchant for hyperbole, and this week has brought a lot of lamentations about the “end of Israeli democracy.” That’s an unwarranted counsel of despair as well as an overstatement: Israeli democracy has survived worse.
My God, Brett, don't keep us hanging! When has Israeli democracy survived worse and, in your judgment, I'm still mightily confused, should Israeli democracy survive again, or, you're among frenemies, do you really prefer a continuation of elite Ashkenazi rule. Inquiring minds want to know. And can't figure out what the fuck it is you want.
