Coalition’s ‘legislative blitz’ designed to shore-up, unshackle right-wing power

The flood of controversial laws rammed through the Knesset by the coalition in this final week of legislation before the election season begins has generated fury and outrage among the opposition parties.

The contentious measures effect major changes to the checks on government power and to the regulation of the press, while creating ever greater societal discord over the suppurating wound of ultra-Orthodox draft evasion.

Some of these laws have ideological motivations, some have illiberal motivations, and some are simply politically expedient for the coalition’s political alliance ahead of the October 27 elections.

If you look closely, however, a common theme appears to unite the different components of the coalition’s legislative blitz: preserving right-wing power by buttressing public and political support for the right-wing bloc in the Knesset, and unshackling the government from legal restraints on its exercise of that power.

This, therefore, is the source of the opposition’s anger and of its accusations that the coalition’s raft of far-reaching laws is based on its political survival.

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The blitz

The most important and controversial of the measures passed this week include a law stripping the attorney general of any ability to restrain the government; a law politicizing broadcast media regulation and enabling a small number of right-wing owners to amass ever-greater influence over the media market; a law banning the arrest of ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers; and a quasi-constitutional law establishing Torah study as a foundational value of the state.

A law restoring the Haredi-controlled Chief Rabbinate’s control over kashrut licensing, with the vast powers of patronage that it entails, was another key kickback to the ultra-Orthodox parties.

Throwing off the legal shackles

The law neutering the attorney general’s powers has been an ideological goal of the political right for many years now. Justice Minister Yariv Levin of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman MK Simcha Rothman, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and numerous others have long railed against the ability of the attorney general to stymie government decisions and legislation if they deem it to be incommensurate with Israeli law, or in other words, illegal.

The ability of the attorney general in Israel to issue binding decisions on the legality of government action, which can thwart government policy and decisions, is an outlier among most democratic countries, and is a power stemming from several landmark High Court rulings rather than from legislation, something Levin, Rothman et al have frequently highlighted when justifying the law passed on Wednesday denuding the attorney general of this authority.

Critics have argued, however, that the minimal checks on executive power in Israel — which lacks a bill of rights or constitution, a clear separation between the executive and the legislature, a bicameral legislature, and representative constituencies — mean that the power of the attorney general to determine whether government decisions are legal is vital to the country’s system of checks and balances.

Either way, the coalition’s legislative blitz over the last week has done away with that particular restraint on government power. High Court review of this complex law will be lengthy, and it is far from certain that the court will strike down the measure.

Media influence

The media overhaul law advanced by far-right Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi also seems designed to buttress right-wing power by bolstering right-wing media in various ways.

Although some of the most extreme aspects of the legislation, which severely threatened press freedom, were removed from the bill, the law still gives the communications minister effective control over the broadcast media regulatory body it establishes.

And it will also enable cross-ownership in Israel’s media market, allowing the owners of broadcast television channels to own news outlets which are distributed through cable and satellite providers, something that was previously prohibited in order to prevent a small number of owners from amassing excessive influence over public opinion, as occurred in countries which experienced democratic retreat, such as Hungary under Viktor Orban.

When testifying in his ongoing criminal trial, Netanyahu admitted that he had sought to have the owner of the Walla News website sell it, so as to transform it into a right-wing outlet.

Currently, Netanyahu ally Patrick Drahi owns the right-wing i24 News outlet as well as the HOT cable television provider, while the government has lavished sympathetic Channel 14 with beneficial regulation, notably in the newly passed law.

The goal of the legislation appears clear: to make it easier for right-wing media outlets to gain greater market share, and thereby shore up right-wing public sentiment.

Keep your friends close

Finally, there is the slew of legislation passed by the coalition this week to satisfy the demands of the ultra-Orthodox parties.

The Basic Law: Torah Study law, with its goal of legitimizing Haredi draft evasion, and the law banning arrests of Haredi draft dodgers for seven months are both ostensibly anathema to non-Haredi right-wing voters who either serve in the military themselves or send their children to fight for the country.

The goal of these laws is purely political: to guarantee that the ultra-Orthodox parties remain part of the alliance with the right-wing that has been a winning electoral combination for Netanyahu through almost all of the past two decades.

Current polling does not seem to indicate that the current coalition has any chance of forming the next government. But Israeli political surveys are unreliable, the opposition is quite divided, and Netanyahu is a formidable campaigner. And even if keeping the Haredi parties tightly bound to the right-wing bloc will not guarantee electoral victory, and may even harm it, the unified bloc may do well enough on election day to ensure the opposition parties are denied the ability to form a coalition.

Taken together, the coalition’s legislative strategy appears to follow a coherent logic of power preservation.

The ultra-Orthodox-compliant laws shore up the electoral alliance; the media law shores up public support for the right-wing bloc through pro-coalition messaging; and the attorney general law unshackles the government from legal checks on its power, with the hope that the right-wing political bloc will be able to enjoy the fruits of that legislation.

Given current polling suggesting a political stalemate akin to the electoral deadlock across four elections and two years in 2019 and 2020, the current government could begin making use of its newly legislated powers during transitional governments between elections, even if its coalition does not win a Knesset majority.

Of course, there is a significant chance some of these legislative efforts will backfire. The laws passed to pacify the truculent Haredi parties may prove to be political poison for the right-wing. If that leads to electoral success for the opposition, then the powers granted to the government through the new media and attorney general laws could conceivably be used against the right-wing bloc, though opposition leaders have promised to repeal them.

But the general strategy of this week’s coalition-pushed legislative blitz looks clear: ram through as many self-serving laws as possible, thereby enabling the right-wing bloc to accrue as much power and public support as possible, in the hope that it will be able to wield that power with the fewest possible restraints.