I think Israel is a democracy, will remain a democracy.
I think it'll be a stronger democracy after some of these reforms are met.
People don't understand democracies,
they don't understand that France can have these divisions,
that the US can have these divisions, that Israel has these divisions.
But the strength of democracy is that we voice these divisions,
we protest, but ultimately we make important democratic decisions.
And that'll be the case in Israel as well.
>> Speaker 2: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel, of course,
is now trying to defend the decision to weaken Israel's judiciary system.
In fact, this was a decision passed by lawmakers in Israel this week, and
it has sparked mass protests, including protests for members of the military.
We'll get to those details in just a moment.
But first, a few details about what has been done to the political
system in Israel, what the fallout is, and what we could expect in the future.
So before we continue, it's really important to understand that unlike
the United States, the Israeli government does not have a constitution.
So when it comes to their judges, they do have a system of checks and balances.
The judges are able to decide on whether or
not the actions of the lawmakers are reasonable or unreasonable.
So they don't base their decisions on constitutionality because they do not have
a constitution the same way the United States does.
Now, the bill in question here that passed on July 24th,
significantly limits the Supreme Court's oversight of government actions and
policies and ends the Court's ability to strike down government decisions and
appointments on the basis of reasonability.
So again, the whole point here, what they're doing,
the lawmakers under the leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu,
is they are weakening their system of checks and balances,
weakening the judiciary in the country so they can essentially go forward unchecked.
Go ahead Cenk.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's even made worse by the fact that it's
a parliamentary system.
So once the ruling party has a majority in parliament, as Netanyahu's does, and
they appoint the prime minister, if there is no judicial check at all.
So unreasonable is the equivalent of unconstitutional in our system.
So now the judiciary cannot rule anything unreasonable that the prime
minister does or parliament does.
So then that judiciary becomes totally irrelevant politically.
So that means that whatever Netanyahu says and
gets his party to agree to in parliament, it's over.
That's the law of the land.
So they can basically do anything they want.
The unreasonable standard was to check for minority rights and
to make sure they were following the democratic principles of not
just majority rule, but minority rights and protections of human rights, etc.
And now those things do not exist anymore.
So whatever Netanyahu says becomes the law of the land in Israel.
That's what people are concerned about.
Honestly, that little piece that you saw there,
I thought Stephanopoulos did an awful interview.
He did not explain that and he never asked him about that.
It was just propaganda for Netanyahu.
It was pretty gross.
>> Speaker 2: We're gonna have a few other examples of that in just a moment.
But I do wanna also talk a little bit about the protests.
The protests have been ongoing for months to the lead up of the passage of this
legislation, to the passage of weakening the judicial system in Israel.
And after the lawmakers passed the legislation on Monday of this week,
the protests really did explode even further.
So last week by the way, there were members of the military in Israel
who said, we are not going to participate in the military as a form of protest.
And so last week, 1,142 Air Force reservists announced
they would end their volunteer duty in protest of
Benjamin Netanyahu's attempt to overhaul the judiciary.
Among them is Lieutenant Colonel N.
His name is obviously not N, but that's what he would like to go by.
He was asked to be only referred by his rank.
And here's what he told NBC News.
I came to the conclusion that this government is the biggest danger that
Israel faces right now, more than any external enemy or
threat, be it Iran, Hezbollah, anyone out there.
Since I don't believe in violence inside Israel, the only option that I was left
with is to stop serving in reserve because I don't want to serve a dictatorship.
And despite that public outcry, Netanyahu absolutely insists that these
changes are not going to weaken Israel's democracy, but rather strengthen it.
And here's a little piece of that propaganda in the interview that Cenk
was referencing right here.
>> Speaker 1: I think we have to bring back Israeli democracy in line with what
is common to all democracies.
The essence of democracy is the balance between the will of the majority and
the rights of the minority.
And that's achieved by the balance between the three branches of government.
That's been taken off the rails in Israel in the last 20 years because we have
the most activist judicial court on the planet, and it's aggregated for itself
powers from the government, from the executive, and the legislative branches.
So we're trying to correct it, but I wanna bring the pendulum to the middle.
I don't want to bring the pendulum to the other side.
There is a middle ground there, and I hope we can achieve it, but
that's why we're doing it.
Imagine that in the United States, the Supreme Court could tell the executive,
the president, okay, we are nullifying any one of your decisions just based on
something that we think is unreasonable.
You would not accept it.
We don't accept it, but we have to correct it.
And that's what we just did.
It's a minor correction.
It's described as the end of Israeli democracy.
I think that's silly.
And when the dust settles, everybody.
>> Keep in mind that Benjamin Netanyahu leads a right wing government
in Israel right now.
He is a right wing politician and
is also facing some pretty serious bribery and corruption charges.
So the timing here is pretty convenient for Netanyahu.
But Cenk, I don't know.
Maybe I'm being unfair.
Do you believe him?
Do you think that he's just trying to get the pendulum to swing to the middle?
>> Speaker 3: Look, Netanyahu is allowed to do any propaganda he likes for
himself, but it's Stephanopoulos'job to check him.
He had four outrageous things right there.
First of all, he's like, imagine if in America,
the president or the legislative branch was overruled by the Supreme Court.
Yeah, I can imagine that cuz it happens all the time.
That's our system of government.
And that was your system of government until you just destroyed it.
He's like, look, we're just trying to look for balance.
No, you're not.
You had balance.
Now the judiciary is irrelevant, so you don't have any balance at all.
And again, in a parliamentary system, for example in America, since we don't have
a parliamentary system, we can have the Republicans hold a House,
Democrats hold the Senate, Democrats hold a presidency.
You got a balance of powers, you got checks on one another.
No, in a parliamentary system, the prime minister is picked from the majority, so
there's no brakes left in that car.
Then he says, I'm for a balancing of majority rights and minority rights.
No, but this eviscerated minority rights.
Now the minority, whichever minority in any direction in Israel
can't be protected by the judiciary.
And then he said, this is the moderate position.
No, it's not.
The reason why Israel's exploding with anger and protests and all of these people
in their military resigning is because this is nowhere near moderate.
This is nowhere near the middle.
This is extreme right wing.
If you watch that, and I did, I watched a whole interview with Stephanopoulos,
you would not have come away with that impression at all.
If you didn't know anything about the current situation.
You would think that Netanyahu was the Centrist candidate in Israel and
he was just trying to help minorities and balance and
democracy because Stephanopoulos never checked him on it.
Lie after lie, after lie.
>> Speaker 2: So I should also note that in response to a question about
the protests, the ongoing protests in Israel,
Netanyahu simply says, we'll get over it.
They'll get over it.
Not a big deal.
So just force this, knowing that the majority of people in
the country are not in favor of weakening the judicial system in the country and
hope that within due time they will get over it.
They'll just move on.
We'll see if that's the case.
But I do wanna go to one last video here, because as I mentioned earlier,
is facing some charges having to do with fraud, breach of trust, and bribery.
And he denies any wrongdoing and is even offended at
the insinuation that he has connected this weakening of
the judicial system to his own potential criminality.
Let's watch.
>> Speaker 5: And what do you say to your critics who say that this reform was
designed in part for
you to protect yourself against these corruption charges you've been facing?
>> Speaker 1: I think it's ridiculous.
It has nothing to do with my trial because it's been proceeding for three years.
It's actually unraveling.
I don't know if you know that a few weeks ago,
the three judges called in the prosecution and said, listen, we haven't heard yet
of any of the defense witnesses, but we're telling you, drop the bribery charge.
That's the main charge.
You should drop it right now.
So look, I have only one request for my trial that hasn't been met so
far that we have live television coverage of the trial.
It's the best show in town.
This has nothing to do with my trial.
It's a bogus charge.
>> Speaker 2: So he says it's a bogus charge, but again,
the timing super convenient for him, super convenient.
>> Speaker 3: So what the people on TV never tell you for understandable reasons,
is that they oftentimes get these guests in a competition with other shows.
And so how do they compete to get Netanyahu on ABC instead of NBC or CBS?
Well, they promise them goodies.
That they'll be fair to him, fair to him.
So then what they do is 100% marketing.
So Stephanopoulos asks a softball question disguised as a hardball question.
It looks like Stefanopoulos is challenging him on the fact that he has these criminal
charges against him, but he knows that Netanyahu knows that question is coming.
So Netanyahu has a BS answer ready.
I am innocent.
I want the whole world to watch.
The bribery charges are gonna be dropped.
This has nothing to do with my case.
I mean, it would affect it completely.
But it has nothing to do with it.
If you're doing a real interview,
you then challenge him after that with facts showing that he is wrong.
No follow up at all.
So when you ask the question, it's meant to help him do marketing to pretend
that his case is not relevant, when it's definitely relevant to this.
So it's just a miserable interview.
And at the end, Stephanopoulos with another hardball question of like, well,
President Biden seems to disagree a little bit.
He wanted you to slow down, did you?
First of all, that's not even the question at hand.
Israel's having an internal issue here.
Who cares what Biden thinks or McConnell thinks?
I get it, your relationship with America is relevant.
I understand that.
But again, it's such a softball because then he gets to go, yeah,
no, I did slow down for three months cuz Biden asked me to,
cuz I'm such a great ally to America.
Well, no, you slowed down because you were worried about national security and
all those people that were gonna quit and you use it as a way to get more support.
And I hear you, and that's normal politics inside your own country.
But you didn't soften it 1%.
And so it made it seem like he agreed with Biden when he doesn't even Biden,
who's gonna give him everything he wants anyway, right?
But put out a strongly worded letter about Netanyahu.
But if you watch that interview again, you would probably think that Netanyahu and
Biden agree 100% at this point, when that'S not remotely the case.
>> Speaker 2: Look, at the end of the day, we here in the United States,
as ordinary citizens, have no control over what happens in Israel.
It's really important for the people of Israel to do what they've been doing,
to stand up and to be persistent in their protests, be strategic
in trying to get this power hungry right wing prime minister out of office.
I think that that's what they should focus on.
But here in the United States, we should focus on our own government and
what our own government supports, right?
So I'm not interested in Biden's strongly worded letter to Benjamin Netanyahu.
The argument that we hear from the US government in regard to Israel over and
over again is, this is the strongest democracy,
this is the best democracy in the region.
How are you gonna make that argument as you're funneling billions
of dollars in US tax money to Israel, right?
To help them with Iron Dome, to help them with their military?
What is the excuse gonna be now, right?
How are you gonna argue that it's a democracy while the only pressure the US
government has applied to the Israeli government on this issue
is a strongly worded letter?
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, don't get me wrong.
Biden definitely disagrees with him, and Netanyahu,
who almost made it seem like that he agreed with him.
But the disagreement is irrelevant.
And that's why I don't even like the question, cuz the question is,
if Stephanopoulos knows we're not going to do anything to Israel,
he knows we're not gonna take away $1 from Israel.
He's just doing this as a way of, again,
seeming like he's asking him a hard question.
Could this endanger your relationship with America?
Okay, why don't you ask Biden next time he's on?
Are you gonna cut a single dollar?
Look, no one in mainstream media would even dare to ask such a so.
If we're all outraged, and Biden is genuinely
outraged at how Netanyahu is destroying democracy in Israel,
and if you love our allies in Israel, you would want democracy, you would root for
them to have a healthy government that is more democratic.
Well, then you would push your allies in the right direction.
But are we going to do that?
No, look, people would love to throw around identity
politics here to cover for their political positions,
especially their right wing positions.
But the reality is,
of course we're not gonna do anything because of the lobbyists.
So I've been covering politics for 25 years.
It doesn't matter if it's a Republican or a Democrat in charge at all.
Israel's funding has never been cut.
It's only been added to every single year.
No politician is ever allowed to question it.
When Ilhan Omar questioned her a little bit,
they did a resolution calling her an anti Semite.
When she made the most obvious point in the world that lobbyists matter,
not just for Israel, but for Saudi Arabia, for
all these countries, and for all these companies and interests.
To pretend that the lobbyists don't matter when they're funneling millions and
millions of dollars into these politicians is absurd.
And it's a giant lie by the American media going, I don't see it.
Did the money wind up in ads for us?
No golly gee, get out of here man.
We know nothing's gonna happen.
It doesn't matter if Attila the Hun runs Israel.
We're going to give them more money and
more money cuz it has nothing to do with our love for Israel.
Cuz if it did,
then we would wanna actually help our ally go in the right direction.
No, we don't care.
Those politicians just want the money, and they will do as they're told.
Look, people are gonna get really mad.
But Netanyahu is not 1% worried cuz we're not the boss of him and he knows it.
And that's just the reality.
Same reason by the way, that Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia not
1% worried cuz we're not the boss of him.
And that's how these lobbyists have completely taken over our government.