The Knesset on Wednesday voted to approve opposition Yesh Atid MK Karine Elharrar to the Judicial Selections Committee. With 58 votes in favor and 56 votes against, Elharrar’s win marks a triumph for the opposition, which had hinged the continuation of judicial overhaul talks on the selection of its candidate to the committee.
Though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to use a legal technicality to delay the vote by 30 days, it backfired.
Noted Israeli writer Rabbi Chaim Navon posted a comment on his Facebook page about the state of the judicial reforms. “For now, we are left with a broken judicial system. Tomorrow the court can announce that it is canceling a law, or a basic law, or the Declaration of Independence itself, because that is what it feels like doing. We must not give up the ambition to correct this, and the other weaknesses of the system. But it may be worth using the only tactic that managed to bring about a certain correction in the system – the tactic that Levin’s associates often underestimated,” Navon wrote.
Navon also praised the success of the former Minister of Justice, Ayelet Shaked. “The subtle and sophisticated way of Ayelet Shaked; the only one who managed to appoint many conservative judges and start some necessary reforms, without having a quarrel with the heads of the system.
Comparing the success of Shaked with the current state of the judicial reforms process is like night and day. It also goes to show how badly the process is being threatened and undermined by those who seek to bring down Israel’s current right-wing government. While the negotiations are worse than a tug of war, and despite this, judicial reforms can, must, and will advance.