If the High Court judges are afraid to take a bold decision, there will be a fatal blow to democracy.

It is not only the criterion of reasonableness. The Supreme Court will have to decide: a sharp and clear ruling or fall into a messianic dictatorship. On the eve of the hearing of great historical significance, the public must strike, protest with all their might and give the judges a tailwind.

By Yuval Noah Harari

To resolve the existential crisis that Israel finds itself in, it is important to understand what forces we are facing. There are many personal interests and pressure groups stirring in this cauldron, as there is in any political crisis, but the intensity of the hatred, rage and fear we are experiencing, and the disintegration of society and the military, indicate that we are facing a completely different type of strength. Many Israelis experience the current crisis as an attempt by the ruling coalition to provoke a radical revolution, like the Bolshevik revolution in Russia or the Ayatollah revolution in Iran, a revolution that awakens messianic hopes on the one hand and existential fears on the other. “If it succeeds,” some Israelis dream, “there will be a paradise here!” “If it succeeds,”

What has changed in Israeli politics is that an impetuous messianic force has been created here. We have gone from an ordinary policy, of small promises and practical measures that sometimes fulfill them, to a policy of redemption, which promises heaven on earth but tends to create hell. Like the Bolsheviks and Khomeinists, our local Messianic Jews believe in three things:

* They know the path to redemption.

* To achieve redemption, they need unlimited power.

* To achieve this power, any means is valid and any sacrifice is justified.

Messianics are not limited to a certain party, like religious Zionism. Some members of Likud and ultra-Orthodox parties also share the messianic worldview and want to gain unlimited power to bring about a radical revolution in Israel. Although the Messianics do not represent the majority of Israeli citizens, fortuitous circumstances such as the Netanyahu trial have allowed them to gain control of an important part of the State’s resources. The messianics are now in the power-building phase. They use the enormous resources of government agencies and the budgets that have fallen into their hands to recruit new supporters, appoint their loyalists to key positions everywhere, from the police to the Ministry of Education,

Many Israelis hope that the messianists will voluntarily stop the attempted revolution when they realize the destruction they are causing to Israel’s economy, military, society, and international standing. But messianics do not fear destruction. For them, the old world will be completely destroyed, and in its place we will raise a new world . They will not stop because of an economic crisis: for messianics, the economy can collapse. They will survive it. The defense industries, gas and some other branches will guarantee them a minimum income in the short term, and in the long term they will build a new economy, as the Bolsheviks did in Russia.

The messianists will not stop in the face of an internal crisis in the army; For them it is even better that the Israeli Defense Forces are disbanded. Nuclear weapons and loyal units in the army will guarantee them a minimum of protection in the short and long term. In the short term they will build a new army of believers, just as the Bolsheviks established the Red Army and the Khomeinists established the Revolutionary Guard.

The messianists will not stop at the immigration of doctors, academics, etc.; It doesn’t really scare them. On the contrary, they will be happy to get rid of all deserters and traitors. Dictatorships do not usually collapse just because of poor health care or a lack of philosophers.

There is no room to believe that the United States will stop the messianics: the United States has its own problems, and even if it withdraws its protection over Israel, the messianics will defect to the Chinese camp without even blinking an eye. There is also nothing on which to base the hope of being saved based on future elections: the messianists will not allow fair elections to be held in which they are in danger of losing. The messianic sThey assume that their defeat in future elections will result in a series of countermeasures that they believe are unacceptable under any circumstances, such as the separation of religion from the State and a reexamination of the policy of occupation of the territories. That is why they deliberately sow hatred and exaggerate the differences in society, so that the possibility of losing the elections is seen as a total ruin not only for them, but for all their current allies. This would justify the maneuvers and intrigues they would do to prevent fair elections (for example, restricting the right to vote for Arabs).

So what will stop them?

Today the messianists do not have a majority in the Knesset. They therefore need an alliance with more moderate forces. One possibility is that the moderate elements of the coalition will come to their senses before it is too late and establish a “national healing” government with the opposition. Unlike the Bennett-Lapid government, which deliberately postponed addressing Israel’s fundamental problems, the sanitation government will have to confront these problems immediately. In the face of messianic danger, we don’t need a band-aid, but open heart surgery. The guiding principle of sanitation government should be: “Wounds must be healed, rather than used as an excuse to gain power and hurt others.”

Unfortunately, the chances of a healing government being formed are not high. There are messianic elements in all the coalition parties, so to establish a healing government, it will probably not be enough to simply prevent Religious Zionism from being part of the government by replacing it with Gantz and Lapid and some of the opposition parties. To make matters worse, meanwhile, the moderate members of the coalition seem to think that they can continue riding the messianic tiger without it devouring them. Historical experience in cases such as the Bolshevik revolution shows that moderates only understand the magnitude of the danger when they themselves have already been chewed in the tiger’s mouth.

If we do not want to make the fate of the State of Israel depend on the questionable wisdom and courage of the seven secret and clandestine members of the Likud in whom many place hope, then the other factor that can stop the messianists is the Supreme Court of Justice. The Supreme Court will have to decide in September not only specific questions about the criteria of reasonableness or the convening of the committee for the appointment of judges [which Justice Minister Iriv Levin opposes], but the fundamental question: Is it permissible for a small majority in the Knesset unilaterally change the rules of the game of democracy, to weaken the checks and balances of the judicial power over the legislative and executive at will and take for itself unlimited power?

Netanyahu and members of his coalition claim that the Supreme Court should not invalidate basic laws, but any law, today, can be defined as a “basic law” and thus a privileged majority is not needed to pass a basic law. Therefore, if the Supreme Court does not have the right to invalidate basic laws, what mechanism will prevent the 61 members of the Knesset from passing, for example, the “Basic Jewish Voting Law” that will deny the right to vote to Arabs, or the “Basic Law of National Media” that will prohibit the independent activity of the country’s media?

To save Israeli democracy, the Supreme Court judges must rule bluntly and clearly that a small majority in parliament does not have the right to unilaterally change the rules of the game of democracy, and that if the coalition nevertheless tries do so — the Supreme Court can also invalidate basic laws. Netanyahu’s government has already signaled that it will refuse to accept such a decision, leading Israel into a constitutional crisis. But there are good reasons to expect that in a constitutional crisis security mechanisms will faithfully fulfill their role and respect the law. The messianists have not yet had time to fill the army, the police, the Security Service and the Mossad with their people.

However, the expectation of a Supreme Court ruling carries a tremendous danger: even if the Supreme Court justices are convinced that the coalition is overstepping its authority and attempting to dictatorially usurp power, they will be very afraid to be them. who supposedly start a constitutional crisis and, God forbid, lead to a civil war. Who in their right mind would want to carry such a terrible responsibility on their shoulders? Instead, the Supreme Court may prefer to give up its authority (thus committing suicide as an institution) and wait for others to intervene to save the country. If the Supreme Court is afraid to make a bold decision, it will not only lose itself, but will deal a mortal blow to the protest movement and Israeli democracy.

The strategy that follows from this is clear. All undecided people should now join the fight with all their might. Maximum pressure must be exerted before the start of critical discussions in the Supreme Court, in order to give it the popular support necessary for a bold decision. If the reservists return to their units, if the unions eliminate strike threats, if the streets remain calm and everyone just waits patiently for the Court’s decision, then the judges will hesitate to adopt a position that could set the country on fire. On the other hand, if the country is already full of protests and strikes, if universities and schools are closed, if hospitals and other essential institutions operate only in a state of emergency, and if hundreds of thousands of citizens demonstrate in the streets,

That is why we must now use all non-violent means at our disposal to inflame the protest before the Supreme Court hearings. It is imperative to avoid any manifestation of violence, but the judges of the Court must be clear, whether they want it or not, that they must clearly decide between liberal democracy and messianic dictatorship. If you run away from responsibility, you will become servants of the messianic vision. Similarly, if the secret and underground Likud seven want to help save Israel from dictatorship and civil war, the opportunity to do so is now, before the decisive Court hearings. With each passing day the wounds in Israeli society deepen. and makes the task of a future sanitation government even more difficult.

For most people, and especially moderate ones, there is a psychological barrier that prevents us from believing the worst, either about other people or about the situation as a whole. The Bolsheviks and Khomeinists won and established predatory dictatorships because, at several critical moments, the moderate elements thought they still had time and preferred to continue sitting on the fence. Every once in a while someone would sober up, jump over the fence, take a brave stand, and, without a word, the undecided would come to their aid. In the end there was no fence left to sit on.