“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” Hosea 8:7

Maybe you read or heard about the op-ed Tom Friedman wrote for the New York Times.

Friedman’s long association with Israel has endowed him with a deep empathy for the Jewish State, an empathy that’s tempered with a measure of constructive criticism.

I decided to cherry-pick the main points in Friedman’s article omitting content I have referred to in previous posts.

“Can Joe Biden Save Israel?” Friedman asks provocatively.

“If I could get a memo onto President Biden’s desk about the new Israeli government, I know exactly how it would start”

At this juncture I want to insert a margin note: I’m tempted to add that it would likely be filed away with the much sought after classified documents.

Back to the main text-

“Dear Mr. President,

 I don’t know if you are interested in Jewish history, but Jewish history is certainly interested in you today. Israel is on the verge of a historic transformation — from a full-fledged democracy to something less, and from a stabilizing force in the region to a destabilizing one. You may be the only one able to stop Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition from turning Israel into an illiberal bastion of zealotry.”…….

“The short story: An ultranationalist, ultra-Orthodox government, formed after the Netanyahu camp won the election by the tiniest sliver of votes (roughly 30,000 out of some 4.7 million), is driving a power grab that the other half of voters view not only as corrupt but also as threatening their own civil rights. “……

“The current crisis in Israel may be presented to Biden as an internal constitutional matter that he should stay out of. To the contrary. Biden should wade right in (just as Netanyahu did in his address to Congress in 2015) because the outcome has direct implications for U.S. national security interests. I have no illusions that Biden can reverse the most extreme trends emerging in Israel today, but he can nudge things onto a healthier path, and maybe prevent the worst, with some tough love in a way that no other outsider can.” …

“Here is my guess of how Netanyahu would respond" Friedman says,

"Joe, Joey, my old friend, don’t press me on this stuff now. I am the only one restraining these crazies. You and I, Joe, we can make history together.

And let’s, you and me, forge a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. M.B.S. is ready if I can persuade you to give Saudi Arabia security guarantees and advanced weapons. Let’s do that and then I’ll dump these crazies.” ….

“I applaud both foreign policy goals, but I would not pay for them with a U.S. blind eye to Netanyahu’s judicial putsch. If we do that, “we’ll sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”

Israel and the U.S. are friends. But today, one party in this friendship — Israel — is changing its fundamental character. President Biden, in the most caring but clear way possible, needs to declare that these changes violate America’s interests and values and that we are not going to be Netanyahu’s useful idiots and just sit in silence.

Israelis demonstrating against Yariv Levine’s proposed reform to the justice system, aren’t the only ones troubled by the coalition government’s attack on the High Court of Justice.

In an interview with Reuters, Global Ratings director Maxim Rybnikov said the agency was closely following moves Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet might make in the occupied West Bank, as well as the pledged judiciary overhaul that would cut back Supreme Court powers.

"If the announced judicial system changes set a trend for a weakening Israel's institutional arrangements and existing checks and balances this could in the future present downside risks to the ratings. But we are not there yet," said Rybnikov.

S&P rates Israel as 'AA-' with a stable outlook.

Rybnikov, the main credit analyst for Israel, said risks to the country's ratings are currently balanced but that could change. He added that if necessary, ratings action could come sooner than a planned review in May.

 “I don’t think we could have got to where we’ve got to in Israel had it not been a small liberal democracy with proper institutions,” he says. “Anything that undermines that—anything that hurts the checks and balances, anything that hurts minority rights—it’s going to have an impact. There’s no question about it.”

Investors and leaders of Israel’s powerful technology sector are expressing concern that plans by the new government to weaken the judiciary will threaten the country’s liberal democracy and business-friendly environment.

“Investors are certainly contacting us, worried,” says Assaf Rappaport, chief executive officer of Wiz, a cloud cybersecurity startup that has offices in Tel Aviv. “We all understand—the entrepreneurs in Israel and the industry leaders, but also around the world—that without a strong legal system, you can’t do real business, and the risks to business grow.”

Tech companies generate 15% of Israel’s gross domestic product and more than half of its exports. It’s the source of one-quarter of the country’s income tax revenue.

Alan Feld, the founder and managing partner of Vintage Investment Partners, whose Israel-based fund has $3.6 billion in assets under management, says he’s really concerned.

Feld was one of the signatories on a letter circulated last month by an Israeli venture capital firm, Qumra Capital, that warned about driving away tech investors.

The CEOs of Israeli unicorns Honeybook, Cato Networks, Fireblocks and Monday.com, also confirmed they were among the signatories.

“There’s certainly questions swirling about what impact this government and future Israeli demographics will have on the tech ecosystem,” says Nicole Priel, managing director of the Israel office of US investment firm Ibex Investors LLC.” She added, 

“The strength of the Israeli tech brand is its ability to produce smart minds out of universities and out of the army, and it banks on keeping the best and brightest here in Israel. If that ceases to exist, then capital inflows into Israel will also cease to exist.”

Barak Eilam, CEO of Israel’s Nice Ltd., a cloud-based software provider, cautioned that the judicial upheaval is poised to have irreparable consequences for Israel as a hub for doing business and attracting investment.

By the way, our daughter Irit Kaye has a vested interest in Nice Ltd. The company is one of her main business clients.

Prime Minister Netanyahu brushed off the criticism of the proposed changes to the judicial system. Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting he argued that the planned changes would strengthen democracy rather than hasten its end. He also maintained that the government is carrying out the will of the people.

Nonetheless, concern for Israel’s societal wellbeing was expressed in an 86-page report presented to President Isaac Herzog by The Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. The authors of the report warned that the increasing polarisation in the country could have a substantially detrimental impact on the country’s security.

The far-reaching plans for judicial change have sparked massive weekly protests and warnings by officials, industry leaders and others that the overhaul could turn Israel into an international pariah.

“The government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary could undermine democracy and set Israel on a collision course with the United States, potentially endangering crucial strategic ties with its greatest ally.” said INSS director Tamir Hayman, a former Military Intelligence chief.

Describing the recent clash between the judiciary and the coalition government, journalist/analyst Neri Zilber said:

“Other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most consequential figure in Israeli politics today is Aryeh Deri, a senior minister in the country’s hard-right religious and nationalist government and head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Mr. Netanyahu’s biggest coalition partner.

His pivotal role in the political constellation that is testing the strength of Israel’s democratic institutions was confirmed last week as the Israeli Supreme Court transformed a theoretical battle over Israeli democracy into a practical one. In a not entirely unanticipated yet bombshell decision, it ruled that Mr. Deri’s appointment as both interior and health minister was “unreasonable in the extreme” due to his repeated criminal convictions. And it instructed Mr. Netanyahu to fire him. The prime minister unwilling to be held in contempt of court, had to comply with courts directive.

Deri and his party are furious, once again they let the ethnic genie out of the bottle!

Columnist Herb Keinon Jerusalem Post said” The High Court of Justice's decision pulled a scab off a deep societal wound that has never healed, and it's a wound that helps explain Shas' strength and longevity. The ethnic genie – the feeling among many Israelis of Mizrahi descent that they are treated differently than Ashkenazim – has just been let out of the bottle and will only fan the flames of one of the worst domestic crises this country has ever faced. Many in this country – perhaps not as many as those walking around with a feeling that the current right-wing religious government has stolen their country, but a substantial number nonetheless – are carrying a deep-seated feeling that the cards are stacked against them because an Ashkenazi elite is deeply embedded in the system and not giving them an equal chance.

For some, this sounds crazy; for others, it feels real

If healing that wound was all the country had to deal with, that would be enough. But it is not all that Israel has to deal with.

     Shas party leader Aryeh Deri

Uncovering that wound now is bound to create an even more confrontational and antagonistic atmosphere, which will make dealing with all the other challenges the country is dealing with even more complicated. “

Maybe Aryeh Deri derives some consolation knowing that the Wall Street Journal published an editorial defending the Israeli government’s planned judicial overhaul and slamming the dramatic High Court decision last week to bar him from serving as a cabinet minister.

The business daily slammed the 10-1 High Court ruling Wednesday that determined that Deri’s dual appointments as health and interior minister were “unreasonable in the extreme” as a major example of judicial overreach.

I think the WSJ engaged in a bit of journalistic overreach when its editor compared the US Supreme Court with Israel’s High Court of Justice.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni.                           26^th of January, 2023