7/25/023

This appeared in my inbox yesterday, after Netanyahu and his brethren had pushed through legislation that a majority of Israeli citizens opposes. Unless you live under a rock, you will have heard in the news or read in our own major newspapers about the changes that drive Israel in the direction of other small, autocratic countries like Hungary and, increasingly, Poland, and the huge opposition they ignited. I thought I’ll summarize the major points best I can, but with a focus on what it implies for women, Jewish, Arab and Palestinian women alike. (Correspondingly, photographs today are street shots of women across the years.)

I used to be on the Board of the local Chapter of NCJW, the National Council of Jewish Women, before it closed its doors here in Portland, and am still receiving important information from the national group. Much of today’s information was gleaned from there.

The basics: The State of Israel has no formal constitution that anchors a separation of powers, preventing the executive or legislative bodies from accumulating too much say through a structural system of checks and balances. The judicial system, in particular the Supreme Court, served as a check on governmental excesses or violations of human rights instead, particularly those affecting minorities and women. It functioned around a “reasonableness doctrine,” which permitted the court to overturn government decisions that they felt lacked standards of basic fairness and justness, and the rulings did not require unanimity from the full bench.

The reasonableness doctrine, that very tool to curb power grabs by the legislative, has now been scrapped by the coalition of Netanyahu, far-right factions in his government and the ultra-Orthodox. More is in the wings, including the proposal that the court needs full bench agreements, and a new bill that will allow to override court decisions with a simple majority vote of the Knesset (Israel’s legislature). There is also a proposed bill that stipulates pure government control over the appointment of judges, and a proposal that would turn legal advisers who serve government ministries from professional appointees accountable to the attorney general into political appointments controlled by Cabinet ministers. Add to all that the hope of the extremist religious factions to move closer towards a theocracy, where many legal decisions will be in the hands of religious courts.

The specifics:

Last week there was an emergency meeting convened by the Labor Party and others at the Knesset under the title: “Emergency conference on the elimination of the status of women.” Points of discussion were far right proposals to advance the “right” to gender segregation, as well as their bill towards expanding the rabbinic courts’ powers in matters of divorce to include alimony and custody elements, with dire ramifications for the rights of women in divorce proceedings. And, importantly, the extremists’ move to disband the National Authority for the Advancement of the Status of Women, an independent watchdog that preserves and protects women’s rights.

According to the Israel Democracy Institute, this is the status quo:

The current situation in Israel is that women’s rights are not adequately protected. Women are not appropriately represented in the senior ranks of government ministries and local authorities (only 14 of the 257 local authorities are headed by women); many women are the victims of various forms of violence (the estimate is that approximately a million women and children in Israel are exposed to domestic violence); women suffer significant wage differentials in the job market; and a large percentage of working women hold low-paying jobs, especially women from groups that are the victim of discrimination, such as the ultra-Orthodox and Arabs.

If the legislative proposals became law, the situation would be far worse.

For one, the composition of any future court would shift even more heavily male and conservative, if the appointing committees would be under the control of the radicalized government. If the courts can no longer effectively provide constitutional reviews of proposed laws, the protection of women and minorities would suffer. The proposed amendment of the anti-discrimination law will harm women. Right now the law says that gender segregation is unlawful discrimination. The ultra-Orthodox would like to reinstate gender segregation in all forms, thus excluding women from public office, the courts, and the like (women are already minimally represented as is.)

Even if the courts could still fulfill their role in protecting against discrimination, the proposed bill that a simple majority of the legislative body could overrule the court, would leave women without ANY recourse.

And women’s rights in rabbinical courts are considered by many to be a travesty. Included in the proposed legislation to expand the power of rabbinical courts in civil matters is the adjudication of child support even without the consent of both parties, contrary to the current situation where if one of the spouses requests transferring the child support case to the family court, they can do so. Women who want a divorce are often forced by these courts to sign all of their rights away to be granted the legal separation. (Ref.)

Women’s advocacy groups like Bonot Alternativa called for a strike last week.

“One in three women experiences ‘get’ (divorce) extortion and are forced to give up their rights to free themselves from marriage. One in every 10 court procedures in the rabbinical court lasts over two years and causes a case in which the woman and hundreds of other women are refused a get each year and join the ranks of the agunot (chained women).”

Here is a link of an interview by Daliah Litwick of three Israeli women involved in the opposition to an expansion towards theocratic rule. It provides a lot of details of what the stakes are.

The options:

Hundred of thousands have marched in Israel in protest across the last months. Many professionals, military personnel included, have threatened strikes or absence from work duties. Eminent politicians across the spectrum, including former and current presidents, have warned against pushing the new legislation through, seeing it as a dangerous undermining of democracy.

There are also people who study resistance, in particular non-violent resistance from a general and a Jewish perspective. Just last week, a conference took place in Israel, organized by Bar Ilan University and the German University of Leipzig. Titled Non-Violent Resistance: Multi-disciplinary perspectives from the past, present and future for today’s democracies, the conference showcased lecturers from diverse fields and backgrounds. They tackled a lot, from the Hebrew Bible as Resistance Literature, to the Strategy and Principles of Non Violent Civil Resistance on a pragmatic level. It was surely no coincidence that the key note, presented by Menachem Mautner, the Danielle Rubinstein Professor of Comparative Civil Law and Jurisprudence at the Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Law, was titled – Jurisprudence for the “Bad Times.” Maybe their insight and knowledge can be applied to a contemporary crisis as Israel experiences it right now.

We will see how much and how long an active opposition to those undermining democracy can endure. Seeing the commitment by such large numbers of Israelis so far is providing some hope.

Here is NCJW’s solidarity statement from yesterday.

Here is a wild collection of variations on a theme – The People United Will Never Be Defeated.

Rest in Power, Frederic Rzewski.