April 04, 2023

What’s the Deal With Protests in Israel?–Professor Eugene Kontorovich on Supreme Court Power Grabs, US Involvement, and Where the Real Danger to Democracy Lies

42 minutes

“Amazingly, President Biden is warning Israel that allowing politicians to be involved in nominating judges is going to perhaps affect our shared democratic values. Well, of course, in America, politicians do exactly that.”

Eugene Kontorovich is a scholar of international law, an expert in the Israeli-Arab conflict, and a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. At a time when many have lost faith in international organizations, I sat down with him to discuss what role they should actually play.

“With all international institutions, the trade-off—the lesson—is how to be able to rely on them for small things, small routine things, and not put faith in them for important things,” said Kontorovich.

We also discuss the current protests in Israel and the U.S. State Department’s role in funding some of them.

“The United States is giving political support for the efforts to crush democracy in Israel. And by crush democracy in Israel, I mean insulate the Supreme Court as a permanent, aristocratic, democratically unchangeable body,” said Kontorovich.

He argues that despite what we are hearing in the mainstream media, the judicial reforms proposed by Netanyahu’s coalition are not a threat to Israel’s democracy. In fact, a judicial overhaul is necessary in order to restore the Jewish state’s separation of powers and transfer authority back to elected officials, says Kontorovich.

“In Israel, the court picks its own successors … so, what you essentially have is the supreme power in the state held by a self-selecting group of people completely insulated from any democratic process,” explained Kontorovich.

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