Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address to the nation this evening on the government’s planned judicial reforms. The address follows Netanyahu’s meeting with Defense Minikster Yoav Gallant, who called for the judicial reform bills to be frozen until the next Knesset session.
“Citizens of Israel, a few months ago, as soon as the election results were announced, I said, ‘I intend to be the prime minister of all the citizens of Israel,’ I meant it then and I mean it today,” Netanyahu said at the beginning of his speech. “We have one country and we must do everything to protect it from external threats and from an irreconcilable rift from within. We cannot allow any dispute, no matter how acute, to endanger our shared future.”
“The opponents of the reform are not traitors and the supporters of the reform are not fascists. Most of the citizens of Israel love our country and want to preserve our democracy. But since there are those who appropriate democracy for themselves, I want to say a few words about democracy: the supporters of the reform think that there is no democracy here. What is real and what endangers democracy is an all-powerful court. On the other hand, the opponents of the reform think that what will endanger democracy is a Knesset and a government that will act without restraints and without brakes, that will endanger the rights of the individual,” he said.
In the wake of the passage of the law preventing the attorney general and Supreme Court from declaring a prime minister unfit, Netanyahu declared, “Until today my hands were tied. But no more. Today I enter the conversation, for the sake of the people and the country, I will do everything in my power to reach a solution and calm the spirits in the nation. We are all brothers.”
