(JNS) Tragically, some Israelis are still stuck on Oct. 6—before the catastrophe that served as a wake-up call, for anyone with eyes to see, that the politics of division was something the Jewish state could ill afford. Seemingly blind to the rising tide of antisemitism (from Bondi Beach to Washington, DC) or to the attempts of Israel’s genuine enemies (from Tehran to Beirut) to regroup for yet another genocidal attack, Oct. 6 Israelis focus their ire inwards, on imagined enemies from within. Former Labor politician Haim Ramon’s hit job on the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) is a fine exemplar of the genre.
It is tempting to leave this defamatory concatenation of baseless claims, crude distortions and tendentious half-truths unanswered, because it is unworthy of one. Or, alternatively, to call up a lawyer. But since the IDI in question was founded on a belief in the value of informed, non-partisan, civil debate, I will indulge interested readers with a rebuttal of the more substantive points raised in the piece.
Let’s begin with IDI’s proposals for electoral reform, which, in Ramon’s view, are anti-democratic in content, inconstant in application and shrewdly calculated to bring the left to power in Israel. The truth is rather more banal: the IDI’s electoral reform plans represent an earnest though perhaps imperfect attempt to fix the obvious problems of a democracy that competes with Greece over the dubious record for “most frequently held elections.” If adopted, they will benefit any prime minister, right or left.
IDI’s most comprehensive set of proposals to stabilize Israel’s political system was released in the lead-up to the elections of 2015. They were the product of a series of conversations held between the leadership of IDI and … drum roll … Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at the time casting about for solutions to the instability that plagued his coalition government with Yair Lapid. No, IDI did not craft these proposals to benefit Netanyahu personally (or to bring the opposition to power, as Ramon would have it), but rather to ensure that every future prime minister would be positioned to govern more effectively. I still recall the great excitement in the halls of IDI when Netanyahu pledged to implement a version of these reforms in the lead-up to the election (though he subsequently reneged on that promise in the face of opposition from the ultra-Orthodox parties).
Substantively, the proposal had three main components, all of them admittedly controversial. First, the head of the largest party would be declared prime minister, automatically, on election night—thus minimizing the extortionist power of small sectoral parties and shortening the process for formation of a government; second, the new government would no longer require a parliamentary vote of investiture—thus ensuring that every election would be conclusive; and third, failure of the Knesset to pass a budget would no longer entail collapse of the government—thereby removing an Israeli anomaly that was one of the prime causes of political instability.
As the English version of the proposal explicitly states, there was internal disagreement at the time about a potential fourth measure to curtail the Knesset’s power to dissolve itself and trigger early elections (though it would still have retained the power to topple a government through the constructive no-confidence mechanism).
Some experts at IDI felt at the time—and still do today (Surprise: We don’t all agree on everything!)—that such a measure went too far in weakening the Knesset vis-à-vis the executive branch, even though in no other democracy does the parliament have as many ways to topple a government as the Israeli Knesset does, and the Knesset’s power to dissolve itself by a vote of the majority of its members (61) exists only in a handful of democracies (Austria and Croatia).
Accordingly, the framers emphasized that it should be considered as part of a package deal that entailed enhanced parliamentary oversight. Ramon conveniently glosses over IDI’s comprehensive set of proposalsfor strengthening the Knesset (the most recent Hebrew version here) in his eagerness to paint the IDI as obsessed with promoting a “justocracy.”
In truth, ever since the 1990s, IDI’s proposals for electoral and constitutional reform have consistently taken a holistic view of the Israeli system, seeking to provide much-needed political stability and strengthen the executive branch’s capacity for governance while at the same time enhancing Knesset oversight (a particular challenge for parliamentary democracies) and preserving judicial independence.
IDI’s political reform team doubled down on these proposals in 2022 not as part of some attempt to bring Benny Gantz (or “the left”) to power, as Ramon would have it (even if adopted in the aftermath of the 2022 election, the reforms would have applied only after the next election, so they had no relevance whatsoever for the heated political competition of the moment). Rather, they represented a good-faith effort to contend with the unprecedented reality of five consecutive elections that paralyzed the country in the four years from 2019 to 2022. For those afflicted by Bibi Derangement Syndrome (of both “pro” and “con” varieties), everything is always about one man’s political fate.
But IDI was created to propose reforms that would ensure Israel’s survival as a Jewish and democratic state for centuries to come. A partisan might find it unfathomable, but reforms and many others were proposed not for the benefit of any politician, party or political camp, but for the good of the country as a whole. Nor have they been abandoned, pace Ramon: They are still available for any candidate, right, left or center, who wishes to advance them as is or improve on them—ideally on the basis of broad national consensus.
Which brings me to the judicial overhaul. Reasonable people can disagree about individual pieces of the plan for judicial reform announced by Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin on Jan. 4, 2023. But even he subsequently acknowledged that had they been adopted in toto, any coalition could have gained control of all three branches of the government, and Israel would have become something less than a full democracy. So maybe the millions of Israelis who took to the streets for nine straight months from January to October 2023 were onto something after all.
Obviously, the Israeli judiciary is in need of reform. Which branch of government isn’t? Indeed, as Ramon surely knows, the earliest proposals for judicial reform, oversight over the prosecution and reforms to the office of the attorney general originated at IDI—years before partisans and ex-politicians with an axe to grind took up the mantle in defense of a prime minister on trial.
But the Levin plan, as any fair-minded American could readily appreciate, was not a bona fide attempt to reform the judiciary: It was an attempt to crush it—in a democracy with no constitution, no bill of rights, no federal distribution of power and a plethora of good reasons to throw civil liberties and the rule of law out the window in the face of existential threats faced by no other democracy with the possible exception of Ukraine and Taiwan. Which is why the leadership of IDI responded by releasing a positive alternative to the government’s faulty plan—including suggested reforms to all three branches of government—and contributed to Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s laudable efforts to hammer out a compromise.
According to our polls at the time, 63% believed that the current makeup of the judicial selection committee should be maintained, 66% believed that the Supreme Court should retain the power to strike down laws that conflicted with Basic Laws, and some 66% would have supported a constitutional framework grounded in the Declaration of Independence—hardly the left-wing fringe of Ramon’s fevered imagination. By July 2023, 58% of Israelis advocated abandoning the government’s plan in favor of an attempt to forge national unity; only 27% wanted to see it carried through. Unfortunately, these days, to take a principled stand on any issue is to take sides. Is every American defender of congressional prerogative, states’ rights or judicial independence to be branded a leftist? The very notion is absurd.
Ramon takes issue with our conferences. The Institute organizes some 60 conferences a year. It is easy to find fault in any one of them, and we often do. He picked one example. Here are two others: one, a major economic conference held at the height of the judicial overhaul, at which the Institute hosted Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich (a persona non grata in the United States at the time) and two other ministers from Netanyahu’s government. A horde of anti-government protesters broke through the security perimeter, flooded the conference floor and disrupted the proceedings. Another, more recent conference, on religion and state, generated a pressure campaign against the leadership of the Institute by secular Israelis outraged at alleged pro-Orthodox bias among the speakers. The sad truth is that any attempt to hold a substantive conversation on matters of policy in Israel these days risks provoking wrath from all sides.
Ramon offers a cherry-picked survey of individual staff résumés to paint a damning picture of radical leftism run amok. To which the first response must be: People who live in glass houses really should avoid throwing stones.
Readers concerned about this donor-funded den of pacifists might find it useful to learn that 21 IDI employees (including its president and several other executives) have spent a cumulative 2,019 days (and counting) on reserve duty since Oct. 7—fighting and otherwise contributing to the war effort in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and elsewhere. Or that Israel selected the leader of IDI’s highly respected international legal team to participate in its defense against claims of genocide at The Hague. Or that the legal opinions offered by his team over the course of the war were designed not to tie Israel’s hands, as Ramon alleges, but to preserve its freedom of action, shield IDF soldiers from international legal retribution and uphold the rule of law—a principle the former minister of justice surely still cherishes.
Of course, Ramon could just have easily highlighted, as our critics on the left often do, that an organization chaired by the likes of George Shultz, a Republican former US Secretary of State; Reuven Rivlin, a former Israeli president in the Likud Party; and American billionaire businessman Bernie Marcus—and dedicated to preserving liberty and limited government—might best be described as conservative.
In truth, much to the annoyance of partisans on both sides, the IDI is doggedly nonpartisan. As an institution, it is indifferent to who is in power and has worked consistently with anyone who shares the animating belief that strengthening Israel’s embattled democracy is the key to its survival in a hostile region.
Of IDI’s three-member management team, one is a self-described conservative, another is a radical centrist, and the third is a proud liberal. Our board spans the gamut from right to left. As does our broad base of donors, many of whom disagree vehemently about politics in their country of origin but come together around the idea of Israel as a strong, vibrant Jewish and democratic state.
IDI proudly employs the best experts in its areas of expertise—and though we do not inquire about the politics of our staff, anyone who visits will encounter people from all walks of Israeli society, religious and secular, conservative and liberal, Jews and Arabs. Which is as it should be in a place dedicated to advancing the public interest in one of the most diverse societies on the planet.
Since Oct. 7, IDI’s dedicated policy experts—when not performing reserve duty, helping evacuees or speaking out in Israel’s defense on international media—have been focused on assembling detailed blueprints for reforms designed to ensure that Israel emerges stronger from the biggest catastrophe and longest war in its history. We intend to make these blueprints available to the leaders of all the parties contending in the upcoming election so that whoever is elected will have the policy tools to rebuild Israeli institutions on the basis of broad national consensus. A constitution for one of the only democracies in the world without one. Electoral reform to enhance stability, good governance and accountability. Civil service reform to make the government more efficient and effective. A plan to mitigate the damage social media are doing to our society. A blueprint for empowering local government. Plans to integrate the ultra-Orthodox into the economy and the military. A plan to combat crime in the Arab sector. A plan to boost civics education. And much more. If that agenda is not at the core of the Zionist mission in 2025, what is?
Ramon seems to have an abundance of spare time in retirement. Perhaps it would be better spent defending Israel against its real enemies rather than stabbing fellow patriots in the back.
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