Now, hundreds of thousands of Israelis went on strike and
protested out of the Knesset this morning, in response to Prime Minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to weaken the country's judicial system.
He specifically proposing to weaken the country's highest court,
Israel's Supreme Court.
In fact, protesters or protests have been taking place in Israel for
the last six weeks.
Now, Netanyahu coalition advance this legislation that would overhaul
the country's top court.
And voted to send the first of two bills to parliament for a vote, even with
opposition from President Joe Biden and the demonstrators in his own country.
Now, Netanyahu, to give you some more details,
has sought to fast-track the legislation which would weaken oversight
of legislation by Israel's Supreme Court and
give lawmakers the power to appoint judges among other changes.
Now, the way the system of government is set up in Israel does share parallels or
similarities to what we have here in the United States.
The courts or
the judicial branch is supposed to serve as a check to Parliament.
But Benjamin Netanyahu, who, by the way,
is facing his own serious corruption investigation,
is looking to weaken the oversight power that the country's Supreme Court has.
Netanyahu says the legislative changes are needed to curb Israel's overly activist
judges reign in alleged judicial corruption and
increase diversity on the bench.
His opponents say they amount to an end to judicial checks and balances and
a governmental takeover of the Supreme Court,
which many Israelis consider the last bastion of the country's democracy.
Before we get to some more footage of the protests from this past weekend,
Cenk why don't you jump in?
>> Yeah, so I've often complimented the Israeli Supreme Court or
criticized them from time to time too.
Of course, unfortunately, as with many parts of the Israeli government,
they have their absurd rulings too against Palestinians oftentimes.
But, they do also often have fair rulings.
And they're largely independent from Parliament, and
they do a way better job of checking corruption than our Supreme Court does.
I mean, a billion times better.
So, it is one of the best parts of the Israeli government.
And you do sometimes even get them checking the Israeli government are some
of their worst abuses.
Oftentimes they excuse the worst abuses as well, so it's a mixed bag in
that department, but overall, one of the best institutions in Israel.
So, now what you're seeing is secular citizens.
And look at that, you see that it's the same dynamic, there's all these people who
think, certain ethnic groups do this, or certain religions do that.
No, it's in every country.
You have the right wing which is usually filled with fundamentalist zealots, and
you have secular people.
Now, all the secular citizens that are showing up here in the protest,
they're not all necessarily left wingers as we would describe them,
or progressives, a lot of them are, by the way.
So, look at all those progressive Israeli citizens, right?
But yes, there are even some religious groups in there and
other folks who are saying, yeah, look, I don't know how I feel about policies or
I don't know how I feel about this or that, but I do know, I don't want us
to be run by fundamentalist clerics and have my rights stripped away.
And a lot of people showed up in handmaid's tale outfits too because
the Supreme Court, if its power is taken away and
its independence is taken away, could really harm secular rights inside Israel.
>> Now, despite the large number of protesters that you can see in Tel Aviv,
the fact of the matter is polling indicates that a slight majority in
fact favor weakening the Supreme Court.
Now, this is one poll, so let me just give you that warning.
But according to the Jewish People Policy Institute,
which is a Jerusalem-based research group,
roughly 44% of Israelis support the judicial overhaul and 41% oppose it.
I should also note that Netanyahu pursued this or
the moves came after the government announced its first efforts to
strengthen Israel's settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
So, that's in my opinion, another motivation here because,
as Cenk had mentioned, the country's Supreme Court was far more fair in
terms of weighing in on matters related to the West Bank and Palestinians.
So, this new authorization for nine new settlements is a bit of a problem and
I think that kind of informs us as to what the real motivations are for Netanyahu.
Now, on the Israeli, right, the Supreme Court again, is typically seen
as a left-leaning institution that prevents right wing and religious
governments from enacting policies that they were elected to implement.
Though it has broadly supported some settlement construction in
the occupied territories, Cenk went over this a little bit.
But understand the criticism mostly comes from Benjamin Netanyahu's right
wing government because of the fact that they've been willing to step in and
check some of the acts that they've engaged in.
Now, about the protesters.
An estimated 200,000 Israelis demonstrated across the country on Saturday,
according to organizers, in one of the biggest turnouts in the weekly mass
rallies happening for nearly two months.
Israel's mainly ceremonial president also has called for compromise and
warned that the crisis had left the country on the brink of constitutional and
social collapse.
The other thing I wanted to mention is having an impact on the economy,
which I wouldn't have predicted.
But just to give you a sense of what's happening, in recent weeks US investors,
JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs, as well as Britain's Barclays Bank
have issued reports warning of a rising risk of investing in Israel.
Some economists have compared the situation to Poland, whose credit rating
was lowered after passing legislation in 2016 restricting judicial independence.
And as one professor of economics at Tel Aviv University says, what we see here
with the reforms is bad for the economy, how fast the risk is going up is not yet
certain, but it is rising and the people are worried.
>> Okay, so I wanna make, I think this is a really interesting point where
we get to look at three different issues and see a little bit of insight into.
One's about Jewish people over all the other one is about Palestinians and
the third one's about Israel or three different topics.
One, there's tons of anti-Semitic theories that have come resurfaced
recently because of Kanye West and others, right?
And Donald Trump dining with a bunch of crazy anti-Semites.
So, well they're always portrayed as a monolith, right?
Or, Jewish business interests, Jews control this or that.
Well, there's all those Jews in Israel who don't agree with one another.
And the business interest by the way inside Israel are losing.
And then international business interests like JPMorgan and
others are coming out against the Israeli government.
Why are they doing that if the Jews control everything?
So, I mean look, these are super obvious points but
unfortunately, they are not obvious to everyone.
So, the anti-Semitism is absurd and always ridiculous and
any look at Israel ironically shows that, okay?
So number two is about Israel itself, look Netanyahu in there in terms of their
internal politics is doing what all of these corrupt right wing leaders do.
I'm not worried about the Supreme Court because they're pursuing corruption
charges against me, I'm worried about their corruption.
Yeah, that's it, that's it even more,
even though my corruption is pervasive and proven and obvious.
No, we need to get rid of those guys investigating me cuz they're the real
corrupt ones wink.
And that's just exactly what Trump did with drain the swamp,
exactly what Erdogan does during the earthquake and before, it's the same
right wing formula that every body across the world unfortunately applies.
And the last thing is, look for as far as the Palestinians are concerned,
I actually view this as a really hopeful moment.
Because, unfortunately, the Palestinian cause has not animated enough of
a percentage of the Israeli citizens for to push forward a peace plan, right?
But now reform secular Jews inside Israel are beginning to see, wait,
my interests are not at all aligned with the right wing fundamentalist zealots,
they're not just coming for Palestinians, they're also coming for us.
And so, now that's been a phenomenon for a long time, but now it's crystal clear and
now they're on the brink of realizing they're also going to lose a lot of
rights here.
And so, I might create a tiny bit of sliver of hope that perhaps the secular
side can win and they lead in a different direction for Israel.
It's not a huge hope, but it is a little bit and so
that's a positive amount in here, too.