Netanyahu Loses

Israel's Supreme Court strikes down Netanyahu's law attempting to muzzle them.

This is good, because in the absence of a formal constitution, Israel REALLY needs robust judicial review, and because it makes Benjaman Netanyahu's eventual conviction on corruption charges more likely:

Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday struck down a law limiting its own powers, a momentous step in the legal and political crisis that gripped the country before the war with Hamas, and pitted the court against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

The court’s 8-7 ruling has the potential to throw Israel’s national emergency government, formed after the Oct. 7 attacks, into disarray and reignite the grave domestic turmoil that began a year ago over the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul plan. Mass protests brought the country to a near-standstill at times, in one of the deepest political upheavals Israel had faced in its 75 years, and led to warnings of possible civil war.

The court, sitting with a full panel of all 15 of its justices for the first time in its history, rejected the law passed by Parliament in July that barred judges from using a particular legal standard to overrule decisions made by government ministers.

The standard in question is, "Reasonableness,"  meaning that government actions cannot be arbitrary or capricious.

………

Critics of Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have argued that, in fact, the government’s fixation on weakening the independence of the judiciary contributed to Israel being caught off guard by the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas that touched off the war, killed 1,200 people and seized more than 240 hostages, according to the authorities.

Yair Lapid, the parliamentary opposition leader, hailed the court for “faithfully fulfilling its duty to protect the people of Israel.”

………

Opponents of the judicial overhaul feared it would make the court much less able to prevent government overreach, and also make it much easier for the government to end the prosecution of Mr. Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges.

Which was the primary purpose of these reforms the whole time.  They were about Benjamin Netanyahu trying to save himself.

………

The court’s decision in large part centered on the concept of “reasonableness,” a legal standard used by many judicial systems, including in Australia, Britain and Canada. A government action is deemed unreasonable if a court rules that it was made without considering all relevant factors, without giving relevant weight to each factor or by giving irrelevant factors too much weight.

It should be noted Israel, as is the case for Australia and Canada, based their parliamentary systems, so it is not unreasonable that they all have a judicial standard of reasonableness.

Now the Israeli polity should set about removing Netanyahu from office.  His mismanagement contributed to the October 7 debacle, and his desperate attempts to retain power are a clear and present danger to the continued existence of the state of Israel.