WhatsappJust a few years ago, Opposition leader Yair Lapid vocally supported judicial reform and quite succinctly expressed that he was against former Chief Justice Aharon Barak’s court’s activism which destroyed the balance of powers between the three branches of government.
Today, Lapid is leading a protest movement in Israel against the “destruction of democracy” with the government’s judicial reform. It is one thing, as an opposition leader, to would play politics and publicly fight a government bill, but to call a reform that he supports “destroying Israeli democracy”?
Just the other day, Addressing the Knesset in honor of Israel’s parliament’s 74th anniversary, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid warned that the government’s planned judicial overhaul will tear Israeli society in two.
“The price of the legislation that you are leading now is not just erasing democracy, it is the painful destruction of our joint existence. We are one nation, one family, and it is tearing us apart.
“This house for 74 years symbolized our ability to live together. The ability to overcome every hurdle. The idea that we struggle and there is always one side that wins, but the other side does not disappear, it has a place and a voice. This house symbolized the fact that we are different but that there is a common good.
“For the first time in my life, I am concerned that it won’t survive. If the government completes the legislative process it began, it will be irreparable. The fracture will be too deep. Already now, more and more people are saying to themselves that we are no longer one people. That their country has given up on them,” Lapid said.
So the question remains, why has Lapid decided to protest with such viciousness, muddying Israel’s name in the world, threatening a civil war, and trying to create a self-fulfilled prophecy of destroying Israel’s economy?
Since he agrees that Israel’s Supreme court has broken the balance of power between the branches of government, and he knows that Israel needs judicial reform, then all he has to do is sit in the Knesset committee meetings and work together with the government to make the necessary compromises to the reform bill to pass the very needed judicial reform in the Knesset.
It is not Prime Minister Netanyahu or his government that is causing division, it is Lapid, his political partners on the left, with the support of the media that are creating a mountain out of a molehill.
Thankfully, the hysteria from Lapid and the media regarding this judicial reform is not reflected by most Israelis, who either support this judicial reform or are indifferent. Only a tiny minority of Israelis are following the lead of Lapid and the opposition leaders.
