Israeli judges call for protection after threat to chief justice
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Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had lashed out at the chief justice, saying “we will run him over”.
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JERUSALEM - Israel’s judicial and business establishments are expressing alarm over the safety of the country’s chief justice after a top minister threatened to “run him over”, the latest round in a battle between the government and the courts.
In an open letter signed by 143 judges, including all living former chief justices, they warned that government actions “pose a threat to the country’s democratic foundations”, and voiced concern over “the personal safety of Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit”.
They appealed to law enforcement agencies “to ensure at all costs his safety and well-being, as well as those of all Israeli judges.”
Earlier this week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich lashed out at the Chief Justice, saying “we will run him over”, after calling him “a megalomaniac, violent, predatory totalitarian who’s robbing Israel of its democracy”.
Mr Smotrich refused to retract his remarks, saying that he “could not use gentler words to express the pain and frustration over the Supreme Court’s wrongdoings toward the government and the people”.
A business forum of the chairs and chief executive officers of Israel’s top enterprises, roughly half of them listed in the Tel Aviv 35 benchmark index, said Mr Smotrich crossed “every possible red line” and should be indicted for incitement.
“He sends a terrible message to global rating agencies,” they added, ”who are lowering Israel’s sovereign rating precisely due to such government brutality.”
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu views the judiciary as a bastion of liberals who defy the government’s authority, trampling voters’ will. Supporters of the system say that courts are holding the line against governmental populism that threatens minorities and human rights.
“When the court criticises the government, that’s its job, it’s not violence,” said Ms Dorit Beinisch, a former chief justice, who signed the letter, in a radio interview.
“There’s been an accumulation of decisions that, on the face of it, seem illegal,” she said.
Recently, the court overruled the ousting of the country’s attorney-general and has prevented the appointment of Israel’s civil service commissioner, a top technocrat in charge of 80,000 government employees, demanding a more competitive procedure.
This week, the court froze a parliamentary decision to transfer 1 billion shekels (S$400 million) to ultra-Orthodox schools that do not teach core studies, enraging Mr Netanyahu’s closest political allies.
The allies called the judges “a dangerous group of arsonists”.
The court has also halted a decision to shut down Army Radio
Mr Netanyahu’s government has attempted to weaken courts – as well as other state institutions – and shift more power to the executive branch since it came into office three years ago, sparking mass protests through much of 2023.
They came to an abrupt halt after the Oct 7 attacks
