Israeli Judicial Overhaul Resumes

[Nilokeras]

Given where Jewish people ended up in their struggles for emancipation in places like Russia, they disagree with your assessment.

Purged by the Bolsheviks? Oh well, at least they didn’t put the “Jewish” “Autonomous” Oblast in Chukotka. The JAO is both ridiculously far away from Moscow and the weather is not an instant death sentence. Thank the Soviets for gifting “rootless cosmopolitans” the best location in all of Russia.

Fighting with the Bolsheviks against the White armies, for example. And of course it's certainly an interesting perspective, especially considering the reasoning behind Zionism, that the idea of giving landless Jewish people who had been persecuted in imperial Russia their own land and autonomy is a bad thing.

Given where Jewish people ended up in their struggles for emancipation in places like Russia, they disagree with your assessment.

I would strongly advise against speaking on behalf of Jews, especially with your disgusting Marx avatar.

Chibi Marx is quite handsome, idk what you're talking about

[Judah]

I would strongly advise against speaking on behalf of Jews, especially with your disgusting Marx avatar.

Chibi Marx is quite handsome, idk what you're talking about

Chibi Marx? He doesn't look chibi to me, just anime-esque. Any incarnation of Karl Marx is a bad incarnation of Marx. I hope to HaShem he is burning in Hell, and let's face it - he probably is.

[Nilokeras]

Chibi Marx is quite handsome, idk what you're talking about

Chibi Marx? He doesn't look chibi to me, just anime-esque. Any incarnation of Karl Marx is a bad incarnation of Marx. I hope to HaShem he is burning in Hell, and let's face it - he probably is.

You seem to be the expert on attractive animu communists so I'll take your word for it on his chibiness

[Judah]

Chibi Marx? He doesn't look chibi to me, just anime-esque. Any incarnation of Karl Marx is a bad incarnation of Marx. I hope to HaShem he is burning in Hell, and let's face it - he probably is.

You seem to be the expert on attractive animu communists so I'll take your word for it on his chibiness

Stop projecting - it makes you look stupid.

[Vistulange]

Purged by the Bolsheviks? Oh well, at least they didn’t put the “Jewish” “Autonomous” Oblast in Chukotka. The JAO is both ridiculously far away from Moscow and the weather is not an instant death sentence. Thank the Soviets for gifting “rootless cosmopolitans” the best location in all of Russia.

Fighting with the Bolsheviks against the White armies, for example. And of course it's certainly an interesting perspective, especially considering the reasoning behind Zionism, that the idea of giving landless Jewish people who had been persecuted in imperial Russia their own land and autonomy is a bad thing.

To be nitpicky, Zionism is not about giving landless Jewish people any land, it's about giving them the land of, y'know, Zion.

Kind of a big deal. Also why the Uganda Proposal was rejected by the World Zionist Congress, since it wasn't Palestine.

But, don't let me distract from your embellishment of how awesome the Soviet Union was for Jewish people.

so basically rightists in israel are pulling an america and trying to establish a dictatorship?

great. just what we need. I’m sure we’ll keep supporting them too, because 10% of our government is right-wing hacks, 40% panders to right-wing hacks, and the other 50% are too cowardly and/or hamstrung to do anything.

Not really anything like January 6th. The insurrection was a crime, while this is basically a legal loophole to suspend the law. The 64 seat Knesset majority is large enough to ignore or override the majority of the constitution—expelling MKs and enacting a permanent state of emergency are among the few things which require a 2/3 majority. However, the Supreme Court also has the authority to determine what is constitutional; ergo, you can’t actually do this in practice.

This proposal would make it so the Knesset actually could do this and would only be constrained by how cohesive and ambitious the ruling coalition is. Additionally, given that Netanyahu would face serious legal problems if his coalition falls apart, he will likely make extreme concessions to the far-right fringe.

What "constitution"? You realise that Israel isn't America, yes?

Israel has no constitution. What it does have is a series of Basic Laws, which despite their name, are not subject to any sort of parliamentary threshold or supermajority. Again, Israel practices "parliamentary sovereignty" as the United Kingdom does—perhaps with even less norms governing it—and as such, there is no "constitution" to override. What the Knesset says is law, and that isn't any sort of loophole. It's a feature of the system.

We can debate whether or not that's a good idea or a bad idea—my vote is "very bad idea"—but presenting it like Likud's doing some weird unheard of shit is just not right. No, they're doing something that's perfectly fine in the Israeli legislative system, but obviously terrible for Israeli democracy.

The Supreme Court of Israel has no direct authority to rule legislation "unconstitutional" in the sense most modern constitutional courts do, more or less because of the idea of parliamentary supremacy. It does, however, occasionally rule to stop administrative action; this is not the same as declaring a law illegal. In any case, even if they did, it would most likely be a moot point: the yardstick they would use to reach a decision would inevitably be the Basic Law(s) themselves, which can, themselves, be amended or even (theoretically) be abolished outright with a simple majority of the Knesset.

[Nilokeras]

To be nitpicky, Zionism is not about giving landless Jewish people any land, it's about giving them the land of, y'know, Zion.

Kind of a big deal. Also why the Uganda Proposal was rejected by the World Zionist Congress, since it wasn't Palestine.

But, don't let me distract from your embellishment of how awesome the Soviet Union was for Jewish people.

The logic of Zionism is that Jewish people can only be safe in a Jewish polity that is self-governing and separate from the people that would want to harm them. There were several attempts at settling Jewish people displaced by pogroms and the civil war by giving them land in autonomous polities within the Soviet Union, the Autonomous Oblast among them. There were others in Crimea and southern Ukraine. All predicated on similar logic to Zionism and intended as a Soviet alternative to Zionist settlement.

[Fahran]

To be nitpicky, Zionism is not about giving landless Jewish people any land, it's about giving them the land of, y'know, Zion.

Kind of a big deal. Also why the Uganda Proposal was rejected by the World Zionist Congress, since it wasn't Palestine.

But, don't let me distract from your embellishment of how awesome the Soviet Union was for Jewish people.

The logic of Zionism is that Jewish people can only be safe in a Jewish polity that is self-governing and separate from the people that would want to harm them. There were several attempts at settling Jewish people displaced by pogroms and the civil war by giving them land in autonomous polities within the Soviet Union, the Autonomous Oblast among them. There were others in Crimea and southern Ukraine. All predicated on similar logic to Zionism and intended as a Soviet alternative to Zionist settlement.

The extent to which we should understand these as good faith attempts to realize Jewish self-determination is questionable to say the least. They were motivated largely by a desire to suppress and discredit Jewish nationalists. The USSR never wholly kicked the prejudices that had defined, at least relative to the Jews, the Russian Empire. Purges of Jews occurred under Stalin and Brezhnev, with institutional racism and scrutiny following Jewish citizens of the USSR throughout its history. Russia and Ukraine continue to struggle with Antisemitism even today. The fact that the Whites wanted to actively engage in pogroms and exterminations, as well as long-term political factors linked to the diaspora experience in Russia, led to many Jews siding with the Bolsheviks and other left-wing factions. But we should not take the experience of Russian Jews as a monolith or presume that temporary gains, soon half undone, constituted an enduring promise of safety, especially in 1948. We also shouldn’t suppose that the JAO was a sensible alternative to Israel at the time it was proposed. It suffered from a lot of the same problems that crippled later Soviet successor states, and did so by design.

I’ll likely turn in for the night soon since I need to be up bright and early tomorrow. I’m a touch irked, not at anyone in particular, that most conversations about modern Israeli politics and the status of the Palestinians always seem to get whittled down to debates about the moral legitimacy of Zionism or cookie cutter talking points. Or, worse, very low-effort racism aimed at Jews and Arabs. It takes the focus away from the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and more concrete concerns - such as work programs, the settlement policy, land and water rights, etc. Mind you, it’s a fun and spicy topic, but I feel like we’re flattening the topic. When we’re not going completely off-topic, that is.

[Vistulange]

I’ll likely turn in for the night soon since I need to be up bright and early tomorrow. I’m a touch irked, not at anyone in particular, that most conversations about modern Israeli politics and the status of the Palestinians always seem to get whittled down to debates about the moral legitimacy of Zionism or cookie cutter talking points. Or, worse, very low-effort racism aimed at Jews and Arabs. It takes the focus away from the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and more concrete concerns - such as work programs, the settlement policy, land and water rights, etc. Mind you, it’s a fun and spicy topic, but I feel like we’re flattening the topic. When we’re not going completely off-topic, that is.

It's natural—not excusable—because not a lot of people care to study Israel, Palestine, or the Arab-Israeli and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in depth. Thus, people fall back on their overall theories of the world...which can be fine, but most of the time, it leads to what you're describing.

And yes, it is irksome, to say the least.

[El Lazaro]

Not really anything like January 6th. The insurrection was a crime, while this is basically a legal loophole to suspend the law. The 64 seat Knesset majority is large enough to ignore or override the majority of the constitution—expelling MKs and enacting a permanent state of emergency are among the few things which require a 2/3 majority. However, the Supreme Court also has the authority to determine what is constitutional; ergo, you can’t actually do this in practice.

This proposal would make it so the Knesset actually could do this and would only be constrained by how cohesive and ambitious the ruling coalition is. Additionally, given that Netanyahu would face serious legal problems if his coalition falls apart, he will likely make extreme concessions to the far-right fringe.

What "constitution"? You realise that Israel isn't America, yes?

Israel has no constitution. What it does have is a series of Basic Laws, which despite their name, are not subject to any sort of parliamentary threshold or supermajority. Again, Israel practices "parliamentary sovereignty" as the United Kingdom does—perhaps with even less norms governing it—and as such, there is no "constitution" to override. What the Knesset says is law, and that isn't any sort of loophole. It's a feature of the system.

We can debate whether or not that's a good idea or a bad idea—my vote is "very bad idea"—but presenting it like Likud's doing some weird unheard of shit is just not right. No, they're doing something that's perfectly fine in the Israeli legislative system, but obviously terrible for Israeli democracy.

The Supreme Court of Israel has no direct authority to rule legislation "unconstitutional" in the sense most modern constitutional courts do, more or less because of the idea of parliamentary supremacy. It does, however, occasionally rule to stop administrative action; this is not the same as declaring a law illegal. In any case, even if they did, it would most likely be a moot point: the yardstick they would use to reach a decision would inevitably be the Basic Law(s) themselves, which can, themselves, be amended or even (theoretically) be abolished outright with a simple majority of the Knesset.

America doesn’t have a monopoly on constitutions, and “being a Nazi dictator is ‘basically illegal/unlawful’ under the most fundamental part of German law” isn’t suddenly more helpful than saying it isn’t constitutional. A constitution is made up of the underlying principles and organization on which a government exists. Sure, the Knesset can legally overturn whatever it wants, and it’s also theoretically possible for Congress to repeal the entire Bill of Rights. Neither the Supreme Court of the US, nor that of Israel, has any obligation to deliver consistent or meaningful verdicts. Most likely, abolishing the government isn’t necessarily against a procedure or technicality. However, whether something is possible and whether it largely upholds the legal basis of the government are two distinct questions, and the former has not been debated at all.

[Nilokeras]

The extent to which we should understand these as good faith attempts to realize Jewish self-determination is questionable to say the least. They were motivated largely by a desire to suppress and discredit Jewish nationalists.

Which was entirely in line with similar Soviet policies aimed at defusing nationalist sentiment in other minority nationalities. It wasn't a purely benevolent policy, to be sure, but I don't think we can call it antisemitic.

The USSR never wholly kicked the prejudices that had defined, at least relative to the Jews, the Russian Empire. Purges of Jews occurred under Stalin and Brezhnev, with institutional racism and scrutiny following Jewish citizens of the USSR throughout its history. Russia and Ukraine continue to struggle with Antisemitism even today. The fact that the Whites wanted to actively engage in pogroms and exterminations, as well as long-term political factors linked to the diaspora experience in Russia, led to many Jews siding with the Bolsheviks and other left-wing factions. But we should not take the experience of Russian Jews as a monolith or presume that temporary gains, soon half undone, constituted an enduring promise of safety, especially in 1948.

Countries everywhere struggle with antisemitism. While Stalin was cooking up the doctors' plot, McCarthy was purging and ruining the lives of people suspected of communist sympathies - unsurprisingly, Jewish people were very, very over represented in his list of victims. It's one of histories dark ironies that Stalin was accusing Jews of being secret bourgeois nationalists while McCarthy was hauling people in accusing Jewish people of being secret Bolsheviks.

This isn't to minimize the impact of Soviet antisemitism or play games with body counts, but to point out that the USSR was not particularly unique in its antisemitism and shouldn't be singled out as some world-historic destroyer of Jewish people, especially not as a ploy by modern rightists to discredit left opposition to Israeli ultranationalism.

We also shouldn’t suppose that the JAO was a sensible alternative to Israel at the time it was proposed. It suffered from a lot of the same problems that crippled later Soviet successor states, and did so by design.

Colonial projects tend not to do well without the support of the metropole, yes. One would imagine the history of Israel would be quite different without military aid originating from the West, for example.

I’ll likely turn in for the night soon since I need to be up bright and early tomorrow. I’m a touch irked, not at anyone in particular, that most conversations about modern Israeli politics and the status of the Palestinians always seem to get whittled down to debates about the moral legitimacy of Zionism or cookie cutter talking points. Or, worse, very low-effort racism aimed at Jews and Arabs. It takes the focus away from the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and more concrete concerns - such as work programs, the settlement policy, land and water rights, etc. Mind you, it’s a fun and spicy topic, but I feel like we’re flattening the topic. When we’re not going completely off-topic, that is.

I think the problem is that discussion in non-Israeli spaces like NS is dominated by an ultranationalist political discourse about settlement and Palestinian sovereignty that really sucks up the oxygen of any political debate about the way out of this situation. It's a lot like debates about climate policy, where a loud minority of people who think that climate change isn't real drag any online discussion down into an endless debate about the validity of climate science and not, say, how we're all going to survive the next century.

[Vistulange]

What "constitution"? You realise that Israel isn't America, yes?

Israel has no constitution. What it does have is a series of Basic Laws, which despite their name, are not subject to any sort of parliamentary threshold or supermajority. Again, Israel practices "parliamentary sovereignty" as the United Kingdom does—perhaps with even less norms governing it—and as such, there is no "constitution" to override. What the Knesset says is law, and that isn't any sort of loophole. It's a feature of the system.

We can debate whether or not that's a good idea or a bad idea—my vote is "very bad idea"—but presenting it like Likud's doing some weird unheard of shit is just not right. No, they're doing something that's perfectly fine in the Israeli legislative system, but obviously terrible for Israeli democracy.

The Supreme Court of Israel has no direct authority to rule legislation "unconstitutional" in the sense most modern constitutional courts do, more or less because of the idea of parliamentary supremacy. It does, however, occasionally rule to stop administrative action; this is not the same as declaring a law illegal. In any case, even if they did, it would most likely be a moot point: the yardstick they would use to reach a decision would inevitably be the Basic Law(s) themselves, which can, themselves, be amended or even (theoretically) be abolished outright with a simple majority of the Knesset.

America doesn’t have a monopoly on constitutions, and “being a Nazi dictator is ‘basically illegal/unlawful’ under the most fundamental part of German law” isn’t suddenly more helpful than saying it isn’t constitutional. A constitution is made up of the underlying principles and organization on which a government exists. Sure, the Knesset can legally overturn whatever it wants, and it’s also theoretically possible for Congress to repeal the entire Bill of Rights. Neither the Supreme Court of the US, nor that of Israel, has any obligation to deliver consistent or meaningful verdicts. Most likely, abolishing the government isn’t necessarily against a procedure or technicality. However, whether something is possible and whether it largely upholds the legal basis of the government are two distinct questions, and the former has not been debated at all.

No, see, Congress cannot unilaterally revoke the Bill of Rights. There are multiple veto points in the American institutional framework. Constitutional amendments need to pass each and every one of those veto points.

The Israeli institutional framework includes only the Knesset. Much like the British one, but that's a system I haven't studied, so I won't drag that comparison further. The Knesset practically is the final word on everything in Israel; Congress in the US is not.

[The Land of the Ephyral]

Something something extremely dangerous to our democracy (re: imperial religion).

[Kubra]

Fighting with the Bolsheviks against the White armies, for example. And of course it's certainly an interesting perspective, especially considering the reasoning behind Zionism, that the idea of giving landless Jewish people who had been persecuted in imperial Russia their own land and autonomy is a bad thing.

To be nitpicky, Zionism is not about giving landless Jewish people any land, it's about giving them the land of, y'know, Zion.

Kind of a big deal. Also why the Uganda Proposal was rejected by the World Zionist Congress, since it wasn't Palestine.

But, don't let me distract from your embellishment of how awesome the Soviet Union was for Jewish people.

Not really anything like January 6th. The insurrection was a crime, while this is basically a legal loophole to suspend the law. The 64 seat Knesset majority is large enough to ignore or override the majority of the constitution—expelling MKs and enacting a permanent state of emergency are among the few things which require a 2/3 majority. However, the Supreme Court also has the authority to determine what is constitutional; ergo, you can’t actually do this in practice.

This proposal would make it so the Knesset actually could do this and would only be constrained by how cohesive and ambitious the ruling coalition is. Additionally, given that Netanyahu would face serious legal problems if his coalition falls apart, he will likely make extreme concessions to the far-right fringe.

What "constitution"? You realise that Israel isn't America, yes?

Israel has no constitution. What it does have is a series of Basic Laws, which despite their name, are not subject to any sort of parliamentary threshold or supermajority. Again, Israel practices "parliamentary sovereignty" as the United Kingdom does—perhaps with even less norms governing it—and as such, there is no "constitution" to override. What the Knesset says is law, and that isn't any sort of loophole. It's a feature of the system.

We can debate whether or not that's a good idea or a bad idea—my vote is "very bad idea"—but presenting it like Likud's doing some weird unheard of shit is just not right. No, they're doing something that's perfectly fine in the Israeli legislative system, but obviously terrible for Israeli democracy.

The Supreme Court of Israel has no direct authority to rule legislation "unconstitutional" in the sense most modern constitutional courts do, more or less because of the idea of parliamentary supremacy. It does, however, occasionally rule to stop administrative action; this is not the same as declaring a law illegal. In any case, even if they did, it would most likely be a moot point: the yardstick they would use to reach a decision would inevitably be the Basic Law(s) themselves, which can, themselves, be amended or even (theoretically) be abolished outright with a simple majority of the Knesset.

"constitution" is often shorthand for really any documents or traditional guidelines/principles that establish the fundamental legal framework of a state, a literal constitution is more of a simplification of this.
I don't know the relevance here, I'm just saiyan. Here in Canada there is no constitution, but the documents which make up the fundamental legal framework means people still talk of "constitutional" and "unconstitutional" and are still speaking correctly.

[Vistulange]

To be nitpicky, Zionism is not about giving landless Jewish people any land, it's about giving them the land of, y'know, Zion.

Kind of a big deal. Also why the Uganda Proposal was rejected by the World Zionist Congress, since it wasn't Palestine.

But, don't let me distract from your embellishment of how awesome the Soviet Union was for Jewish people.


What "constitution"? You realise that Israel isn't America, yes?

Israel has no constitution. What it does have is a series of Basic Laws, which despite their name, are not subject to any sort of parliamentary threshold or supermajority. Again, Israel practices "parliamentary sovereignty" as the United Kingdom does—perhaps with even less norms governing it—and as such, there is no "constitution" to override. What the Knesset says is law, and that isn't any sort of loophole. It's a feature of the system.

We can debate whether or not that's a good idea or a bad idea—my vote is "very bad idea"—but presenting it like Likud's doing some weird unheard of shit is just not right. No, they're doing something that's perfectly fine in the Israeli legislative system, but obviously terrible for Israeli democracy.

The Supreme Court of Israel has no direct authority to rule legislation "unconstitutional" in the sense most modern constitutional courts do, more or less because of the idea of parliamentary supremacy. It does, however, occasionally rule to stop administrative action; this is not the same as declaring a law illegal. In any case, even if they did, it would most likely be a moot point: the yardstick they would use to reach a decision would inevitably be the Basic Law(s) themselves, which can, themselves, be amended or even (theoretically) be abolished outright with a simple majority of the Knesset.

"constitution" is often shorthand for really any documents or traditional guidelines/principles that establish the fundamental legal framework of a state, a literal constitution is more of a simplification of this.
I don't know the relevance here, I'm just saiyan. Here in Canada there is no constitution, but the documents which make up the fundamental legal framework means people still talk of "constitutional" and "unconstitutional" and are still speaking correctly.

As mentioned in the prior post, you've missed my point. The point isn't that there is a single, unified document; the point is that there exists only one veto point in the Israeli system—the Knesset—which is, to my knowledge, practically observed only in Israel, the United Kingdom (particularly prior to joining the European Union; I'm not sure how Brexit has changed that), and New Zealand.

Both Canada and the United States—like practically every country in the world, in different degrees—have established, either theoretically or practically, several veto points in their political systems. El Lazaro gave the example of Congress abolishing the Bill of Rights: I'm fairly certain that would amount to a constitutional amendment, necessitating that a certain number of states agree to the amendment alongside Congress. In other words, the federal government cannot by itself modify the fundamental law of the land: it needs consent at different levels, hence me referring to multiple veto points.

Contrast that to a hypothetical scenario in which the Netanyahu government wishes to abolish the basic law creatively titled "Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty". This law is somewhat unique in that it both allows the Supreme Court of Israel to practice judicial review regarding cases tied to it, and prohibits the government from adjusting it through emergency regulations (the Law and Administration Ordinance of 1948 in specific, which for a very long time was in full force). However, none of these facts are all that relevant. If Netanyahu manages to gather a simple majority—not necessarily 61 votes!—this bill of rights would essentially be dead. No institutional veto points, which is the whole point I'm trying to make.

To tie that back into my original point, so as to not derail the discussion: whatever Netanyahu is doing through the Knesset isn't some backhanded, odd, peculiar thing, it's certainly not a loophole. It's a fully-intentional design of the system. It's a very shitty system if you ask me, but it's still what it was intended to do. Blame it on Ben-Gurion if you like, with his desire to control the state in its entirety while maintaining a semblance of multiparty democracy, albeit with Mapai hegemony.

I'm not sure what you two are pushing back against here, to be honest.

[Vertillia]

In the last few weeks and months, far-right extremism has been on the rise in both Israel and Palestine as Israel carries out frequent and aggressive attacks on Palestine and groups such as Hamas have allegedly lost funding from Iran, undermining confidence in their ability to secure territory.

And this is supposed to be a bad thing? Hamas and the PLO carry out rocket attacks and suicide bombing attacks on Israel and in return, Israel launches attacks back at Hamas and the PLO. What exactly does this talk about with Hamas trying to secure territory? Like in Israel? Hamas is a terrorist organization, not a legitimate government body like the PLO. Personally, if Palestine is going to repeatedly launch attacks towards Israel, Israel has the right to strike back. I've also heard a lot of the stories regarding the IDF targeting innocent Palestinians were fabricated as the IDF warns citizens in the area of attacks ordering them to evacuate, but Hamas uses a lot of these citizens as meat shields to protect themselves. I do have sympathy towards the Palestinian civilians but if you ask me, I cannot put the blame here on Israel for radicalization.

[El Lazaro]

In the last few weeks and months, far-right extremism has been on the rise in both Israel and Palestine as Israel carries out frequent and aggressive attacks on Palestine and groups such as Hamas have allegedly lost funding from Iran, undermining confidence in their ability to secure territory.

And this is supposed to be a bad thing? Hamas and the PLO carry out rocket attacks and suicide bombing attacks on Israel and in return, Israel launches attacks back at Hamas and the PLO. What exactly does this talk about with Hamas trying to secure territory? Like in Israel? Hamas is a terrorist organization, not a legitimate government body like the PLO. Personally, if Palestine is going to repeatedly launch attacks towards Israel, Israel has the right to strike back. I've also heard a lot of the stories regarding the IDF targeting innocent Palestinians were fabricated as the IDF warns citizens in the area of attacks ordering them to evacuate, but Hamas uses a lot of these citizens as meat shields to protect themselves. I do have sympathy towards the Palestinian civilians but if you ask me, I cannot put the blame here on Israel for radicalization.

Beyond war crimes and ethnic cleansing being pretty bad, destabilization doesn’t fix the situation. To make an odd comparison, Hamas is like the (2014-2022) far-right militias in the Donbas. Their politics are abhorrent and absolutely deserve condemnation, but they’re also uniquely able to defend certain areas from a brutal enemy. This “last resort” status is inarguably a major part of their appeal. Further, scattering them would just pass the torch onto a more extreme group. If the PLO, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad all have their authority undermined, guess who’s left? Al-Qaeda, IS, and the like.

[Vistulange]

And this is supposed to be a bad thing? Hamas and the PLO carry out rocket attacks and suicide bombing attacks on Israel and in return, Israel launches attacks back at Hamas and the PLO. What exactly does this talk about with Hamas trying to secure territory? Like in Israel? Hamas is a terrorist organization, not a legitimate government body like the PLO. Personally, if Palestine is going to repeatedly launch attacks towards Israel, Israel has the right to strike back. I've also heard a lot of the stories regarding the IDF targeting innocent Palestinians were fabricated as the IDF warns citizens in the area of attacks ordering them to evacuate, but Hamas uses a lot of these citizens as meat shields to protect themselves. I do have sympathy towards the Palestinian civilians but if you ask me, I cannot put the blame here on Israel for radicalization.

Beyond war crimes and ethnic cleansing being pretty bad, destabilization doesn’t fix the situation. To make an odd comparison, Hamas is like the (2014-2022) far-right militias in the Donbas. Their politics are abhorrent and absolutely deserve condemnation, but they’re also uniquely able to defend certain areas from a brutal enemy. This “last resort” status is inarguably a major part of their appeal. Further, scattering them would just pass the torch onto a more extreme group. If the PLO, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad all have their authority undermined, guess who’s left? Al-Qaeda, IS, and the like.

I agree with some part of this, though I'd argue that the very rise of Hamas—the radical, Islamist terrorists—itself was caused by the collapse of the PLO. So Hamas in this analogy is the Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc. not the precedent.

The collapse of the PLO* is partially due to Israeli fuck-ups, but Israel isn't really a country known for its particularly efficient (over the long-term) foreign policy. No, Israel's pretty much defined by over-the-top, knee-jerk responses to anything it deems a threat. In cases like the Six Day War, it works out quite well. In others, not so much.

* I say collapse, but before the "but acktually" crowd jumps in, I'm referring to its collapse as the primary engine in the Palestinian side of the conflict. I know that it still exists.

[Kubra]

"constitution" is often shorthand for really any documents or traditional guidelines/principles that establish the fundamental legal framework of a state, a literal constitution is more of a simplification of this.
I don't know the relevance here, I'm just saiyan. Here in Canada there is no constitution, but the documents which make up the fundamental legal framework means people still talk of "constitutional" and "unconstitutional" and are still speaking correctly.

As mentioned in the prior post, you've missed my point. The point isn't that there is a single, unified document; the point is that there exists only one veto point in the Israeli system—the Knesset—which is, to my knowledge, practically observed only in Israel, the United Kingdom (particularly prior to joining the European Union; I'm not sure how Brexit has changed that), and New Zealand.

Both Canada and the United States—like practically every country in the world, in different degrees—have established, either theoretically or practically, several veto points in their political systems. El Lazaro gave the example of Congress abolishing the Bill of Rights: I'm fairly certain that would amount to a constitutional amendment, necessitating that a certain number of states agree to the amendment alongside Congress. In other words, the federal government cannot by itself modify the fundamental law of the land: it needs consent at different levels, hence me referring to multiple veto points.

Contrast that to a hypothetical scenario in which the Netanyahu government wishes to abolish the basic law creatively titled "Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty". This law is somewhat unique in that it both allows the Supreme Court of Israel to practice judicial review regarding cases tied to it, and prohibits the government from adjusting it through emergency regulations (the Law and Administration Ordinance of 1948 in specific, which for a very long time was in full force). However, none of these facts are all that relevant. If Netanyahu manages to gather a simple majority—not necessarily 61 votes!—this bill of rights would essentially be dead. No institutional veto points, which is the whole point I'm trying to make.

To tie that back into my original point, so as to not derail the discussion: whatever Netanyahu is doing through the Knesset isn't some backhanded, odd, peculiar thing, it's certainly not a loophole. It's a fully-intentional design of the system. It's a very shitty system if you ask me, but it's still what it was intended to do. Blame it on Ben-Gurion if you like, with his desire to control the state in its entirety while maintaining a semblance of multiparty democracy, albeit with Mapai hegemony.

I'm not sure what you two are pushing back against here, to be honest.

And you're wildly misunderstanding my minor nitpick, because I never said you were wrong.
To summarise perhaps better, to the charges of it being "unconstitutional" you can just say "no it's not". If fundamental rules ain't been broken, they ain't been broken.

[El Lazaro]

As mentioned in the prior post, you've missed my point. The point isn't that there is a single, unified document; the point is that there exists only one veto point in the Israeli system—the Knesset—which is, to my knowledge, practically observed only in Israel, the United Kingdom (particularly prior to joining the European Union; I'm not sure how Brexit has changed that), and New Zealand.

Both Canada and the United States—like practically every country in the world, in different degrees—have established, either theoretically or practically, several veto points in their political systems. El Lazaro gave the example of Congress abolishing the Bill of Rights: I'm fairly certain that would amount to a constitutional amendment, necessitating that a certain number of states agree to the amendment alongside Congress. In other words, the federal government cannot by itself modify the fundamental law of the land: it needs consent at different levels, hence me referring to multiple veto points.

Contrast that to a hypothetical scenario in which the Netanyahu government wishes to abolish the basic law creatively titled "Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty". This law is somewhat unique in that it both allows the Supreme Court of Israel to practice judicial review regarding cases tied to it, and prohibits the government from adjusting it through emergency regulations (the Law and Administration Ordinance of 1948 in specific, which for a very long time was in full force). However, none of these facts are all that relevant. If Netanyahu manages to gather a simple majority—not necessarily 61 votes!—this bill of rights would essentially be dead. No institutional veto points, which is the whole point I'm trying to make.

To tie that back into my original point, so as to not derail the discussion: whatever Netanyahu is doing through the Knesset isn't some backhanded, odd, peculiar thing, it's certainly not a loophole. It's a fully-intentional design of the system. It's a very shitty system if you ask me, but it's still what it was intended to do. Blame it on Ben-Gurion if you like, with his desire to control the state in its entirety while maintaining a semblance of multiparty democracy, albeit with Mapai hegemony.

I'm not sure what you two are pushing back against here, to be honest.

And you're wildly misunderstanding my minor nitpick, because I never said you were wrong.
To summarise perhaps better, to the charges of it being "unconstitutional" you can just say "no it's not". If fundamental rules ain't been broken, they ain't been broken.

The point is that (like the Enabling Act) it’s not legally impossible, but still a severe violation of democratic norms. They aren’t breaking the law; they are stepping over it in a way that is very obviously not how things are supposed to work.

Beyond war crimes and ethnic cleansing being pretty bad, destabilization doesn’t fix the situation. To make an odd comparison, Hamas is like the (2014-2022) far-right militias in the Donbas. Their politics are abhorrent and absolutely deserve condemnation, but they’re also uniquely able to defend certain areas from a brutal enemy. This “last resort” status is inarguably a major part of their appeal. Further, scattering them would just pass the torch onto a more extreme group. If the PLO, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad all have their authority undermined, guess who’s left? Al-Qaeda, IS, and the like.

I agree with some part of this, though I'd argue that the very rise of Hamas—the radical, Islamist terrorists—itself was caused by the collapse of the PLO. So Hamas in this analogy is the Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc. not the precedent.

The collapse of the PLO* is partially due to Israeli fuck-ups, but Israel isn't really a country known for its particularly efficient (over the long-term) foreign policy. No, Israel's pretty much defined by over-the-top, knee-jerk responses to anything it deems a threat. In cases like the Six Day War, it works out quite well. In others, not so much.

* I say collapse, but before the "but acktually" crowd jumps in, I'm referring to its collapse as the primary engine in the Palestinian side of the conflict. I know that it still exists.

Should have clarified, the Ukraine comparison is just about its role. But yes, the more the Palestinian establishment is antagonized, the more radical and uncooperative the frontline groups become.

[Kubra]

The point is that (like the Enabling Act) it’s not legally impossible, but still a severe violation of democratic norms. They aren’t breaking the law; they are stepping over it in a way that is very obviously not how things are supposed to work.

Hoo, whoa, I'm just having an "um akshually" moment here. I ain't commenting one way or another on "constitutionality", because I won't overrate my exact understanding of Israel's political structure and know jack shit about its current political mood, and thus how it would react to the move.

[Fahran]

Which was entirely in line with similar Soviet policies aimed at defusing nationalist sentiment in other minority nationalities. It wasn't a purely benevolent policy, to be sure, but I don't think we can call it antisemitic.

This doesn't exactly contradict my point at all. The USSR did not have any inherent interest in promoting Jewish self-determination or preserving Jewish cultural expression. Even when we consider Soviet leaders of Jewish heritage, such as Trotsky, they often viewed both Zionists and Yiddishists in a negative light, instead favoring the same sort of assimilationism that had been promoted in Germany and France during the Haskalah and Emancipation.

As for Antisemitism, I was discussing Soviet attitudes and policies more broadly. The anti-cosmopolitan purges and the proposed purges that would have followed the Doctors' Plot represent perhaps the most severe examples of Antisemitism at the highest levels of the Soviet government, but, with the exception of the early 1920s, Antisemitism had almost always been an underlying current within Soviet politics and in Soviet media when taken as a whole. And, no, it wasn't comparable to post-1950s or post-1960s Antisemitism in the US or UK. Brezhnev's show trials and the reaction of the Soviet media, which castigated convicted persons for their Jewishness, provide us with a glimpse of the same sentiments that underpinned the Dreyfus Affair a mere century before.

Taking all of that as a whole, we should not take an insincere proposal, intended to nullify Jewish self-determination that was known by the target audience to be both disingenuous and impractical and that was proposed multiple times by governments that had serious problems with Antisemitism, to the point that there was serious consideration of a targeted purging of Jews after the Holocaust, as a credible alternative to Zionism. The Soviets not only could not assure the safety of Jews, as both persons and as a nation, but they had no intention of ever doing the latter in a meaningful sense.

I think Soviet disregard for many of its minority populations should be obvious given the regime remained culpable of genocide for the entire duration of its existence - in the same sense as the US and Canada have been culpable of genocide for the majority of their existence. They enjoyed a more ambivalent relationship with certain Turkic and Slavic populations, but, yeah, I don't find any insistence that ethnic minorities should have appealed to the Soviets as protectors credible. It's mostly bad apologia that ignores the serious history of persecution, suppression, erasure, and genocide.

Countries everywhere struggle with antisemitism. While Stalin was cooking up the doctors' plot, McCarthy was purging and ruining the lives of people suspected of communist sympathies - unsurprisingly, Jewish people were very, very over represented in his list of victims. It's one of histories dark ironies that Stalin was accusing Jews of being secret bourgeois nationalists while McCarthy was hauling people in accusing Jewish people of being secret Bolsheviks.

McCarthy's persecution of communists and left-wingers doesn't really compare to anything proposed by Stalin or put into practice by Brezhnev. McCarthy would get you blacklisted from working as a screenwriter and would destroy your personal relationships. Stalin would have you murdered or worked to death in a gulag. Brezhnev would do everything McCarthy would do to you, as the media castigated you for being a capitalist and rootless cosmopolitan, and would then put you in prison. Again, the status of Jews in the post-1950s and post-1960s USSR was almost beyond any doubt worse than the status of Jews in the Anglophone world in the same period. Some of this was actually down the Soviet geopolitical positions, given much of their Anti-Zionist propaganda was also Antisemitic in character, but, even ignoring that, Russia and Ukraine had long been deeply Antisemitic and that impacted government, media, and public attitudes. The US and UK, while still Antisemitic to some degree, have never really been on the same level as the countries where pogroms were almost a national sport.

This isn't to minimize the impact of Soviet antisemitism or play games with body counts, but to point out that the USSR was not particularly unique in its antisemitism and shouldn't be singled out as some world-historic destroyer of Jewish people, especially not as a ploy by modern rightists to discredit left opposition to Israeli ultranationalism.

Russia and Ukraine are and pretty much always have been unique in their Antisemitism, whether we're discussing the Russian Empire or the USSR. The fact that Antisemitism is a specter that has haunted the Diaspora everywhere doesn't really make its particular virulence in that region of the world a non-issue. There's a reason a steady stream of immigration existed from both the Russian Empire and the USSR, when such options were available, to the US and Levant. It's because they were actually as bad as I'm describing.

Colonial projects tend not to do well without the support of the metropole, yes. One would imagine the history of Israel would be quite different without military aid originating from the West, for example.

There's a reason the JAO wasn't popular. See above. It was a deliberate attempt to suppress Jewish demands for self-determination while promoting assimilation within the context of a deeply Antisemitic society. The repetition of that process across Europe, even in ostensibly tolerant places, and experiences with its failures is what led to the popularity of Labor Zionism and Revisionist Zionism. The Holocaust, Farhud, and Arab Expulsions may have been the final nails in the coffin, but they represented the latest and most extreme expressions of what I'm describing. Assimilation cannot and will not save you when your neighbors hate you for what you are on a fundamental level and cannot bear to leave you be. It was that realization that was the driving force behind Zionism as a mass movement.

I think the problem is that discussion in non-Israeli spaces like NS is dominated by an ultranationalist political discourse about settlement and Palestinian sovereignty that really sucks up the oxygen of any political debate about the way out of this situation. It's a lot like debates about climate policy, where a loud minority of people who think that climate change isn't real drag any online discussion down into an endless debate about the validity of climate science and not, say, how we're all going to survive the next century.

It's not ultranationalism. It's just nationalism.

And the solution, at least in my mind, is to promote national liberation of the Palestinians rather than to reverse the national liberation of the Jews, given we know what the likely consequences of the latter will be. I don't think a binational state or even a non-nationalistic one-state solution are viable options at this juncture if we are motivated by humanitarian concerns, and there's never really been any support for the latter option except among Israeli Marxists, who... have a serious problem with credibility in the context of the broader discourse given their revisions of Jewish history, lack of serious support, and all the water they've carried for Anti-Semites.

[Fahran]

Something something extremely dangerous to our democracy (re: imperial religion).

We're not really discussing the encroachment of religion upon Israeli public life here. The religious parties are in the coalition to preserve the status quo that has existed for decades. The party playing king-maker, while religious, is actually more notable because it's more openly racist than the last party, an anti-clerical party, that played that role. More importantly though, Bibi is employing his ability to consistently build governing coalitions to neuter the judiciary and avoid criminal prosecution for corruption.

[El Lazaro]

Something something extremely dangerous to our democracy (re: imperial religion).

We're not really discussing the encroachment of religion upon Israeli public life here. The religious parties are in the coalition to preserve the status quo that has existed for decades. The party playing king-maker, while religious, is actually more notable because it's more openly racist than the last party, an anti-clerical party, that played that role. More importantly though, Bibi is employing his ability to consistently build governing coalitions to neuter the judiciary and avoid criminal prosecution for corruption.

I think he’s saying democracy is the imperial religion, judging by the sig.

[Fahran]

I agree with some part of this, though I'd argue that the very rise of Hamas—the radical, Islamist terrorists—itself was caused by the collapse of the PLO. So Hamas in this analogy is the Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc. not the precedent.

The collapse of the PLO* is partially due to Israeli fuck-ups, but Israel isn't really a country known for its particularly efficient (over the long-term) foreign policy. No, Israel's pretty much defined by over-the-top, knee-jerk responses to anything it deems a threat. In cases like the Six Day War, it works out quite well. In others, not so much.

* I say collapse, but before the "but acktually" crowd jumps in, I'm referring to its collapse as the primary engine in the Palestinian side of the conflict. I know that it still exists.

The PLO could get pretty radical as well. When I read about the Abu Nidal Organization or Black September, they easily recall to me the militias and paramilitary forces that carried out genocides in Former Yugoslavia. They may have been secularist and vaguely left-wing, but, even when it wasn't explicit, their ideology veered towards genocidal and absolutist. This quote still chills me to the bone.

"If we say, 'Drink alcohol'", do so. If we say, 'Get married,' find a woman and marry her. If we say, 'Don't have children,' you must obey. If we say, 'Go and kill King Hussein,' you must be ready to sacrifice yourself!"

In terms of their outlook, I'd say the closest Israeli equivalents would be the Irgun and Lehi, which had similar extreme attitudes and an almost, if not outright, genocidal perspective when it came to the national struggle. It's not a coincidence that all of these organizations murdered unarmed men, women, and children and were produced in somewhat similar circumstances. Their leadership tended to be young and was radicalized as children or teenagers by witnessing the horrors of war and ethnic cleansing.

I believe many members of the Lehi, for instance, fought against the Nazis or Arabs in their teens or early twenties and had risen to lead the organization by the time they hit their thirties, often seeing the deaths of comrades and relatives along the way. Abu Nidal founded his organization in his thirties as well. al-Banna lost his family homes at a very young age. I believe he was eleven when the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out. His family were very wealthy quasi-aristocrats and landowners, which insulated them somewhat from the hardship experienced by other refugees, but I can only imagine how traumatizing it must have been to be forced from two homes by armed men and to leave for an extended exile.

[Fahran]

I actually think Bibi's actions are arguably democratic, even while contradicting what we consider to be liberal democratic conventions. He does have a mandate to govern and is operating within the purview of Israeli law. It's just he exploiting both of these facts to undermine the independence of the judiciary and insulate himself against trial for criminal wrong-doing. Which has been a serious problem in a number of poorly constructed government systems. I'm thinking of Peru, Chile, and Brazil at the moment.