Is Israel headed toward a January 6 moment? After this week, it is impossible to rule out the possibility.
On Sunday, the government openly declared that it would not respect a ruling by the High Court of Justice. The decision in question – allowing the Council of the Second Authority, the commercial broadcasting regulatory body, to resume operations – might seem inconsequential. But that was beside the point. Here was the government of Israel, the country’s executive branch, openly signaling that it no longer considered itself bound by a ruling of the nation’s highest court.
Then came Wednesday, when Justice Minister Yariv Levin called for defying another High Court ruling, this one ordering the Knesset to hold a new vote for State Comptroller after the original vote a few weeks ago was tainted by lawmakers who violated the principle of a secret ballot and filmed themselves voting.
Again, it might seem inconsequential. It was, after all, just one minister speaking. But this is far from trivial. Ever since taking office in January 2023, this coalition has done everything it possibly could to undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and the attorney-general.
While it ultimately failed to carry out the sweeping judicial overhaul that Levin unveiled just days after the coalition took office almost four years ago, it has succeeded in something else: eroding public trust in Israel’s judicial system and in the rule of law itself.
For nearly four years, Israelis have been told repeatedly that the Supreme Court is responsible for the country’s problems, that the attorney-general prevents the government from governing, and that a so-called “deep state” stands in the way of Israel defeating its enemies.
Many people heard those arguments and found them persuasive. To some extent, they had legitimacy. Over the years, for example, I have repeatedly written in these pages about the lack of transparency in Israel’s judicial appointments process.
I also saw firsthand how legal advisers in ministries sometimes overextend their authority and insert themselves into policymaking, at times attempting to dictate the direction of a minister’s agenda.
But there is a fundamental difference between criticizing a system and seeking to improve it, and trying to dismantle that system altogether.
Over time, the attacks on the courts and the attorney-general became less about genuine reform and more about avoiding difficult policy decisions. There was a problem with drafting haredim (ultra-Orthodox) into the IDF? Blame the courts. Illegal outposts were being demolished? Blame the attorney-general. Whatever the issue, there was always an institutional scapegoat.
It became a politics of deflection rather than one of accountability.
Viewed in light of what happened this past week – with ministers, and ultimately the cabinet itself, openly declaring that they will refuse to adhere to Supreme Court rulings – it becomes clear that this campaign was never simply about judicial reform. Each attack, each accusation, and each attempt to delegitimize the judiciary served as another building block toward the moment Israel finds itself in today.
Not random choices
Democracies do not unravel overnight. Governments do not simply wake up after an election and refuse to accept the results. The public first has to be conditioned to believe that the institutions responsible for safeguarding democracy – the courts, the attorney-general, the election commission – are themselves illegitimate. That is a process, and it happens gradually through a constant process of delegitimization.
That helps explain what we have witnessed over the past several years. The Supreme Court has been portrayed as an enemy of the people. The attorney-general has been accused of preventing elected officials from governing.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana refuses to recognize Justice Yitzhak Amit as president of the Supreme Court or invite him to state-level events at the Knesset while giving him the ceremonial status traditionally afforded to the role. Levin has refused to convene the Judicial Selection Committee because doing so would acknowledge the legitimacy of the court as it currently exists.
And now, with elections just months away, ministers and the cabinet are openly declaring that Supreme Court rulings need not be obeyed.
Notice also which rulings they chose to challenge.
Neither involved an emotionally charged national issue that dominates headlines or divides the country.
One concerned an obscure broadcasting regulator that most Israelis have never heard of, and the other involved the Knesset’s vote for State Comptroller – a decision the coalition can easily portray to its supporters as judicial interference in parliamentary affairs, even though the vote itself was compromised after Likud lawmakers were instructed to photograph their ballots, violating the principle of a secret vote.
These were not random choices. They were chosen because they are relatively neutral and most people will look at the calls to defy and simply shrug and move on, thinking the issues are small and inconsequential. That might be true, but that is only temporary. What is happening is the normalization of the idea that Supreme Court rulings are optional and not binding.
It is, in other words, another building block and step toward eroding a central pillar of Israeli democracy.
What happens next is impossible to know.
Perhaps nothing. Perhaps this is simply another way for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to preserve maximum political flexibility, allowing him to decide later whether to escalate or pull back.
What happens, though, doesn’t have to be something big and all at once. There can be efforts to discourage voter turnout among Arabs, attempts to undermine confidence in the election committee overseeing the voting, or a refusal to recognize legitimate results after votes are counted.
None of those outcomes is inevitable. Yet after this week’s unprecedented challenge to the authority of the Supreme Court, they can no longer be dismissed out of hand.
Years later, January 6 is still remembered as a scar on American democracy. Without getting into the politics of it, it demonstrated that even the world’s most powerful democracy is not immune from attempts to overturn constitutional norms when someone wants to cling to or seize power.
Israelis have always believed that our democracy is resilient enough to withstand any political crisis. But resilience is not automatic. It depends on people respecting the institutions that constrain power.
After this week, that can no longer be taken for granted.
The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD Forum, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. His latest book (with Amir Bohbot), While Israel Slept, is a bestseller in the United States.